April 4, 2016
Taylor García
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I am not sure if the bookstore sells them anymore, but there used to be these t-shirts that said “UCCS Football Undefeated Since 1965” or something like that. It was the best t-shirt, because it’s technically true.
Man, having a football team would be so awesome, right?
Wrong.
We assume that football teams generate as much revenue as they spend, but they don’t. On their website, the NCAA broke down the Division II athletics expenses for schools with football teams and schools without.
In 2011-12, schools with a football team set aside $5.3 million for athletics, while schools that don’t have football set aside $4 million. The average revenue generated by schools with a football team was $624,000. Schools without football made an average of $314,000.
So yes, football creates more revenue. But $1.3 million dollars of expenses isn’t dented by the $310,000 revenue.
Along with looking at athletic expenses, the NCAA broke down how football teams affect institutional expenses as a whole.
From 2004-12, football-playing institutions have increased total institutional expenses from 5 percent to 7 percent. For non-football-playing institutions, that number increased from 4 to 5.5 percent.
Those increases in institutional costs or athletic expenses are over a period of eight years, and don’t include the initial costs of creating a team. Athletic scholarships would shift from being spread across the athletic department to mainly the football team.
The UCCS motto is “reach higher.” Our athletics can’t reach higher when, for however many years, they bog down their students with an outrageous athletic fee to offset the obscene start-up costs to create a football team.
Our athletic fee was increased in March, not with solely athletics in mind, but the student body and the club sports on campus as well. The fee increased to $9 per credit hour, but our athletic fee is still lower than other schools within the RMAC.
CSU-Pueblo’s athletic fee is $12.65 per credit hour. Adams State’s fee is $11.68 per credit hour.
While that difference doesn’t seem huge, having a football team adds up quickly. The $3.65-cent difference between UCCS and Pueblo means almost a $44 difference for a 12-credit-hour student each semester.
It’s also a matter of space.
We all know that parking is terrible, can you imagine adding a football stadium that needs its own parking lots? There is nowhere to put it.
Currently.
But that is the beauty of where UCCS is at right now. It is growing and expanding each year so a football team isn’t a reality for us who are currently attending, but maybe 10 years down the road it will be.