Smaller Female Dominated Colleges Turn to Football
Finally I found a story in the New York Times to which I could relate. Small mostly female dominated colleges are turning to football to bolster their school attendence, money, and prestige.
Some small American colleges, eager to attract men to increasingly female campuses, have taken notice of how many students like Mr. Bosworth can be lured to attend by adding football teams. Officials at these colleges say football can bring in more tuition-paying students than any other course or activity — and not just players themselves.
“When you recruit a halfback, you get a few of his male friends, maybe his sister and his sister’s boyfriend, too,” said JoAnne Boyle, president of Seton Hill University. A 123-year-old former women’s institution in Greensburg, Pa., Seton Hill added football last year. (snip)
At a time when the image of major college football has been sullied by academic, recruiting and sexual violence scandals — and as some prominent colleges eliminate football to cope with federal gender equity regulations for athletics [read Title IX of the badly interpreted 1972 Education Amendments which killed many college football programs] — many smaller institutions have embraced the sport. Since their football players generally do not receive scholarships and are not blue-chip recruits, officials at small colleges say the players tend to exhibit less of a sense of entitlement, leading to fewer academic and discipline problems.
In the last 10 years, nearly 50 colleges and universities have instituted or re-instituted football, with more than 80 percent in the small college ranks. In the same period, about 25 institutions have dropped football, the majority being scholarship-driven teams from the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s top tier, Division I. (snip)
“When male students, even nonathletes, are making a choice on which college to attend, we’ve proven that having a football team will make more of them choose you,” said Dr. Jerry G. Bawcom, president of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in the central Texas city of Belton, 140 miles south of Dallas. In 1997, the year before Mary Hardin-Baylor instituted football, the student body was 32 percent male. The next year, male applications jumped 148 percent. Last year, the university was 40 percent male.
For years these smaller mostly female schools resisted the encroachment of men into their schools. The main reason for the change I believe was money. Football brings in money, attention, prestige, alumni, and even more money. In the end money always wins out. And the men get to continue playing the sport they love. Everybody is happy.
I am glad to see football instituted in some of these smaller schools. These one time female dominated schools like UMHB play good football. And don’t think these schools can’t compete with their compatriots in schools which have not been historically female dominated. The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor came within a touchdown of winning the Division III football crown in 2005.
I am surprised that the Times would cover a story like this. There were no secrets leaked, no one was hurt, and the outcome was good. Hmmmmm. I’ll have to think about that one for a while.
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