Why Have Football?

Earlier this week, I posted some of my thoughts about why I am still mad about Hofstra dropping football. Reaction was fairly positive - but some folks, in so many words, questioned what a CAA schools' problems with supporting football have to do with Lehigh, the Patriot League, or even private school football programs in general (gently reminding me that the name of this blog is "Lehigh Football Nation", not "Hofstra Football Nation", "Defiantly Dutch" or anything else).

The answer to this question is: Hofstra's decision means a whole heck of a lot to every football program in FCS. But it especially means a lot to the Patriot League's seven football schools.

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Hofstra is a private university, just like Fordham, Lehigh, Georgetown, and every other school in the Patriot League. And Hofstra's president - by many accounts, unilaterally - made the decision to drop football.

Hofstra's president, Stuart Rabinowitz, cited costs and lack of alumni and student interest in his decision. But it really appears to have come down to one question: why have football?

It's not about cost. Yes, Hofstra football was not cost-free, but when you subtract revenues, scholarship aid and other donations, it probably only cost about $1 million a year or so - paling in comparison to, say, the $100 million medical center that Hofstra will be financing. It wasn't about lack of alumni and student interest: within 48 hours of the decision to drop football, 7,000 fans joined the Facebook group "Save Hofstra Football", and football alumni came together in an effort to bring a team back.

Rabinowitz, rightly or wrongly, was answering a different question by pulling the plug on the program. Why have football? What's it's purpose? Is it a huge money sink? Does it have educational value?

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In answering this question, you have to talk about running cost/benefit analyses on any collegiate endeavor, athletic or otherwise.

It's become popular these days to treat athletics programs, especially the football program, as a business unit. There are revenues, and expenses. If revenues beat expenses, then it's a good athletics year. If expenses beat revenues, it's an unsuccessful year.

It's not just Mr. Rabinowitz that's talking in this way. Old Dominion's president mentioned the other day that his football program "broke even" last year, with seven home games, all 20,000 seat sellouts. It's a fad these days to talk about football as a business, not an educational mission.

Let's get serious, though - what other educational mission could survive this level of scrutiny? "Mrs. President, those philosophy professors - well, they've just been a source of high annual salaries and benefits, and the graduates they crank out don't donate back to the university, they're just going to end up at Phish concerts and ending up at Columbia for grad school. Shouldn't we cut them so we can save $1 million a year?"

I propose that every time a cost/benefit analysis is made of football, that the cost/benefit of, say, a school's orchestra is brought up. "What is that music department really bringing in, anyway?" It's a ridiculous argument that ought to be attacked at every opportunity.

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Putting aside cost-benefit analysis, though, is the bigger question. What's the educational value of football?

In the BCS conferences, it's clear that football is a different sort of game, with huge amounts of money at stake - so huge, in fact, that it prevents the BCS schools from playing a true national championship. Those schools have chosen to pursue the money - including some great academic schools, too, like Army, Navy, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern and the like.

Even so, the great majority of FBS programs lose money. Costs are large for not only stadia improvements and scholarships and the like, but also for academic compliance as well. In many ways, FBS schools are playing the lotto, hoping to hit the big one every once in a while (Boise State, TCU) while not going bust (Western Kentucky, UCF).

At the FCS level, athletics ought to be, in and of itself, an educational mission, not a for-profit mission. Very, very few FCS football teams "make money" - but then again, the softball teams, crew teams, soccer teams and the like don't make money either. Is the purpose of these teams to make money - or to give student-athletes a chance to have fun, maybe get a trip to a national championship game somewhere, and learn some lessons about discipline, sportsmanship and life along the way?

Athletics promote universities. ESPN is on 24 hours a day. Websites and newspapers run a constant commentary on collegiate athletics, including FCS teams. Do you think I'd have a blog writing about "Lehigh Science Nation"? Not that I'm telling folks that a blog like this shouldn't be written, but for me my passion is Lehigh athletics. Athletics made my time at Lehigh worthwhile - and I'm not alone in that assessment. Athletics invokes a passion in the ol' Alma Mater that Science will never achieve. Grouse all you want about this fact of life, but it is true.

Expanding on this a little, in the Patriot League athletics promote the universities in a very positive way. Appropriately, the Patriot League does not pursue just any student-athletes. They look for the best of the best academically and athletically. They're defined by academics first. You know those NCAA ads talking about "going pro in something other than sports?" That IS the Patriot League. Is it worth spending some money for that educational experience? You bet it is.

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You know I'm going to be passionate about this. I love Patriot League football. Unfortunately, it's not my opinion that counts. It's the opinion of the college presidents that matters more. Just ask any Hofstra graduate who is now without a football team for the forseeable future.

Think Patriot League presidents aren't like Rabinowitz? Think again. All private institutions are feeling some sort of crunch. The meme at this time is cutting costs - and even Patriot League presidents could be eyeing the football program as a potential cost savings. It doesn't matter if they're successful or unsuccessful - Hofstra's football program was much, much more successful than it's basketball program, yet it got the axe while men's basketball gets to take trips to Kansas. Could Patriot League schools be thinking about it? I hope not; but in this climate, it feels like no program is safe.

It's not so much that tuitions will continue to go up for the forseeable future, it's not so much that football programs cost money, it's not so much that scholarships cost money, and it's not so much that students and alums go to only one or two games a year at best. The core issue is that college presidents believe the argument that football needs to be a money generator and needs to adhere to a higher economic standard than any other educational endeavor in the school.

Until that myth is debunked - and I have confidence that it will, ultimately - my advice to football fans out there that want to keep their programs, I'd say:

1. Go to the games.
2. Get a rival - preferably one that's close by.
3. Donate back to the university - and give some portion of that to football, if you love the program.
4. Make it clear, whenever you give money, that you're a supporter of football.

That might - just might - convince some university presidents about the full ramifications of dropping football. The atmosphere at the games, the money it generates, the positive culture it brings (in the Patriot League) - it all needs to be priced accordingly.