Comments on: NU football and sports journalism

By: mike_b1

mike_b1 — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:41:51 +0000

I should add that the “big cities” you cite are all home to scores of colleges and universities, many of which have football teams.

So to correctly account for a given metropolis’ interest in college football, one must add up the attendance, etc. at all the local football games on a given weekend. Otherwise, you’re left with the impression that St. Louis citizens like baseball more than Chicago citizens do on the basis that the Cardinals (3.34 million) outdraw the White Sox (2.28 million) or Cubs (3.17 million). However, the combined WS’ and Cubs’ attendance (5.45 million) shows MLB is far more popular — using one somewhat crude measurement — in Chicago than in St. Louis.

I just looked up the 2008 attendance figures for BYU and Utah. Combined, they averaged 109,000 fans per game, which would rank first in the nation. Is SLC rural?

By: mike_b1

mike_b1 — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:58:51 +0000

My god, you’ve never been to Texas, have you? It is every bit the academic institution UCLA is, and cleanliness is next to footballness in Austin. I cite 10 cities larger than Boston: do they all have less “pressing things” than Boston? Austin, to continue the example, is not only the state capitol, it is nearly 2X the size of our fair hamlet. And all schools make exceptions for athletes; if the football team wants you, it is rare the school won’t accept you, regardless of its pedigree.

Don’t let the facts get in your way, though.

By: Dunwich1

Dunwich1 — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:45:17 +0000

USC has its ups and downs, based on its head coaches
Based on personnel leaving. Underclassmen coming out early makes consistent elite ranking difficult.
I’d rate Cal,Fla,Tx,Pa,OH as the top talent pools with SoCal best based on the huge JC system in addition to its prime HS talent. And USC doesn’t have admission concerns Stan.,Cal,UCLA have.
My initial response was about big city schools ( in NY,SF,Chi.,Bo.,Phil.Det.,et al.) not having a pressing need for football, because of other things going on.
This, and the expense are two factors the Northeastern administration could no longer ignore.

Div.1 FB is at its best in Norman,Lincoln,State Col.,Ann Arbor,maybe even Eugene! Were little else matters on a Saturday afternoon.

By: Mr Punch

Mr Punch — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:27:31 +0000

Dan, it seems to me that this is a one-time opportunity for some real explanatory journalism. How was the decision reached? What are the numbers, really? What options were examined? Etc. For instance, the pro media keeps noting that Parsons Field is two miles from campus, but isn’t there a comparable facility actually adjacent (at Wentworth)?

Oh, and there are other NCAA sports that can be played at different levels. Hockey: RPI, Colorado College (both champs), St Lawrence, Clarkson. There was an attempt to change the rule to prevent this, a few years back, but the Boston media never mentioned it because it wouldn’t have affected BC.

By: mike_b1

mike_b1 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:53:55 +0000

Dunwich1, I’m still not sure the data point your way. USC has its ups and downs, based on its head coaches. Recruiting is not a slam dunk. UCLA is the same way. Even University of Miami — which is in a major city and shares the other attributes of USC — is sometimes great, sometimes not.

Just taking the current ESPN Top 25 schools, for example, I see Texas, Cincinnati, Georgia Tech, Pitt, BYU, Utah, Ohio State and Houston as well as the aforementioned Miami and USC as ranked teams located in cities equivalent to or larger than Boston and which are anything but “rural campuses.”

But the main problem I see with your hypothesis is that logically it should extend to the HS ranks, too. And it doesn’t.

By: mike_b1

mike_b1 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:09:16 +0000

Settle down, Aaron. Football is the only NCAA sport where a school can play in a different division than the rest of their sports. Temple is a prime example. It’s a D1 school (basketball being most prominent) but D2 in football (or at least it was).

Google Proposition 65-1.

And Hobart is D-3 in lacrosse, not D-1. You got that backwards: http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-lacros/spec-rel/042808aab.html

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:44:46 +0000

There’s doing it big, and there’s doing it right. They don’t necessarily go hand in hand, or have to. I don’t know a ton about what’s going on at Northeastern, but if the field is hard to get to (a half-hour away?), as this says, then that will play a big factor in attendance.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/extra-points/2009/northeastern-cuts-74-year-old-football-program

I went to a Big Ten school 20 years ago, and the football program there has rarely been competitive. Lately, they’ve had a big problem getting kids to come to the game (the tailgates have been much more popular in recent years) and the stadium there is right on campus. You can’t complain about attendance when the field is a hike for these kids. They just won’t do it.

By: Aaron Read

Aaron Read — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:13:03 +0000

In my limited experience, football is usually killed off at a school because of money. By which I mean in one of two ways: either the program just costs too much money, period (it’s not cheap to move 45 guys around to a bunch of away games, not to mention equipment) or because the school has Title IX issues and it’s too expensive to both keep football going and pay for the equivalent women’s sports.

By: Aaron Read

Aaron Read — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:05:41 +0000

Second, a school Northeastern’s size cannot compete compete at the Div-3 level. Too great advantage with just “walk ons” from the outsized student body.

I’m sure school size DOES play a role in what division your football program (or any program) can be in, but I’m also sure it’s not in the way you describe. UConn was D3 football for many years and it’s a lot bigger than NU; in terms of raw numbers of undergrads – NU has 15k, UConn 20k.

I think you have to be above a certain size before you’re allowed to be in Division 1 football, or any of the D1x subdivisions. Or perhaps it’s a de facto minimum size because you have to have a stadium that holds a minimum number of fans, and it’s a pretty big number…and to justify that capacity, you need a large student body.

I’m not sure about the “walk-on” level, either. Very few football players, even at the D3 level, are true walk-on’s…they’ve all played in high school and most are at the college on some kind of scholarship.

I would think that’s especially true for the D1 schools, where most of the kids are effectively auditioning for the NFL, and have had that goal on their minds since pee-wee level.

By: Michael Pahre

Michael Pahre — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:11:36 +0000

Reading Derrick Jackson’s op-ed in the Globe today:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/11/24/footballs_loss_a_win_for_nu_students/

I see that Northeastern was getting by with a true bargain in the cost of their football program: $3 million per year at Northeastern compared to $11.4 million per year for comparable universities. That they have been competitive on the cheap is pretty remarkable — and an indication that, at some level, most universities are over-paying their football programs by a large margin.