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Friday, April 18, 2008
Inner-city college football generally struggles
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Exhiliration runs high. Pulse of the mid-city beats picks up with anticipation. Downtown Atlanta is about to become blessed with its very own college football team, though “blessed” might be considered somewhat premature.
The Georgia State Panthers have no practice facility, not even a ball, most of all its own place to play the game, no history, no background, nothing more than a surging desire to have its own team and be, finally, a “full” university, as its envisions itself. OK, that’s fine. I don’t want to be a wet blanket, an anti-visionary spreading doom and gloom, but let’s take a cold, hard look at what has become of inner-city college football in this country.
Once upon a time University of Chicago was a powerhouse. It produced the first Heisman Award winner. Later its stadium became the laboratory for nuclear activity. In New York City, Fordham spread its wings from coast to coast at one time. It produced the great Vince Lombardi. NFL stars came out of NYU, the multi-talented Ken Strong, for instance. CCNY and Manhattan once had prosperous football programs. Manhattan played in a bowl game.
In Philadelphia, Temple still struggles to survive. Penn has been reduced to Ivy League level, as has Columbia in New York City. Columbia once played in the Rose Bowl. A few years ago I went to a game at Columbia. It was a nice little outing for about 1,500 people. No scholarships, Ivy League policy, no bowl games, no Heisman candidates.
In St. Louis, both Saint Louis U. and Washington participate well below the radar. Detroit U. once was so mighty it attracted Knute Rockne’s old Notre Dame quarterback, Gus Dorais, as coach. Once upon a time SMU was a regular on Georgia Tech’s schedule. They haven’t played in years. Now the Dallas school struggles to recover from a two-year “sentence” in the NCAA’s hoosegow.
San Francisco once was so rich in football that 11 of its alumni were playing in the NFL at one time, and some are in the NFL Hall of Fame. It’s major sport now is basketball. University of Denver no longer fields a football team. It, like so many other institutions, have been driven out of the game by the invasion of an NFL team. It still does well in low-budget sports.
Now, there are survivors. Boston College rules downtown with the Patriots making their home in Foxboro.
Georgia Tech lives within spitting distance of the Falcons, but its roots are deep in football, and any financial distress that developed there has to do with extravagant and under-funded expansion. All that in spite of a newly published survey of the nation’s major sports cities, in which Atlanta took a pounding.
Somebody, not sure who, did a poll to determine the United States’ “most miserable sports city.” You’ll never guess which city “won” this scourageous (my word) citation. Dear old Atlanta, reconnecting itself with a past which brought the late Lewis Grizzard around to calling it “Losersville.” True, there was much more damning evidence then than now. The Braves were miserable. The Falcons were miserable. Tech was miserable on the football field. There wasn’t much joy in the precinct.
I joust with the purveyors of this latest slap to the chops. The Braves have won 14 division titles and one World Series. (No, these aren’t the Red Sox and Yankees.) The Falcons have been to the Super Bowl. Blushingly, the Hawks now refer to themselves as a “playoff team,” with its losing record. Big-time golf and big-time stock car racing still come to call. There is misery within the boardroom of the Hawks and the Thrashers because of a miserably dysfunctional ownership. Gotta say this, they have kept us in conversation and headlines, though little to do with winning.
So, be cautious, be wary, Georgia State. Stick your toe in the pool before you leap headlong. This is not Statesboro. This is sophisticated Atlanta, as it immodestly considers itself. An upstart football program at a school surrounded by swirling traffic paying little attention, no hallowed halls, no ivy-covered towers and no tradition to build on is taking a walk into a deep forest.
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