If you walk into the office of UTPB's president one of the first things you will see is a UTPB football helmet and a toy bubblegum machine with a sign affixed to it reading "UTPB Football Fund." At our university bookstore you can find those t-shirts that seemingly every university has when they don't have a football team: "UTPB Football: Still Undefeated!" Of course UTPB does not have a football team, and while there are many who wish deeply that we did -- this is West Texas after all, and I'm convinced that some in the community honestly believe that absent a football team we are not even a real university -- without the generosity of a long-term benefactor, I have a hard time seeing such a dream come to pass. And maybe it shouldn't. Few love sports as much as I do, and yet I am not convinced that at this time in our development we need to be pursuing football, however much fun it might be to go to games on saturdays (and inevitably get crushed for several years).
These thoughts come to mind because one of my alma maters, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, appears to be on the verge of developing a football program. UNCC (or simply "Charlotte" as it prefers to be known for athletic branding purposes) is in a much different place than is UTPB. For years it was one of the fastest growing campuses in the country, it has a legitimate Division I athletic program, it is located in a city that would likely be able to support the program, and the university could likely successfully weather the added cost and other growing pains. And now I'll have a legitimate interest in who wins the DI-AA title every year. Go 49ers!
4 comments:
UTPB does not need a footbal team it has more sports than it can handle !!!
While right now football would be a mistake, I think our sports composition works quite nicely. I can think of one sport (men's and women's) that is deadweight and that is largely a function of coaching/recruiting and the general half-assed culture of that sport on campus. We have a couple of sports that are struggling on the field, but that can largely be attributed to the switch up to DII, which some sports have handled well (men's soccer, men's basketball, baseball, volleyball, eg.).
dcat
Those shirts are still valid, this time legitimately. :) For now....
Could well continue this wee as well. I'm doing color commentary on the radio (Rock 95.1 -- they do live stream, fyi!) and we were sort of joking about having never been scored on, or never NOT scored on a drive (a claim that lasted one drive) and what have you. It was a great, great environment. If you get a chance, come out for a game.
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