Joanie Sompayrac wrote:
> I'll admit up front that I am not nearly as informed on the possible fall-out of dropping football and possible conference re-allignments as Jonathan Looney seems to be, but I do have a question that seems to be missing in this debate.  Instead of dropping football, would it be possible that we could go from Division I-AA to say, Division III, thus, not offering scholarships, but still fielding a team?

That would be possible, and IMHO the best option short of dropping
football and staying in Division I.  The only thing is that all sports
would go to Division III together, whereas if football were eliminated
we would still have the option of staying D-I in the remaining sports.
Still, going to D-III to save money on all sports while maintaining a
non-scholarship football team is an option worth considering.

Kathy Winters wrote:
> I guess I have to get into this issue.  Why the big move to eliminate
> football?  Why not cheerleading?  Why not basketball?  Why not tennis?

Football is by far the biggest money spender and the biggest money loser
(not to mention lack of success on the field).  Cheerleading and tennis
are extremely inexpensive by comparison (and I don't know about the
cheerleaders, but our tennis teams are at least competitive).
Basketball is much less expensive to operate than football (more than 50
fewer scholarships, fewer coaches, less equipment, etc.) and, again, is
successful on the court (women's basketball especially).  The only sport
that (a) could be cut and make an actual dent in athletics' deficit, and
(b) would hardly be missed from the standpoint of current "fannies in
the seats", is football.

By the way, don't get the false impression that I don't like football in
general ... I do like football (I like baseball even more and wish UTC
had a team, which will never happen due to gender equity issues as long
as we keep football).  I just don't see UTC as being a good "fit" for
football any more the way it might have been 20, 30, or 40 years ago.

Jonathan Looney wrote:
> The reason ETSU was not allowed to stay was if they let one school drop
> football and stay for other sports, they'd not be able to tell other
> schools "NO".

Aren't there some schools in the SoCon right now that don't have
football teams?  I am thinking College of Charleston and UNC Greensboro
as two examples, and what is the situation with Davidson and VMI?  Have
the schools without football teams been told to "get one or else"?  If
any current conference members are being allowed to compete in other
sports and not football, I don't see why UTC could or should be forced
out assuming we phase out football.  But if we were, so be it ... I
still think we could find another conference out there that would be
right for a leaner UTC athletics program more in keeping with the
University's mission.