Atlanta seen as "hotbed" for college football growth

By Carroll Rogers

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In the last three weeks, Hofstra and Northeastern announced they were dropping football while two metro Atlanta schools made big strides toward starting football.

On the day last week Hofstra announced it was shutting down its program, Kennesaw State president Daniel Papp confirmed KSU was entertaining the possibility of starting one. Papp made it official Thursday, introducing former University of Georgia coach and athletics director Vince Dooley as the chairman of a football exploratory committee.

On Monday, Georgia State opened season ticket sales for its inaugural football season next fall. After two seasons as an independent, Georgia State will begin play in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) in 2012.

So how is it that in one economic climate, two northeastern schools in the CAA with 146 years of football history between them could be going in such opposite directions as two schools in metro Atlanta?

Is it as simple as geography?

"Every school is different, from where they're located, to what their objectives are, to what the interests of the local community are," said Hofstra athletics director Jack Hayes, who points out southern schools in the CAA typically have better football attendance.  "... Old Dominion just added football. Their attendance numbers are higher than anything we've ever had."

Hofstra averaged 4,260 fans this season at their 13,000-seat stadium. They sold 12,000 tickets at that same stadium for NCAA tournament lacrosse games last year. Only 500 of the school's 12,500 students regularly attended football games, and that's including cheerleaders and the band.

Northeastern has been playing in a limited off-campus venue and the school wasn't willing to invest millions in improvements needed to compete at a higher level. The Huskies ranked last in CAA attendance at 1,596.

"Clearly it's very different from what's happening in the state of Georgia," Georgia State athletics director Cheryl Levick said of decisions at Hoftstra and Northeastern. "We are in a hotbed of football."

Georgia State has already sold about 1,000 season tickets. Its goal of 10,000 for 2010 would represent more season tickets sold than what nine of the other 12 CAA schools averaged in total attendance last season.

Levick points to overwhelming student, alumni and faculty support for football.

As part of a GSU feasibility study, 71 percent of alumni surveyed, 61 percent of faculty and 80 percent of students supported the idea of adding football. Shortly, Georgia's State's student fee committee voted unanimously to increase fees to help cover operating costs for football, which run about $4.5 million per year.

"Both Northeast and Hofstra are private schools and about half the size of Georgia State," said CAA commissioner Tom Yeager. "And it's a different media market in the Northeast with a lot of other things going on. College football in the Northeast is a different thing than the Southeast."

Kennesaw State athletic director Dave Waples thinks KSU's situation is much different from Northeastern and Hofstra.

"I don't know what their growth is (with) their student body," Waples said. "But this institution is on the way up."

KSU's enrollment has nearly doubled in the last 10 years to 22,500. The school just completed its four-year transition to Division I. It also just broke ground on a new 8,300-seat women's soccer stadium that can be expanded for football.

"I can name five or six schools that are starting football right now," Waples said. "South Alabama, Old Dominion, UNC-Charlotte, Lamar, the University of Texas-San Antonio – they are all in our situation, state institutions that have a pretty good enrollment and see that they're missing something."

But college football, particularly at the Division I-AA level, is rarely a money-maker.

"There's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," Hoftstra president Stuart Rabinowitz said in his press conference announcing his school would reallocate the $4.5 million spent yearly on football on academic programs and need-based scholarships.

"In a sense, this subdivision of football is like football purgatory," he continued, meaning no bowls and smaller TV contracts. "You need to spend a lot of money to be competitive, but there are none of the benefits that a robust athletic program produces."

From the get-go, Georgia State has acknowledged financial challenges fellow CAA schools face.

"These programs are allowed to exist as financial burdens to the athletic departments because of the intrinsic value they provide to students, alumni and communities," the feasibility study reads.

But for Georgia State, football is also a way to keep moving toward a more traditional campus environment while boosting alumni involvement and fund-raising potential.

KSU students and alumni have been asking Papp when the school would start football from the day he became president in 2006. But this kind of investment would go much deeper than pleasing his "constituents."

"It is publicity, it is visibility, it is a level of student life that rarely, if ever, exists at places you don't have football," Papp said. "... We are on the verge of becoming a truly national university, when it comes to quality, when it comes to size, when it comes to recognition. That was one of the big factors leading us to move forward."

Georgia State graduate Preston Stancil was first in line to buy season tickets Monday. He used to be one of "Lefty's Loonies," a hard-core fan when Lefty Driesell was coaching basketball at Georgia State. But he had to go to Georgia Tech games to get his football fix.

"We'd sit in the student section and didn't miss too many home games over there," Stancil said. "Any student here that does that now, shame on them."