Category | Op Ed

I am ready for some football

Published on October 23, 2007 by The Sentinel

    The news of football possibly coming to campus has me thinking of
my old alma mater and it’s freakishly good year so far as there are a
lot of parallels between KSU and USF.  I don’t know whether it stranger
to see the USF Bulls at No. 2 in the polls or to see Florida State and
Miami heading into a game where both are unranked for the first time
since 1977.

    Back in that time, the FSU vs. Miami game would
decide who dominated football in my home state.  And when I was at
USF we didn’t have a football team, and the Florida Gators, Florida
State Seminoles and Miami Hurricanes dominated the football scene,
fighting it out each year to see who was No. 1. Talk about a long time
gone.

    I’m thrilled to see the Bulls in the thick of things
and USF has a lot in common with KSU that we should think about as we
ponder our growth and football.

    Both USF and KSU are post-war schools, founded in
1956 and 1963 respectively, and both started by catering to more
non-traditional students who largely commuted to and from the school,
living off campus.

    Back in my day, USF’s President, John Lott Brown,
wanted to put the emphasis on academics rather than athletics, hence no
football. Sound familiar? So USF’s homecoming focused on our basketball
team and was a relatively low-key affair.

    Again, sound familiar? As a newer school, USF didn’t
have a deep or strong alumni base to draw from or a sports tradition,
such as at other schools.

    And again, that sounds familiar doesn’t it? 
Flash forward a few years as Florida’s population swells, increasing
enrollment at USF, which eventually became the second largest
university in the state, moving past FSU and behind only UF. 
Doesn’t that sound familiar too?

    Then, in 1997 a new USF president, Betty Castor,
spearheaded the push for football.  Those first years were not
pretty to say the least, but the students and alumni rallied around the
Bulls even though they labored in the shadows of bigger, better
programs at UF and FSU. Then the Bulls started winning and nothing
succeeds like success. In recent years the Bulls have played spoiler,
ruining seasons for Louisville and then West Virginia. But this year?
This year is different.

     Now I’m not saying this to toot the horn for
the Bulls, but to draw the parallels between our universities and
saying maybe our leadership here needs to take a serious look at what
happened for USF. If you look at the roster for USF you’ll see a lot of
folks that played high school football in the Tampa area and throughout
Florida. If they didn’t play for USF they’d probably be playing at a
university in another state.  There’s more than enough talent in
Florida to go around and the same could easily be said of Georgia.

    Why should these high school seniors leave their
friends and family to play elsewhere when they could easily play at KSU
and get a first rate education at one of Georgia’s top universities? It
seems to me that with the interest in football locally, a team at KSU
is a natural progression. Like USF, our alumni base has grown to the
point where we could easily support a football team and pull those
vital alumni back to campus.

    When I was in Tampa in early October I saw a whole
lot more USF merchandise on sale that I did for the Gators or
Seminoles. Think of the money USF is pulling in from that increased
sale of merchandise and more active, engaged alumni.

    Now I’m not saying whether USF deserves to be at No.
2 or not, but look at me. I buy USF merchandise, watch the games, and
if I’m there, I’ll go to a game. To generate momentum you’ve got to
have something to get motivated about.

    And while it’s exciting to see the Bulls play on
television at Raymond James stadium I know it would be even nicer to
see them play in a stadium that’s closer to campus.  But all
things in due time and it is probably a good idea for KSU to build the
stadium closer to home.

    Now USF has a way to go before it truly rivals UF or
FSU in football, but it is getting very competitive as a university. In
my era USF was a fallback school ridiculed as the “University of Sun
and Fun” that few people took seriously. 

       New leadership led USF not to dump
academics, but to add football without losing the academic rigor. So
far the experiment seems to be paying off. Now instead of being a
fallback school, USF has moved up on the list for prospective students,
and that could happen at KSU also. Football isn’t the only reason why
that happened, but it is a big motivating factor.

    In the South there are two things you have to make
time for: God and football. I tutor secondary students and can attest
to that being true; we close early on Wednesday nights for church and
close completely on Friday because of football.

    Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned there. And if
we do get a football team it would be nice to be in the Big East so USF
could come to play, but please don’t ask me who I’d root for. If that
were to happen, believe me, both schools would be winners!