JOHNSTOWN —
Football has long been the engine that drives conference realignment in the NCAA’s top division.
Now, it appears, that the little guys are looking to go big time.
The announcement that the nine football-playing members of the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference are leaving the 90-year-old league to form their own conference has raised eyebrows across the Division II landscape.
“You see that happen in Division I, but suddenly this happens and it’s like ‘Wow!’ ” said Steve Murray, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, which features 16 Division II teams. “I hope people know what they’re doing.”
It also raised questions about why a school like Pitt-Johnstown, which was left behind with five other WVIAC schools that don’t play football, doesn’t start a program.
“The football talk has been here since the beginning of time,” UPJ Athletic Director Pat Pecora said. “Somebody must ask me that question once a week.”
Ed Sherlock, who was the school’s A.D. from 1970-2001, said that UPJ did seriously consider adding football a few times during his tenure. In fact, Sherlock said that Mercyhurst, which began playing varsity football in 1981, used a model developed by UPJ to launch its team.
Sherlock was asked if he regretted never having gotten the football program off the ground at UPJ.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You feel like right now the program is definitely being hurt by not having football because they’ll lose their affiliation with the West Virginia conference and they’ll be hurt in trying to join the Pennsylvania conference.
“But the football program, at times, could have been a drain on the other programs and hurt them,” he said. “It’s six of one and a half-dozen of the other. I don’t know if it would have been better or not.”
The discussion of whether or not to add football will again be a talking point. Pecora, who was contacted just hours after finding out about the disintegration of the WVIAC, admitted that adding the sport was one option the school would consider going forward.
“I think we have to look at all options,” he said.
Football is generally regarded as the most expensive collegiate sport, which could make it difficult to start a program at UPJ.
“I think that would be the first thing is (the cost),” Pecora said. “That’s what we’d have to look at. That’s huge. I’m just beginning to look at that.”
Sherlock said that while Division II football does not require as many scholarships to be awarded as Division I does, it also isn’t as lucrative as big-time football.
“You don’t have the major costs or the income potential,” he said. “You’re not going to get on TV more than once a year and you’re not going to get the money that they do.
“I’ve been to Division II football games. They don’t draw significantly,” he said.
Sherlock said that the biggest potential he sees for profit from a Division II team is to bring in enough players who are paying their own way through school to balance out the cost of the program.
“To put in a football program and expect to have any income, the only real income is from the bodies that you put in football uniforms,” he said. “You can sprinkle in a little scholarship money.”
Adding a football program would also make it more difficult for UPJ to remain in compliance with Title IX, which requires colleges to have equal athletic opportunities for women and men.
“Our Title IX has always been fantastic,” said Pecora, who also is the Mountain Cats’ wrestling coach. “We comply with Title IX on the first prong, which is rare. Our athletic population mirrors our enrollment.”
Sherlock said that UPJ did field a football team at one point, but it was long before he was affiliated with the school. He was unsure of the dates, but said that it was before World War II, shortly after the school opened as a branch campus.
“They had a football team in 1929 or 1930,” he said. “I think they had three games. One was with California State Teachers College. They lost all three games.”
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