Northeastern Football
Northeastern University cut its football program this week citing that it was too costly to continue. Ironically, in an unrelated soliciated email, I saw a very relevant quote from Vince Lombardi. “A school without football is in danger or deteriorating into a medieval study hall.” I like that quote and think there is a lot of truth to it, even though today’s college football landscape is vastly different than the one of Lombardi’s era. The point he is trying to make though is that athletics provide a welcome break from studying for the students and from life in general for that matter for everyone else. Whereas it is a shame that they had to cut the program completely, I do understand their reasoning. They were unwilling to invest the amount of money it would take to be reasonably successful or above mediocre, attendence was ridicuously low and tuition cost is increasing (thus cost for each scholarship is increasing and football has the most scholarships of any sport). It would be a shame if the $3 million it cost to field the team just ended up lowering the schools operating budget by that amount. I do hope though that Northeastern will put the money that they were putting into football into other sports at the school and into intramurals, so that additional students can have the opportunity to compete in athletics and academics. I can’t help but wonder though if the football program could have been saved with a little effort. It’s a decent size school in a large market. Located in the Fenway Cultrural district in Boston (population 600,000+, 4.5 million metro area) and has 15,000+ undergraduates and 5,000+ graduate students. And their average attendance was 1,500! Something is not right there. They should still be able to draw a larger crowd than that, even with a bad team. If nothing else, pump up the family atmosphere, make the games fun for everyone and get people in the seats. Why were they not getting on residents calendar? Ask the average fan what the record of either team is at a minor league baseball game and I bet you that they can’t tell you. Your diehard football fans in the area are going to follow the Patriots or BC, but there are still plenty of casual fans out there and families looking for activities on a beautiful fall afternoon that you could be reaching. And your student population for crying out loud, where are they? Only 35% of your student population needs to show up for it to be a sellout. Listen, I’m familiar with economics, and I know it’s expensive to have a football team. But it’s important for a school to have a football team these days. Being America’s pastime now, it’s a great marketing tool and a way for people (like prospective students) to find out about your school. I wouldn’t know about over half of the colleges and universities that I know about if it wasn’t because of their athletic programs. So, in a way, I guess what I’m trying to say that I think Northeastern’s decision to cut football is bad one. The football program could have been fixed not with millions of dollars invested, but with the right marketing hire and promotions.
Dungy Name Dropping
The last thing I’d like for you to do is to read this post and think that I don’t like Tony Dungy. That’s not the case at all. I recently completed reading his book “Quiet Strength” and really enjoyed it. I’ve always respected him as a coach and as a person. However, it does irk me whenever some athlete or coach gets into trouble and then quickly drops Tony’s name and says they are going to work with him to resolve their problems. As if Dungy were some oracle who has all the answers. The latest case is Mike Locksley, head coach for New Mexico. The media and fans shouldn’t let these guys off the hook just because they are seeking out Dungy for advice and I think that the perception from coaches and athletes in trouble is that they should. Dungy has a lot of great things to say, but I feel like the modern athlete is too selfish, spoiled and undisciplined to listen and apply them to their lives to achieve real change. Instead, I see this as becoming “Oops, I screwed up again, better tell the reporters that I’m going to talk to Dungy about this.” I will say this though, I don’t like Tony being used as a scapegoat, however, I do wish more and more athletes and coaches would read his books and modeled their lives after Tony. The sports scene would be radically different. And in my opinion, since we are a behavior modelling society, our entire culture could potentially be changed.
“You should never be defined by what you do, by the things you have; you’ve got to define yourself by who you are and who you impact and how you impact people” – Tony Dungy
Random Sports Mumblings (RSM) #3
Random Sports Mumblings was a series I started a couple weeks ago on my personal blog. However, I thought it was more appropriate here. These are just random sports thoughts by Craig T. Feel free to chime in with your comments any time.
- I do not care for Tennessee’s football coach Lane Kiffin. I think he runs his mouth too much and is a little cocky for a coach that has never really won anything. However, I would like to applaud him for his swift, decisive action about two football players that are being charged with attempted armed robbery. Kiffin dismissed two of the three players permanently today. The third player remains suspended indefinitely while Kiffin awaits more details. He also barred all three from traveling with the team this weekend while waiting for the charges. I completely agree with both these decisions and applaud the coach.
- I am glad USC finally fell from the top-10. I wondered how many times the would have to be beaten (or pounded) to finally fall. It was also fun to see them get blown out, again. However, Jim Harbaugh’s decision to go for two up 48-21 was uncalled for and ridiculous. It wasn’t even necessary. Just kick the extra point and move along. Act like you have been there before. Congrats to Stanford, though. It looks like they are for real and backing it up.
- Notre Dame Football is a joke. When they play decent teams, they lose. (Plus a few losses to not so decent teams). Charlie Weis is no better the his two predecessors. Move along. Nothing to see here.
- College basketball is back and starts with 24 hours straight on ESPN’s family of networks following Monday Night Football tonight. But what will make me watch? Good games, rather than a game at 8:00 am! Kind of crazy.
- The mighty SEC-East is a disappointment this year. After Florida, the next best team is Georgia with a 6-3 (4-3 SEC) record. Just sayin’….
Quick Hits
-I think the suspension on Brandon Spikes for eye-gouging is a joke. Missing one half against the worst team in your conference is not a suspension, it’s a mockery. My biggest problem with the whole thing though is the people who disagree with the suspension and say that eye gouging is just football. It happens. No, that’s incorrect, eye gouging is not football and its not part of the game. It’s part of UFC, but it’s not part of football.
-So, let me get this straight, everyone complained for an entire week leading up to the USC-Oregon game that the computers were wrong to have USC ranked as the worst of the 1 loss teams and all the pollsters were correct by having them ranked as the best of the 1 loss teams. Then, USC gets blown out by Oregon and everyone shuts up. Apparantly, the BCS computers were right after all. Just wish we could get all the talking heads to apologize to the computers and admit that the computers were right and they were wrong. The talking heads only succeeded in planting seeds of doubt about the computers in heads of masses, even though they were clearly wrong