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Lack of interest.

/Gopher fan

My college is in a Division 1 non-football conference. Until 2004, we had football. We had no rivals (playing all games out of the conference). No drawing power. No fair competition. We did have 40+ students on large scholarships, 5+ full time coaches, large facilities, and enormous travel expenses. We were a tiny fish in an unfriendly pond (football isn’t a huge thing here, save for the big boy over in Berkeley). Football made absolutely no sense for us beyond nostalgia or emotions. It was ineffective. It was a drain. It was unfair to the athletes. They had no fair and appropriate competition. Getting creamed by Boise State wasn’t helpful for anyone. The other schools didn’t appreciate the huge amount of money and time and inconvenience to come to our home games, either. It hurt THEIR students and athletes. After many years of this, the president made the unpopular decision to cut football. Alums screamed, harkening back to the glory Sugar Bowl days of the 1940s. The (admittedly small) group of students who went to games was hurt. The players were hurt (though they were invited to stay and finish their academic careers with their scholarships, many left to play elsewhere because, well, they were football players and wanted to play). But overall, it was the best decision made by what is probably the worst president we ever had. (good riddance)

The two biggest sports on campus now are basketball and rugby. The basketball team has made a splash nationally the last few years, thanks in part to the cash infusion into all sports following the disbanding of football. They are also helped by the fact that they play in-division, more locally, and against rivals. Rugby is a club sport, sustained largely by donors and fundraising. They are competitive, popular, fun, and cost-effective. Whereas we were flying football to play schools in Idaho or Texas we don’t have history with or care about, basketball hits the west coast rivals, mostly teams within 600 miles (2 teams within 50 miles). Rugby car pools over to Stanford or UCB, with booster club not far behind (they also fund raise for the big annual trip; my senior year i think it was New Zealand. Last year was just up to Vancouver). Club sport or not, rugby is a campus institution.

These two sports are everything football wasn’t, and it is through no fault of the sport or the school. It was the context in which football found itself in a marketplace that wasn’t conducive to its viability. It sucks, and it hurts. Those feelings should never in anyway be dismissed. It is the largest negative to any change, sometimes even large enough to cancel out positives (thus the reason NCAA athletics have been status quo for so long and the reason we kept football 10 years longer than we should have). But in the end, it is not personal or necessarily negligent. It is the framework in which college operate. Like all businesses, it is ugly, unfair and brutal. Sometimes bad decisions are bad, but sometimes they are just hard decisions.

P.S. Buck the Froncos!