Not to Beat a Dead Horse (football again). . .

[remus]

babygirl, you make way too much sense to be posting here. Many times this place is the land of make believe. All we have to do is go out back and shake the money tree to make everything happen. After reading your post I'm beginning to think that maybe SBU is an academic institution rather than a sports factory for the locals. Please say it ain't so.

[clubber]

Babygirl, a shovel could have been put in the ground already on many of those athletic projects that you highlighted. If the administration would let athletics do their job we could have many of those upgrades. There are also athletic facility grants available, not everything has to come out of pocket. There are people who want to help athletics. I can GUARANTEE you that there are people who would donate to starting up football.

Lewis & Clark will not be dropping football.Their commission found:

1)The Lewis & Clark community supports the retention of football as an intercollegiate sport.
2) L&W must embrace, cultivate and sustain a new emphasis on the athletic component for it's community, since athletics and physical activity are essential for well-rounded development of students.
3)Athletics offers a common ground for L&W students to come together in a communal effort.
L&W has a complete schedule for 2006 and hired a full time assistant coach. Sounds like they are making a commitment.

16 colleges will START football programs between 2006 and 2008.

Some of us live in the Land of Reality

[sbuSTUDent2005]

I personally love the idea of having a football program at bonas. It would be nice to have fans visiting that normally wouldn't step foot on the campus and be able to see how great it looks in the fall (possibly inspiring some to consider bonas). Although I'd love to see it happen, in my short tenure at bonas i've learned that while many people have bright hopes, ideas and wishes, few actually see their plans through. If we are going to start a football program, it needs to be put in the right hands. It is a large undertaking to get a program like this not only on it's feet but up and running. Other posters make good points. I'm not sure if it would be better to have a wide variety of mediocre teams or a slim variety of well run and successful programs. Maybe it would be better to improve existing programs first, maybe the football program could help generate revenue to help other sports, who knows. As of now this is all talk and if the community is serious about this, it should make its wishes known so that the process can be started.

[MrSmiff]

Peaches was a QB back in middle school. He could play both sports.

[maplehurst]

Perhaps the new field turf on the baseball field could also be used for football. I think there is a historical football program on display at the RC which showed that Bonas once played a football game at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Bonas baseball field is most probably bigger in area than Ebbets was. I think the football layout at Ebbets had one end zone in right field and the other along the third base line. This idea is something to think about. However, I have films of a Bonas game at Forness Stadium. If Bonas gets crowds like what they used to get, a new stadium is in order-not sometthing out along the river. Bonas used to wear white jerseys with brown pants at home games. I think the numbers looked brown as well. Lucky we had color film in those days!!!

[sneakers]

steviecsbabygirl said:

just to be a devil's advocate against the adding of sports....

-beloved baseball coach Larry Shooter Sudbrook has said that if it were not for the $900,000 donation the improvements to baseball would not have happened because that type of money would not come from the school.....who's to say that the school would pony up the cash to start this project (football) and will they give/allot any of the influx of cash to athletics ?

-pool needs to be replaced, soccer/lacrosse field needs to be upgraded, basketball floor needs to be replaced, teams need fulltime assistant coaches, offices are out of date, budgets are low (lowest in A-10 ?), no indoor winter practice facility, locker rooms need to be updated and built (many teams seem to share locker rooms)......with all of these things lacking....how can you then go and add ?

-you cannot just take football and plunk it on the soccer/lacrosse field as it would tear the crap out of the field which would make it impossible to play soccer on (it would have time to recover for the spring I guess for lacrosse)

-if all the current sports are funded at the bottom of the A-10 (not sure if this is true or not) then why on earth would you add more sports ?

-men's lacrosse seems to make the most sense .....then add women's bowling and women's golf to balance things.....or you could add a women's ski team.....

-lewis and clark college in oregon is looking to drop football because they simply cannot field a team due to a lack of players (they had to forfeit their last few games last year because of a lack of players)....not sure if others have dropped or are planning on dropping.....

People need to understand that it is not as if the money from the incoming students (football players and others) is going directly to athletics....it will go to (Snow ? is that her name ?) and not to athletics.....so while it can serve a purpose to stabilize the school (thru enrollment/cash) it could hurt the current programs.....

I hope things can turn at sbu but lots seems to need to happen......

We don't know if there would be enough alumni donations to start a program, but one could certainly explore this without first making a commitment. I have heard from various sources that there are a lot of alum ready to write big checks for this if it were to happen. We would need up-front cash to pay the start-up costs for the program (equipment, coaches, facilities). After the start-up phase, the money generated by new incoming students would more than offset the cost of running the program. Non-scholarship football would not be that expensive when measured against these higher revenues. A deal of some sort would have to be worked out between the athletic department and the school administration as to how this cash would flow.

I think it is time that this school stopped thinking so small. Great things can happen if you make some bold moves and invest in providing the kinds of activities and academic programs that the prospective students are looking for. Doing nothing is simply not the answer to our problems. It is time to think big for a change.

[007]

Unfortunately, making bold moves are not in the cards for the person/people running the University. No one person wants to make a wrong decision so it's just easier to make no decisions at all. I also believe it is time to stop thinking small but the school wants to do and be just that; small!! It's the 21st century and that is not where the Bonaventure Administration wants to be.

[clubber]

Maplehurst,
It's to late to put football on the field. If they get a second chance, the soccer field could get turf and you would have a place for soccer,lax, and football.
There is a great picture of SBU vs Boston U. at Fenway Park,with the "Green Monster" in the background.
Is there any chance of getting a copy of the game films you have?