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| ETSU cuts football program,
next season will be its last |
Staff
Reports |
East Tennessee
State University will discontinue its football program after next
season.
Southern Conference Commissioner Daniel B. Morrison, Jr. said Friday
that ETSU President Paul E. Stanton, Jr. informed him of the decision
to drop football after the 2003 season.
The program has lost about $1 million a year, Stanton told the Johnson
City Press. He said continuing the program would require an additional
$300,000 - $400,000 to be competitive with other Southern Conference
schools and an additional $400,000 to cover Title IX gender requirements
for additional athletics programs and scholarships for women.
“Institutions have to make decisions in their best interest,”
Morrison said. “I’m sure they’ve given this a lot
of thought and consideration. This does have some conference implications
the membership will have to address.”
Morrison said ETSU is planning to continue competing in the Southern
Conference in other sports. That will require a waiver from the
conference, which has a rule that member schools must have teams
in basketball, football and at least four other sports to compete
in the conference in men’s athletics.
Three other conference members, College of Charleston, Davidson
College and University of North Carolina at Greensboro, currently
have waivers and do not play football.
The loss of ETSU’s football program will drop the number of
football-playing schools in the conference from nine to eight, and
the number of conference games from eight to seven.
“That’s something we will discuss at the May meeting,”
Morrison said. “We’ll see what the membership wants to
do. Obviously, we’ll face having one less football game [in
conference play].”
The Buccaneers went 4-8 last season. It was their worst record in
six seasons under Coach Paul Hamilton, a former quarterback at Appalachian
State University and assistant at Air Force for seven seasons before
taking over at ETSU in 1997.
Appalachian head coach Jerry Moore said his team would miss the
natural rivalry with ETSU. The Mountaineers and Buccaneers have
played 45 times since 1928 and the game typically draws one of the
largest crowds for both schools.
“I hate to see it for our league as much as anything,”
Moore said. “There have been a lot of rumors for a long time
that it might happen. We’ll miss playing them.”
The elimination of ETSU’s program is in contrast to developments
at Appalachian, which is in the early stages of a $32-million plan
to upgrade athletics facilities including those for football.
ETSU has not won a Southern Conference football championship since
it joined the league in 1978. |
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