Weighing the pros and cons of UMass moving up to the top football division
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
This place could eat McGuirk for a snack.
That was my thought upon seeing Florida State University’s football stadium for the first time.
Doak Campbell Stadium rises on one side of FSU’s Tallahassee campus like a medieval city, except with higher walls and fewer pigeons. To Minutemen football fans the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s McGuirk Stadium may seem cavernous, yet anyone who has been inside a football palace like Florida State’s gets over that trick of perspective in a hurry.
But next year UMass will join the Mid-American Conference, thus moving its football program up to the Football Bowl Division — the top level of the college game, the level that schools like Florida State play at.
Powerful people have concluded that this will be good for the economic health of UMass, and therefore its academic health. I’ve been teaching in the economics department on the Amherst campus since the 1980s, and I used to think these people were deluded, but now I’m not so sure.
A big-time football team can increase applications from students around the country, raising a university’s national profile. More than that, football gets attention from people who have money — politicians, foundations, alumni — and I am absolutely in favor of more funding for my students and my colleagues.
But there are questions, of course. How many years will it take before the Minutemen are able to beat, say, Central Michigan — generally a tougher opponent than Villanova? What sort of crowd will show up for Minutemen home games ... at Gillette Stadium?
More immediate questions came up last week when the UMass Faculty Senate passed a resolution that calls on the university to halt plans to consolidate the football program’s locker rooms, coaches’ offices, training room and weight room into one new building at McGuirk until 80 percent of the estimated $30 million project has been raised through private donations. Now, these facilities are located in three places across the campus. Faculty members I admire worry that football expansion will be a money pit.
At the senate meeting, UMass Amherst Chancellor Robert C. Holub argued that the university needs national exposure and an upgrade to the players’ training and practice facilities are essential to that end. Moving to the Bowl Division, he said, is consistent with UMass’ aspirations of joining the Association of American Universities, a 61-member club made up of upper-echelon public research institutions, all of which have Bowl Division teams.
But how big can UMass football really grow? How much money can it generate?
I grew up in Tennessee, and I can assure you that in the Southeast football is the Second Coming. I went to Amherst College, where the main thing that matters about football is beating Williams. I teach at UMass, where the 1998 team won the national Division I-AA championship. My son, David, is a graduate student at Florida State, a two-time Division I national champion that began the 2011 season in the top 10.
Deciding it was time to refresh my perspective, to see what resemblance (or lack thereof) exists among these levels of football, I attended three games this season: Amherst College vs. Wesleyan, UMass vs. Villanova and Florida State vs. Miami.
ON OCT. 22 at Amherst College’s Pratt Field, the Lord Jeffs welcomed a homecoming crowd for the Wesleyan game.
My old high school in Nashville has a larger football stadium than Amherst College does. Larger players, too. Never mind; football traditions at this little school go back to the 1870s, and at one point three Amherst alumni were NFL starters. Even Wesleyan, which usually gets beat by Amherst, claims football legitimacy at the highest level: In the early ’70s it had a tight end named Bill Belichick.
This year the Jeffs were on their way to an undefeated season and the Wesleyan Cardinals didn’t get in their way. While perhaps 500 students and alumni huddled in the stands, twice as many strolled at the far ends of the field, sipping beer or coffee, occasionally looking up when crowd noise indicated something interesting on the field.
CEOs, surgeons and corporate lawyers chatted about whose daughter is playing timpani in the college orchestra, how far up the coast of Maine they went in the sailboat last summer, and how one classmate is now a Buddhist monk and another works for the Peace Corps.
Final score: Amherst 24, Wesleyan 10.
Two weeks later was homecoming at UMass. I took along my friend Thiru, a graduate student from Sri Lanka who had never seen a football game.
Our seats, being aluminum, were cold, but they afforded an excellent view. They also afforded a vivid musical experience — we sat directly in front of the UMass Minuteman’s Marching Band trombone section.
Thiru watched with elegant disinterest. It did not take him long to figure out that when a UMass player drops the football and a Villanova player pounces on it, this is not good for the home team. Especially when it happens several times.
The crowd of 10,012 watched Villanova win 35-17.
TICKETS FOR OUR seats at that UMass game cost $16.
Tickets for the Amherst-Wesleyan game didn’t exist; fans just walked in.
To get tickets to the Florida State/Miami game, at $75 each, I had to pay $60 to join the Seminoles Booster Club.
On game day, Nov. 10, my son and I find pregame parties going on everywhere. It’s clear that Florida State sports are the main social occupation in Tallahassee.
Still, FSU is an academic institution, and the library is moderately busy. David is writing a paper on Thucydides; I read a set of UMass student essays. When I take a break to chat with some FSU students, they tell me that, no, they are not going to the game, because they’re catching up on course work.
An hour before kickoff, David and I make our way to the stadium. It’s a giant building, nine stories high at its midsection, with a football field somewhere inside. Besides coaches’ offices, marketing offices, souvenir stands and snack bars, one wing of the stadium complex houses several of the university’s main administrative department, including the office of the registrar (convenient for coaches who want to check players’ grades).
Illuminated signs inform us which gates have the shortest lines. Someone scans the bar codes on our tickets, and we make our way up 200 yards of ramp to our seats. Pretty good, actually: only 34 rows up from the field.
In this crowd — 82,922 was the official figure — upwards of 75,000 seem to be sporting garnet and gold T-shirts, jackets, hoodies and hats. At each end of the stadium a scoreboard with a surface area of half an acre bears the logos of Chevrolet, AT&T, Coca-Cola and other corporations.
The Goodyear blimp circles overhead. So does a small plane trailing red and gold smoke as two members of the Black Daggers, the U.S. Army’s Special Operations parachute demonstration team, do loop-the-loops and eventually land on the 50-yard line. Then the FSU mascot, Chief Osceola, in war paint and feathers and brandishing a flaming spear, rides around the field on his splendid horse, Renegade.
The game itself is equally animated but oddly disjointed, with constant interruptions for television time-outs. Since it is Veterans Day weekend, the game stops twice to honor FSU alumni who have served in the armed forces.
Longer delays occur when the referees review confusing plays. As the refs study the replay screen, the crowd offers a high-decibel opinion of their eyesight.
At the end of the first quarter the Seminoles are ahead 3-0. In the second quarter quarterback E.J. Manuel throws a gorgeous touchdown pass to Rodney Smith, who catches it despite having two Miami defenders inside his shirt. Greg Reid returns a Hurricanes punt 83 yards for another score. Miami comes back, but not far enough, and the ’Noles escape with a 23-19 victory.
After the game the parties continue — some of them attended by alumni that FSU hopes will contribute to a new $30 million indoor football practice facility. The Florida Panhandle has the highest frequency of electrical storms in the country, and NCAA rules prohibit outdoor practices if there’s lightning.
FLORIDA STATE STUDENTS can walk to home games from their dorms. Now that UMass games will be played in Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, students on the flagship campus will have to drive two hours, or take the bus. This year 24,028 people — more than twice the crowd at the game I attended at McGuirk — showed up to watch UMass play the University of New Hampshire in Gillette.
But it’s not the student dollars big football programs are after. Alumni living in greater Boston will have a shorter trip, and Gillette has skyboxes. Imagine a bright Saturday afternoon, and UMass alumni sitting in those skyboxes with a few trustees, a few state legislators and a few UMass fundraisers, sipping Sam Adams and chatting about how the engineering school needs a new endowed professorship.
A handful of universities — Florida State, Ohio State, Michigan — have football programs that net several million dollars each year. UMass won’t join that small group; Boston College, with bowl appearances and a Heisman Trophy winner (Doug Flutie) never has, and most universities lose money on football if all you count is expenses versus ticket sales, TV money and souvenirs. But UMass’ visibility will improve, bringing in donations and grants that are not restricted to the sports program.
At least I hope so.
As Jerry Kutz, a fundraiser with the Seminoles Boosters, told me, “Up close, you see the expense of renovating the stadium. ... [but] the president sees $50 million or more in new donations to the university’s programs.”
Florida State, with nearly 32,000 undergraduates, is known mainly for the accomplishments of just 125 of those students, all of them male, drawn to Tallahassee for reasons not altogether academic. Yet academics are not an afterthought. I have three friends who graduated from Florida State; two are filmmakers, one is an opera singer. David is there studying for a master’s degree in classics.
The enthusiasm generated by big-time football may trickle down to reach average UMass students. Maybe five or 10 years from now they’ll graduate with smaller loans to pay off. Maybe access to desired classes will become easier.
Give us more money at UMass — raised through football or anything else — and we really will be a world-class university.
Meanwhile, our equestrian team probably has a couple of guys who can be Paul Revere and William Dawes riding around Gillette.
John Stifler can be contacted at jstifler@econs.umass.edu.
Comments
Con's ?
............"The enthusiasm generated by big-time football may trickle down to reach average UMass students. Maybe five or 10 years from now they’ll graduate with smaller loans to pay off. Maybe access to desired classes will become easier." Magical thinking.
Comment on UMass Moving up a Division in Football
Good article and great insight. As a UMass Alum an former Amherst resident, I have to add that the economic impact to Amherst should also be taken into consideration. They need to have some games in Amherst down the road! UMass owes it to Amherst. The Amherst Alum come to see the football team and then head to Judies in town or go shopping down at Atkins Market. UMass followers normally gather at the Pub or Rafters and head to the game pre and post game. That will go away now and it's a shame. The folks in Foxborough have the Patriots for six months and Patriots Place (year round) and maybe now a casino. Amherst deserves its share too.