(06-04-2022 11:16 PM)DoubleRSU Wrote:  

(06-04-2022 10:07 PM)MattBrownEP Wrote:  

(06-04-2022 10:00 PM)DoubleRSU Wrote:  

(06-04-2022 09:10 PM)MattBrownEP Wrote:  

(06-04-2022 08:58 PM)DoubleRSU Wrote:  If approved. All the smart students will definitely vote this down and not pay more tuition to add a football program that has zero shot at competing.

I don't see any reason why a UNO team couldn't at least be as competitive as half the other teams in the Southland? It's not as if they're facing off against LSU.

Maybe? I wouldn’t think a FCS program in New Orleans would be well received. How do other FCS programs in NFL cities do? Attendance and winning wise.

There are barely any urban FCS teams, period. San Diego dominated the Pioneer League for years, Fordham has been a Patriot League stalwart, and Villanova has regularly been a strong FCS program. Most of the other urban ones are HBCUs, and I'm not sure that's a 1 to 1 comparison.

Is this a team that's going to draw 15K a night? No. Not many FCS teams do, honestly...and that isn't why UNO is considering doing this. They're considering doing it as a donor and politician engagement play, an enrollment play, a retention play...a conference realignment play, and potentially a real estate play.

IF they hire a decent coach, they're going to be able to get dudes. There's a TON of JUCO talent within an 90 minute radius, and really good prep ball in the surrounding parishes, plus a pipeline of FBS kids wanting to move down and play closer to home.

Will they be able to use this to recruit and retain students, or engage politicians? I think that's more an execution question. Might work, might not. But given who they are competing with, I don't see a STRUCTURAL reason why they couldn't compete in the upper half of that league.

You know a lot more about the “financial reasons” in starting football at UNO and it could be “successful” there. However, when I check out some of their basketball games, there’s nobody there and the atmosphere is dead. Just like at Chicago State. Both schools are lucky to have 200 actual fans at most of their games. To me and others, that does not scream “Let’s start a 3rd rate football program”.

Not every school should have a football program, in my opinion, money and effort would be better spent focusing on sports they already have. Which they already aren’t good at.

Serious question: Do you think it would work at Seattle? Would you support the effort to launch a program?