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.