Small Colleges, Short of Men, Embrace Football
This is incredible! I never would have guessed that there would be so many benefits from a tiny college adding a football program.
The bigger lesson here is the importance of INNOVATION. And guess what drives this innovation? COMPETITION! Gee, what a shocker... Is it any wonder that we have both one of the best educational systems in the world...AND one of the worst? Our post-secondary system, while it has its issues, is among the best in the world because there's an incredible mix of options -- public, private, religious, etc. -- and all of these schools must COMPETE or they'll go out of business and those people who were responsible for the failure will have to find another job. Egads! And students get to CHOOSE which school is best for them -- what a novel idea! -- and the money (Pell Grants, student loans, etc.) FOLLOWS THE STUDENTS -- another heretical idea! Enough sarcasm for this morning...
---------------------"You would be hard pressed to find five admissions officers or five professors or five marketing experts that could guarantee you 100 new, paying male students in one year," said Shenandoah's athletic director, John Hill. "But you can hire five football coaches and they can do it. In fact, they can find you 200 if you want. Those boys just want to play."
Dr. James A. Davis, now in his 25th year as Shenandoah's president, said: "I said no to football for 15 years, but I was wrong. Football is the best draw of qualified male applicants that there is anywhere. I am shocked more schools aren't adding football."
Football is popular among small colleges because the start-up costs for a nonscholarship program are less than $1 million, and that money can usually be raised from alumni. The annual football budget is subsidized by increased tuition revenue flowing from teams of at least 100 players. Methodist College in Fayetteville, N.C., routinely has 130 to 165 players. A typical Division I roster is 95 players....
Football also attracts African-Americans, helping many colleges with diversity. Five historically black colleges have recently started football, too. What makes football such a magnet for male students?
Sheer numbers, for one thing. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, slightly more than 1 million high school students played football in 2005. A study that Shenandoah commissioned before starting football estimated that fewer than 2 percent of the high school players in Virginia would go on to play in college even though more than half said they would like to play.
"We're keeping the dream alive for a lot of these kids," said Paul Barnes, the Shenandoah coach...
Sometimes, the allure is more primal.
"Heck, guys who play football just like to hit somebody, and the guys not playing like to watch the guys who are hitting each other," said Trey Kern, who was raised in Winchester near Shenandoah and who transferred from another Virginia college to play for the new team in 2000. "It's America's game. And, who doesn't like tailgating before the game?"
At Utica College in upstate New York, which fielded its first football team in 2001, Mike Kemp, the coach, reaches out to the sons of working-class families who might not otherwise attend college.
"Hockey, lacrosse and tennis players, they all have money and 1,500 SAT scores," said Mr. Kemp, who brings about 70 players a year to Utica. "Those kids are going to college somewhere. But I come across high school football players from blue-collar backgrounds, and as seniors in high school, they're not sure what they're going to do. They're considering a college here or there. But if you give them a chance to keep playing football, then they get motivated to come."
And once they come, he said, "we kind of trick them into seeing that getting an education is the real benefit."
Small Colleges, Short of Men, Embrace Football
WINCHESTER, Va. — Kevin Bosworth's football career here at Shenandoah University amounted to all of 10 plays, across four years otherwise spent watching from the sidelines. No matter. A reedy tight end, Mr. Bosworth wanted to play football, and the college was starting a team...
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:16 AM
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