Since I live on the West Coast (in the Bay Area), I'm surprised that a state with such a large population doesn't as actively engage in football. Most of the high schools in the state have football programs. I wonder if it has something to do college students' seeming ambivalence toward football. Even some large University of California system schools (like UC-Santa Cruz) don't even have a football program.
This summer, my cousin was attending a summer band camp at Sonoma State University. So, on the weekend, my wife and I drove across the bay to take him on a tour of the San Francisco Bay Area. After we arrived at his dorm to pick him up, he showed us that Sonoma State campus (NCAA Division II - CCAA). I was surprised that there wasn't a football stadium on their otherwise beautiful campus. It turns out that the school doesn't even have a football team. Yet, this is true of all of the CCAA conference schools.
The surprising thing to me is that Sonoma State is one of the smallest schools in that D2 conference. Three of the schools have nearly 30,000 students yet no football program. Is it too hard to imagine a football program at those schools that can (in the very least) break even financially? This is not taking into account the fact that football programs can increase exposure, promote school spirit/loyalty and offer some campus comradery?
Then again, even when Stanford had Andrew Luck, Toby Gerhardt, etc. were winning games for Stanford, the university had a difficult time selling seats at Stanford Stadium (even though students could attend for free). In fact, the closest the stadium could come to a sell out was when USC, Oregon or Notre Dame were in town. Even then, the stadium hardly felt like a "home field" because of so many traveling fans or local alumni. I've been to home games at Javelina Stadium that seemed to have more fans in the seats (back in the Coach Cundiff days) than Stanford has had when playing schools like Oregon State or Arizona.
How does NCAA Division II or the conferences recruit schools into their fold? It seems that a good Power Point slide presentation (showing some of the D2 schools) to various university presidents might be enough to allure some of them. Or, is D2 football operations a net loss for some schools?
This summer, my cousin was attending a summer band camp at Sonoma State University. So, on the weekend, my wife and I drove across the bay to take him on a tour of the San Francisco Bay Area. After we arrived at his dorm to pick him up, he showed us that Sonoma State campus (NCAA Division II - CCAA). I was surprised that there wasn't a football stadium on their otherwise beautiful campus. It turns out that the school doesn't even have a football team. Yet, this is true of all of the CCAA conference schools.
The surprising thing to me is that Sonoma State is one of the smallest schools in that D2 conference. Three of the schools have nearly 30,000 students yet no football program. Is it too hard to imagine a football program at those schools that can (in the very least) break even financially? This is not taking into account the fact that football programs can increase exposure, promote school spirit/loyalty and offer some campus comradery?
Then again, even when Stanford had Andrew Luck, Toby Gerhardt, etc. were winning games for Stanford, the university had a difficult time selling seats at Stanford Stadium (even though students could attend for free). In fact, the closest the stadium could come to a sell out was when USC, Oregon or Notre Dame were in town. Even then, the stadium hardly felt like a "home field" because of so many traveling fans or local alumni. I've been to home games at Javelina Stadium that seemed to have more fans in the seats (back in the Coach Cundiff days) than Stanford has had when playing schools like Oregon State or Arizona.
How does NCAA Division II or the conferences recruit schools into their fold? It seems that a good Power Point slide presentation (showing some of the D2 schools) to various university presidents might be enough to allure some of them. Or, is D2 football operations a net loss for some schools?
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