Don’t worry CU fans, football’s here to stay

Last weekend I went home to Connecticut to watch my high school football team compete in its first state championship game in our school’s history. The game itself didn’t go very well, but that’s not the point of this column. The biggest surprise of my trip home was that Plainville High School‑my school’s Thanksgiving day rival and from the town I grew up playing sports in‑had dropped its football program.

The end of Plainville High School football itself doesn’t really bother me. Sure, I grew up and spent most of my youth in Plainville, but the only reason I liked playing against the Blue Devils was to beat all the guys who had become my secret nemeses while playing sports with or against them as a child. What got to me was that the recent and all too common trend of football programs being dropped finally hit close to home.

In the past few weeks, Hofstra and Northeastern have discontinued their football programs, both citing lack of attendance and the high cost of operation. Even the NFL isn’t immune to these problems, as the Jacksonville Jaguars are struggling to maintain an audience in northern Florida and many other teams‑even good ones‑have struggled to fill the seats every week. The NFL aside, the plight of Hofstra and Northeastern should be of interest to Columbia fans. These teams struggled with some of the same problems that Columbia has in the past, including inconsistent results on the field and trouble getting people to attend games.

Anyone who follows Columbia football knows that since 1961, successes have been few and far between. Case in point, the Lions have recorded just four winning seasons since winning their only Ivy League title. While each team has had their ups and downs, Hofstra and Northeastern have both had legitimate successes in the past 15 years. The Pride has made the FCS playoff five times and advanced to the second round twice, while the Huskies hosted Fordham in the FCS playoffs in 2002. Both programs have gone through their fair share of struggles this decade, but I’m sure any Lions fan would kill to have seen a seven‑or eight‑win season—let alone a record above .500—in the past 10 years.

In the end, for both schools, the decision to discontinue their football programs came down to money and lack of attendance. One of Hofstra’s main problems is that many students don’t live on campus and the Pride pulled just 4,260 people per home game this season. In separate discussions with people affiliated with Northeastern—a current student and an alumnus—I was told that nobody at the school cares about the football team and the stadium is just too far away. They weren’t kidding—the Huskies ranked 115th in the FCS in attendance this year with just 1,596 fans per home game.

The lack of attendance issue is one that affects the Columbia football program, as the Lions pulled the lowest crowds of any team in the Ivy League with just 4,027 people at each home game—down from 4,127 in 2008. The distance of Lawrence A. Wien Stadium from campus, despite the free fan buses to the games, is just too much for many Columbia students—something that helped kill Northeastern football. For those of you that might argue that Ivy League football is a hard sell, I give you Yale, which despite finishing lower than the Light Blue in the standings this year, averaged the third‑most fans per game with 21,245. That many fans and the Bulldogs didn’t even host “The Game” this year!

Given everything I’ve just said, you’re probably wondering if Columbia football could endure the same fate as Hofstra and Northeastern. You don’t need to worry, though; it’s not going to happen here.

So why is football going to live on here in Morningside Heights… er… Inwood you might ask? There are two main reasons that the program is not going anywhere and the first is that it is not hemorrhaging money like programs at some other schools. Attendance may be relatively low, but the money that the football team uses isn’t being taken away from other students or the University at large because it mainly operates with the Athletic Department’s funds and donations from wealthy alums like Bill Campbell and Robert Kraft. In fact, it could be argued that many donations that are made to the school come from people because they have a tie to the school through the football program—the aforementioned Campbell and Kraft are proof of that. It also helps that, unlike Hofstra and Northeastern, Columbia doesn’t offer scholarships, which means that money isn’t given to players that could have gone to other students.

The other explanation for why Columbia football is here to stay is because the school needs to keep up with the rest of the Ivy League. It would be a terrible decision for the University as a whole to discontinue football because that would give an edge to every other Ivy school in terms of recruiting students. A lack of a football team could also drive current and/or potential donors away, which actually hurts present and future students. Northeastern’s biggest rival is Boston University and in order to save face in Boston, the Huskies need to keep up with the Terriers. Since BU doesn’t have a football team, it doesn’t hurt the rivalry for Northeastern to drop football—it just gives them more time to focus on hockey season. Here at Columbia, we may not have a rival, but it is absolutely necessary for the University to keep up with the rest of the Ivy League—which makes it even crazier that there is no varsity men’s lacrosse team, but that’s a different issue altogether.

While these two reasons might be the main ones for why I believe Columbia football isn’t going anywhere, it doesn’t hurt that there’s hope for the future. Of course, a 4-6 record wasn’t what the team or its fans envisioned at the start of the season, but three Ivy wins and a strong corps of returning talent bodes well for next year. And who knows, maybe one of the guys from Hofstra or Northeastern will end up here in 2010.

Matt Velazquez is a Columbia College senior majoring in history.
sports@columbiaspectator.com