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Football Discussion Featured in Local Paper
SID
6/1/2008 10:15:03 PM
The Index Journal in Greenwood featured four articles on Sunday about Erskine's Feasibility Study of Football. The main article is below. The other three can be accessed at www.indexjournal.com/sports
By MATT ANDERSON/Index-Journal sports writer
Sunday, June 1, 2008 1:54 AM EDT
DUE WEST --Within the next five years, Erskine College could take a step back to the first half of the 20th century.
In 1952, Erskine dropped football from its athletic offerings. Now, the school is in the midst of a feasibility study that is looking at bringing college football back to its Due West campus, with the main purpose of increasing enrollment for the primarily tuition-funded college.
In October, athletic director Mark Peeler -- a member of the feasibility study committee and one of the biggest boosters of football at Erskine -- will present the findings of the study to the board of trustees for a vote on beginning Division II football.
But there are obstacles to bringing football back, most notably financial barriers and faculty opposition. As such, Peeler said the feasibility study will have to make an air-tight case for football.
“We can’t take a leap of faith here and say, 'This might work and lets go give it a try,’” Peeler said. “We have to have a plan that is fail-proof, that says, 'If we add football, this is what will happen’ and that we can back it up financially, and that what we say will happen financially will happen financially.”
FINDING NECESSARY FUNDING is perhaps the most concrete issue that must be addressed before starting the Flying Fleet football program anew.
At UNC Pembroke, which started its Division II football program this past season, it took $4.5 million build a fieldhouse that is home to the football facilities, athletic director Dan Kenney said.
In addition to building the fieldhouse, the UNCP athletic department also had to build a new soccer stadium, as the football stadium was built on the school’s existing soccer field. On top of those up-front expenses, Kenney said the per-year football costs for UNCP are estimated in the $500,000 range.
Tom Collins, the former athletic director at Brevard College who was there when the school added a Division II football team in 2006, said the money originally budgeted for a football team is not always the end cost.
“I would say figure your money, then double it,” he said. “There are a lot of costs that are hidden in running a football program. The key is having a plan and staying with your plan.”
According to Peeler, the financial plan for a football program will be detailed and planned to the dollar by the time the feasibility study is complete.
“I would imagine that when this gets done, we’re going to say, 'O.K., we need X amount of dollars before we even start, then, we’re going to need this many players each year that X amount is taken care of,’” he said.
Likely helping make those yet-to-be-determined marks easier to reach are endowments.
Kenney said private financial gifts greatly helped UNC Pembroke in raising the funds necessary to start a football program at his school. The $4.5 million fieldhouse, for example, was entirely privately-funded.
“I learned a long time ago people give for things that they want to give to,” Kenney said. “You can’t convince them sometimes to give for a noble cause, and a lot of people are just interested with college athletics, and specifically college football.”
With the level of alumni excitement surrounding the possibility of starting a football program, Peeler said he thinks the same would be true for Erskine.
“I’m reasonably confident that we will see more giving to the football program or to the start of the football program than we’ve ever seen at Erskine,” Peeler said. “Now I could be wrong, but we’ll take that leap.”
ACCORDING TO PEELER, resistance from the Erskine faculty could be as big an obstacle to adding football as finances. He said that many professors at the college are concerned with a football program lowering the academic profile of the institution.
Among the Erskine faculty members opposed to football is Bill Crenshaw, an English professor at the college since 1976.
“It’s a very small school and a lot of things have changed in intercollegiate play over the past few years,” Crenshaw said. “I just don’t see it fitting in with what we do or what we want to do. I don’t see how we can support it given our size.”
Crenshaw, who received his master’s degree and doctorate from South Carolina when Paul Dietzel coached the Gamecocks, has experience teaching at a school where football is big.
The time Crenshaw spent at South Carolina, he said, impacted his thinking on football at Erskine.
“That was madness,” Crenshaw said. “You would get pressure to change football players’ grades, and things like that. We’ve escaped that madness at Erskine. Things can get unbalanced when football, and sports in general, become really big.”
Peeler, however, said it’s a misconception that football damages a college’s academic reputation. He pointed to schools such as Davidson and his alma mater, the University of the South, which field football programs while maintaining high academic standards.
He also said there are examples of flourishing academic institutions with football in-state.
“Wofford, Furman, Presbyterian, those are all schools that we would like to be compared with when people talk about schools in South Carolina -- they have football,” Peeler said. “I don’t buy the argument that it’s going to hurt our academic program. I believe it can only enhance the overall product of the school.”
At UNC Pembroke, Kenney said having an open, ongoing dialogue with the staff about the entire football process through its feasibility study was important in building faculty support.
That kind of openness yielded results when the faculty’s opinion was officially solicited.
“There were a few faculty members who don’t see sports as part of academic experience, but that was very small,” UNC Pembroke Chancellor Alan Meadors said. “We met with a half to two-thirds of faculty before we made the decision. If we had 20 people in room, it would be 18 very supportive, maybe one neutral, and maybe one not pro-sports.”
According to Randall Ruble, Erskine’s president since 2006, the faculty’s resistance to football might be rooted in an anti-athlete bias among professors at the institution.
Part of that bias, Ruble said, exists because of wrongheaded thinking. In the fall of 2007, Ruble said Peeler reported the academic performance of student-athletes was slightly better than the performance of the student body as a whole.
“Faculty, in my judgment, often view student-athletes in the wrong way,” Ruble said. “They think that they’re all poor students.
“If you look at the student-athletes across the board, they have a reason for being here. They want to play ball, they know that they have to keep their academics up. They have to keep their scholarships in place if they want to continue to play ball. That’s a very strong motivator if you think about it.”
To listen to Massachusetts-Lowell athletic director Dana Skinner, however, some of the Erskine faculty’s concerns might be legitimate.
Skinner presided over an athletic department at UMass-Lowell that dropped its Division II football program in 2002 because it was a financial drain at the state-supported school. He said football players created problems beyond those seen with the typical student-athlete.
“I can tell you by and large when we did have football, they were a challenge behaviorally and a challenge academically,” Skinner said. “If you look at football over a 10-year period, they had the lowest GPA in the department and by and large, they made up most of the incidents we had to deal with.
“When adding football, you have to go in wide your eyes wide open and be prepared. You have to look at schools that have staffing in place to make sure can properly monitor program. It plays an integral role in student-athlete population and can’t become an island unto itself.”
Peeler readily admits it will be difficult to convince the Erskine faculty about the benefits of adding a football program, and that other parts of the college, such as the student life office, are also opposed to football.
Still, as head of Erskine’s athletic department and a member of the feasibility study committee, Peeler will try to sell football to reluctant and non-interested buyers.
“I hope that from a long-term visionary standpoint this is going to be the right thing for Erskine to do,” Peeler said. “Whether or not I’m going to be able to convince them of that, it’s doubtful, but sometimes, we’ve got to grow, we’ve got to change as a school. I think this is one way that we can do it.”
WHILE MEMBERS OF the Erskine academia are opposed to the addition of a football program, there is a generally positive consensus about the sport among members of the coaching staff.
Baseball coach Kevin Nichols said a football team at Erskine would be a positive for the athletic department and college as a whole.
“I see it being a huge, good impact,” he said. “You look at some of these schools -- take Elon for instance. Look at what has happened over past 10-15 years there. Their enrollment’s way up; it’s blown up. I think that’s what would happen with football at Erskine.
“I think that’s the way that Erskine should turn. I believe if you’re not growing your dying.”
With both soccer teams playing in the same season a football team would compete, there is potential for a football to overshadow soccer at Erskine.
Neither soccer coach, however, anticipates a downturn in their program’s prominence if the Erskine trustees vote to add football. Women’s soccer coach Gary Winchester said if anything, football would help his team.
“The potential for it to expose our program is good,” Winchester said. “People might go to the Web site to look at something to do with football and end up clicking on women’s lacrosse or women’s soccer. I think the potential for exposure for women’s sports in general would be good.”
While men’s soccer coach Warren Turner said he is in favor of whatever the board of trustees decides, he agreed with Winchester that football would help bring exposure to the other athletic programs at Erskine.
Regardless of the decision that is made, Winchester said he thinks Peeler will recommend the right course for the athletic department.
“I know for a fact that coach Peeler would not jeopardize Erskine athletics at all,” Winchester said. “I stand behind whatever the feasibility study committee and coach Peeler decide.”
FOREMOST AMONG THE reasons football proponents give for adding the sport is that the school projects an enrollment bump with the addition of a football program. With a student body numbering under 1,000, Erskine derives a large portion of its funding from tuition.
A campus on more than 90 acres of land with over with 30 buildings on the grounds, there is a large constant maintenance cost at Erskine. Because of those unavoidable costs, boosting enrollment is crucial for the school, Ruble said.
“We’re trying to grow (enrollment) right now,” he said. “We’ve made some changes in admissions this year and we’re trying to grow it. ... Eighty percent of our revenue comes from students, from student fees, so enrollment is critical for a school like Erskine.”
Even with the decision on football four months away, Erskine is already counting on athletics to help add to its student body numbers. Based on the recommendations of an athletics committee Ruble appointed in 2006, the school will add men’s golf, women’s golf and women’s lacrosse to its athletic department next school year, and in the fall of 2009, will begin a volleyball program.
Adding football, proponents said, would produce the maximum athletics-related enrollment bump to campus.
“You’re going to get the 80 to 100 kids that are going to play football, but you’re also going to get kids that never even look at Erskine because you don’t have football,” Peeler said. “As crazy as that seems, that’s the one thing that’s occurred to us since we’ve started doing this. ... There’s just so many kids out there.”
Supporters of football at Erskine also posit that the addition of the sport would help keep students on campus for weekends. Now, they say, students leave campus on the weekends because there isn’t a bevy of activities in Due West on Saturday and Sunday.
Adding football, Erskine alumni association president and feasibility study committee member Steve Southwell said, could change that.
“Right now our big fall sport is soccer,” he said. “It’s hard to say that we have students staying around on weekends to watch soccer games. Also, there would be the opportunity to get alumni in on weekends.
“There’s plenty of land on campus for tailgating. Of course, you’ll be competing with the other schools, like Clemson and Carolina, but you look around, Presbyterian does well, and so does Newberry.”
Through one year of football, UNC Pembroke has seen an increase in the number of students on campus during the weekend.
Meadors said concrete numbers, such as cafeteria meals served on Saturdays and Sundays, have shown that more students have stayed on campus during fall weekends. Other non-measurable indicators, such as cars in campus parking lots on weekends, also seem to show that football kept students at UNC Pembroke this past fall.
Kenney said he agreed with his chancellor’s analysis.
“It’s given us a different type of social activity on our campus,” Kenney said. “For us up until this point, it’s been a positive experience. At this point, it was the right thing for our institution to do. It was the right thing for us to do because we’ve studied it and we’ve followed our plan.”
But Dave Ridpath, executive director of the Drake Group, an organization that’s stated mission is to defend academics from out-of-control college athletics, said that is not always the case.
“People are saying we need to add football for reasons that have not really been proven by research, reasons like adding enrollment, and adding to the school’s profile,” Ridpath said.
In his experience, Skinner said added enrollment and a festive campus environment are potential benefits of Division II football. What he said they aren’t, however, is givens.
The key to reaping the envisioned football rewards, he said, is fielding a winning team.
“If you can’t be competitive, you sort of defeat the purpose of getting the campus to rally around it,” Skinner said. “Too many people do it on a shoestring because it’s a nice idea and in reality it ends up being problematic, because with all the costs of football, you can’t do it on a shoestring budget.”
A potentially big obstacle for Erskine in fielding a competitive football program is the same reason the school is talking about adding the sport -- small enrollment.
As the athletic director when football started at Brevard, which has an enrollment near 700, Collins said the small student body is a disadvantage for the football team.
“(Enrollment) is the biggest challenge,” Collins said. “For private schools, your money comes from enrollment and student tuition fees. Building our enrollment to where it’s stable and healthy is our biggest challenge in all our athletic programs.”
IF ERSKINE ADDS a football program, the impact would reach far beyond the athletic department and the anticipated benefits purported by football boosters.
Foremost, the influx of extra students associated with a football team would need a place to live. The current dormitories at Erskine are not able to handle its current load plus the anticipated football enrollment boost.
But according to Ruble, student housing is not an obstacle between Erskine and a football program.
“I’m not worried about that problem,” Ruble said. “We can build a dorm if we have to, or we can use some of our own rental property and put some of our students in it. So that can be handled if that happened.”
There are also logistical hurdles to overcome within the athletic department. Peeler said the school will have to examine the possibility of hiring a full-time athletic director or adding an associate athletic director position (Peeler also coaches the men’s basketball team and teaches at the college) and hire a full-time athletic training staff.
Erskine would also likely have to expand its sports information staff with the addition of a football program. Currently, the sports information department consists of sports information director John Sell, also the cross country coach, and assistant Thomas Holland, an assistant baseball coach.
However, one of the biggest issues associated with the addition of a football program, where the team would play, has been tentatively settled. Peeler said current plans call for the school to either renovate the existing soccer field to play football at the site, or construct a football stadium around the field.
REGARDLESS OF WHAT the feeling in the community is, what the faculty thinks or what the athletic department wishes, the decision about football at Erskine will be in the hands of the board of trustees. The board is made up of 30 at-large members, 12 of whom must be Associate Reformed Presbyterian ministers, four ex-officio members and a large advisory panel.
Eddie Spencer, an at-large trustee and pastor at the First ARP Church in Gastonia, N.C., said he plans to go into October board meeting with an open mind.
“I’d have to see the feasibility report,” Spencer said. “I really don’t have a lot of comment. I think we’re waiting for the committee to come out with the feasibility report. When that comes out, we’ll take a look.”
Juan Unda, an at-large trustee and pastor at Pinecrest Hispanic Mission in Flat Rock, N.C., has a much more set opinion on football. He said it’s unlikely his vote would change after seeing the feasibility study.
“I do not think that would be the right thing,” Unda said. “To get a program like that started takes a lot of time and a lot of money. I believe that Erskine should devote that time and money to academics.”
Ruble, who noted he works for the board of trustees, said he is maintaining neutrality on the matter of football until the board votes. While he mentioned some positives about the potential of a football program, he also advised caution.
“Everybody looks at the success stories of colleges starting football,” Ruble said. “I don’t think we have a lot of reporting on the failure rate of schools that try to do that then have to retrench, so I don’t know. That’s something research ought to show us before we jump into the lake.”
Even though Ruble is careful not to take a stand one way or the other about the prospect of football, Erskine’s president does admit to having confidence in Peeler, the man leading the charge for the sport and Erskine’s athletic director since 2004.
“I certainly respect him and I think that his voice is going to be heard,” Ruble said. “Whether it is going to be heeded is another issue, but he’s a smart fellow and I think he’s done a lot of research. He does his homework; he’s a very careful fellow.”
For his part, Peeler is already in the process of overseeing the addition of four sports to the Flying Fleet athletic department over the next two years.
He also has a valuable resource when it comes to adding a football program -- Kenney, a close friend who Peeler served under as a graduate assistant basketball coach at Winthrop when Kenney was the school’s head coach. Peeler said if not for Kenney’s success adding football at UNC Pembroke, he might not be as strongly in favor of football as he is now.
Peeler and Southwell spent a week at UNC Pembroke in April to get a firsthand look at a fledgling Division II football program, and also talked to Brevard and two schools in Alabama about the experience of adding football.
With that experience, even with the faculty and financial odds that are stacked against it, Peeler said he thinks football will become a reality in Erskine’s near future.
“I’m not going to lay money down, I’m not going to bet on it, but in my mind I do believe that four years from now Erskine College will have a football team,” Peeler said. “I believe it is my job, my responsibility, right now to do everything that I can to make sure that that happens.
“If it doesn’t happen, it won’t be because I haven’t done my work. It’s not going to be that I haven’t done everything I possibly can to make this happen, because I believe that this is what this institution needs. And it may not be. But in my mind it is.”
Fri, Mar. 12, 2010
Softball
vs Mount Olive College (DH)
Postponed
Baseball
vs Belmont Abbey College
W 9-2 Recap
Women's Lacrosse
vs Edinboro
L 8-17
Men's Cross Country
at Coastal Carolina Invitational
All Day
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