UNCC 49er Football...like USF?

[WoolyBully]

RUSTEES TO CONSIDER STUDY

Hefty bill only sure thing for UNCC football

PETER ST. ONGE

pstonge@charlotteobserver.com

Students at Charlotte 49ers basketball games have brought signs of support for a football team, including T-shirts. On Monday, they'll be able to vote in a poll on using student fees for the sport. | Photo illustration: What would the stadium area look like?

DAVID T. FOSTER III - dtfoster@charlotteobserver.com

Students at Charlotte 49ers basketball games have brought signs of support for a football team, including T-shirts. On Monday, they'll be able to vote in a poll on using student fees for the sport. | Photo illustration: What would the stadium area look like?

   * Fees, stadium, conference among issues to consider

   * UNCC students have their say about football

   * Others schools where football is in infancy

   * Photo illustration | Possible stadium site

   * Poll | Should Charlotte 49ers start a football program?

   * Forum | Talk about 49ers sports

   * Hefty bill only sure thing for football at UNCC

   * Hoops | Alexander lifts 49ers to victory

   * Baseball | 49ers pitcher throws shutout, strikes out 13

   * Blog | The Gold Mine

   * More Niners news

On the south wall of Philip Dubois' office, a framed map offers an aerial view of UNC Charlotte. The map is less than a year old -- recent enough to show the bloom of new construction on the chancellor's campus. Dubois points to an undeveloped spot, on the frame's northeast corner.

This is where a UNCC football stadium might go.

Dubois is reluctant to talk about the spot -- or any other potential site -- because he doesn't want the UNCC community to think he is in favor of football. He also doesn't want anyone to think he is against it.

This, he will say: At the next UNCC board of trustees meeting, scheduled for Thursday, he will recommend that a citizen committee study the feasibility of football. "I'm optimistic they'll agree," he says.

The "F" Question, as Dubois calls it, has been an on-and-off topic at the school for decades -- though never more than in the past five years, as UNCC has grown and tried to shed its commuter campus image. Last year, alumni started a Web site that takes nonbinding pledges for football. Students are rallying, wearing football T-shirts at basketball games.

Big-time football, Dubois knows, is tempting. He is a former University of Wyoming president; he understands how the sport can enhance the student and alumni experience, how it connects a college to its community. Since 1990, at least 40 schools have started football programs or moved into Division I-A, the NCAA's top level.

"It's a transformational decision," he says.

UNCC, however, faces the same obstacles it always has -- football done right costs money, and the school has a limited budget and little legislative financial support. A 2004 internal athletic department study estimated the yearly bill for football and related costs at $7.1 million to $8.1 million, not including tens of millions for an on-campus stadium and facilities. Those costs, which a new study would update, have almost certainly gone up.

Dubois also has a good idea what any football research will say. The results, he says, will likely surprise students and alumni -- and perhaps anyone who believes in the power of a football Saturday.

Unless you are a top team in a major conference, football is not a moneymaker for NCAA schools. It doesn't usually result in rising alumni donations -- or bring significantly better students to your school.

"People think, `We're going to go with football and get all these benefits,' " says Cornell University economics professor Robert Frank, who has studied the issue for the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. "Well, the expenses you'll face are very certain. The benefits you'll incur are very doubtful."

Haves and have-nots

When Dubois left UNCC for Wyoming in 1997, football was more a wish than a want on the Charlotte campus. UNCC had recently joined Conference USA, and fans were mostly content to enjoy the renaissance of 49ers basketball. "Football wasn't on the burner," Dubois says. "It wasn't even in the kitchen."

Meanwhile, fellow conference members Alabama-Birmingham and South Florida were starting football programs in the 1990s to compete in Division I-A. At the time, many around college athletics suspected correctly that major conferences would realign soon; schools with successful football programs would be positioned best for inclusion into the lucrative leagues.

UNCC, however, faced built-in disadvantages. The school's overall budget was less than one-fourth the size of those at UAB and USF, where money could be found to absorb football's inevitable deficits.

By the time Dubois came back to UNCC in 2005, the school had grown to more than 20,000 students, with 7,500 students living within a mile of the school. Yet an old problem persisted: The campus was dead on weekends.

An old solution came roaring back: football.

"If you want to get the students and alumni on campus, football probably works," says Dan Fulks, an NCAA consultant and accounting professor at Transylvania University. "But it's going to cost them. It's going to cost them a lot."

In Division I-AA, the place UNCC football would initially land, only 6 percent of football programs made money in 2005, Fulks says, with the remaining schools losing an average of $1.3 million.

In I-A football -- which Dubois and others agree would best protect the basketball program -- 53 percent made an average of $11 million, with the rest averaging losses of $2 million.

But, says Fulks: "If you're not in a conference that sends half its teams to a bowl game, you have no chance of making money."

The hill is steeper for new programs. Of the 64 teams playing in bowls last season, one came from a program younger than 40 years old. That was South Florida, which reaps the benefits of one of the country's most talent-rich states.

Fulks says the gap between I-A winners and losers widens each year as richer schools spend more money on facilities and coaches, while the schools Fulks labels "pretenders" spend money they don't have in an effort to keep pace.

Football, Dubois knows, is a perpetual fixer-upper. He laughs that under his leadership, Wyoming's I-A football team fell from 10-2 in 1996 to 2-10 in 2002. In response to conference competitors spending more, Dubois proposed $28 million in stadium renovations and facilities improvements in 2003. The money was raised.

Wyoming football has since gone 7-5, 4-7 and 6-6. This year, athletics director Tom Burman is asking for $800,000 more a year.

Alumni and student benefits?

Jim Duncan has already imagined UNCC's first football Saturday. It is 2011, and 20,000 fans are tailgating near the soccer and track field, which has been expanded until an on-campus football stadium is built. The opponent? "You don't want someone who'll kill you," Duncan says. He settles on Western Carolina.

Duncan is a UNCC grad, Class of '91, a Winston-Salem mortgage broker who drives 90 minutes from his office to most 49ers home basketball games. Last spring, he started a UNCC football initiative that included Charlotte49erfootball.com, a site designed to rally and demonstrate support for the sport.

Like many proponents, he believes football creates a buzz for a school -- "The tip of the marketing sword," USF officials called it -- prompting donations from alumni and affluent locals, and resulting in a larger, higher-quality student enrollment.

Such a phenomenon even has a name -- the "Flutie Effect" -- so called because of the 12 percent rise in applications at Boston College after quarterback Doug Flutie led his Eagles to an oft-replayed "Hail Mary" victory over Miami in 1984.

A 2003 NCAA-commissioned study, however, showed that even if schools get more applications after football successes, the quality of admissions, based on SAT scores, doesn't significantly improve. That report affirmed independent studies in 1993 and 1987 that showed small SAT bumps for schools with big-time athletics or top 20 football teams.

The same 2003 NCAA report showed little relationship between football spending and alumni giving, either to the sports program or to the school. Other studies showed private gifts rising after successful football seasons, but the increases were small and temporary.

So why do schools continue to aim for I-A football? Fulks says that first, it's the ego of the schools' leadership. "They want to be associated with the big schools," he says.

Also, administrators and fans tend to believe their school will succeed where others don't. At UNCC, supporters point to a Charlotte market that would be attractive to a major conference, plus a vibrant nearby business community. As alumnus Duncan says: "There's money here for football. This is Charlotte."

The money game

No big donors have come forth for UNCC football at this point, nor does Dubois expect love from the state legislature, as football startups in other states have received. One striking example: Connecticut lawmakers, in 2000, approved a $91 million, 40,000-seat UConn football stadium.

Dubois believes an on-campus stadium would be crucial for UNCC football, but he knows that even a small-but-expandable stadium is pricey. UNCC's largest-ever donation, he notes, is $10 million.

The feasibility study, which would take about a year, also would likely show a yearly shortfall in football, one that could grow as UNCC moves to Division I-A. The bulk of that cost would fall on the students, Dubois says.

On Monday, those students can vote in a student government poll on using student fees for football, but Dubois is reluctant to ask much of a population that is already among the UNC system's most dependent on financial aid.

"If you believe there's a limit to what students can pay," he says, "and you decide that football is going to take up most of that, then you're not going to be able to use that money for academic programs."

All of which adds up to a sobering football portrait, one that Dubois has already begun to sketch in binders of research on his desk. He is, he says, a sports fan. He knows the point guard on the women's basketball team. He has student-athletes over for dinner. He knows what athletics can bring to a campus.

But he also knows the difficult, corresponding question:

"How much," he says, "are you willing to lose?"

And where would the stadium go?

[Bullpride08]

To late, they're just to late.  The A-10 is no place to start a family.  They were asked to look into it like 7 years ago by C-DOA and they declined.  Now they want to hop into the mix after they moved to the 1-AA football family called the A-10.  Maybe they could beg back to C-DOA, it would be just what the doctor ordered.

I actually believe starting football to move to 1-A just got worlds more difficult in recent years.  And with many schools like FIU, and FAU struggling it's going to be harder to get the NCAA to grant more waivers.  If they want to start it then they'll probably be living in the world of 1-AA for a while which could zap the financial resources that had UNCC a one time decent hoops contender.

Everyone starting a football program now looks to us as the model, financially speaking, fan support speaking (we actually have good fan support given our modest and short upbringing), booster speaking.  Few take into account that we may have just been an anomoly and not the norm.  The schools they should be talking with are the ones that are struggling to see what went wrong, and what are the periles if things don't go according to plan or as USF did it.  USF did it on the backbone of Leavitt, there are not many Leavitt's running around in the world.

[BullyPulpit]

Fulks says the gap between I-A winners and losers widens each year as richer schools spend more money on facilities and coaches, while the schools Fulks labels "pretenders" spend money they don't have in an effort to keep pace.

Hmmmm.....remind anyone of a program that has Bull Envy????

[Joe]

They won't be able to emulate the success of USF, not in North Carolina... To me they're going more of the trend of riding the commuter tag from their campus. Old Dominion did a similar thing in 2005, they start playing in 2009; George Mason is having a similar vote soon.

All three schools are about 20,000 students.

[80mins]

I caught wind of this from one of my fraternity brothers down at UNCC. Having attended one school and worked at another with no football, I know how loud the whining can get, but I would think for their situation, especially here in the state of NC, they'd be wise to stick to basketball.

[Apis Bull]

They would also have to compete with the Carolina Panthers.

[mattegunz]

UNC, NC State, Duke, Wake Forest, ECU. 5 D1 schools in the state already, no room for another.

[BiggTipp]

no no no....USF started up in a loaded state...give 'em a chance

[80mins]

UNC, NC State, Duke, Wake Forest, ECU. 5 D1 schools in the state already, no room for another.

Plus, they'd come in at I-AA, in the home state of the 2 time national champion Appalachian State Mountaineers.

[Don Toro]

Why move this? The article mentions USF as a success story in it, this is as USF related as they come. It let's us reflect on how  well we managed are football program for these past 10 years.