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Hoping to take a hike
USA's club team trying to make big enough impression to stick around
08/25/02
By MARK McCARTER
Times Sports Staff markcolumn@aol.com
MOBILE - His friends and colleagues over on the serious, non-sweaty side of campus still give him a little grief. Coach Hilton. C'mon.
''My peers are kinda laughing at me,'' says David Hilton. ''They say, 'I can't believe they call you Coach now.' But it's been great.''
Hilton, a former high school football player who is, in the real world, assistant to the vice president for student affairs at the University of South Alabama, has been assistant coach, organizer, nursemaid, favorite uncle to the burgeoning Jaguars football program.
''I just kinda fell into it,'' he shrugs.
If things go well, he'll also find himself in some sort of surrogate mother role. In 2004, he may be handing the program off to the South Alabama athletic department.
At this point, the Jags are a club football team. Say that softly around Daniel Ryle, a senior tight end.
''We don't look at it as club,'' he says. ''We play Division III teams. We play Division I-AA non-scholarship teams. We treat it like it's I-A football.''
In three seasons, USA has played 10 games against other club teams or small colleges. The Jags were 1-5 a year ago. They have seven games scheduled this season. The program remains under the direction of the student affairs office, with no affiliation whatsoever with the USA athletic department.
However, the athletic department has a blueprint to begin intercollegiate football in 2004. Athletic director Joe Gottfried introduced a season ticket drive July 1 and named longtime Mobile educator Paul Sousa as chairman of the USA football committee.
USA wants to sell 6,000 tickets, at $50 each, by the end of December. It is concentrating on individual sales, rather than to corporations who might buy tickets out of a sense of duty yet leave many tickets unused. According to Gottfried, some 980 tickets had been sold at the beginning of last week.
''I've been continually approached with 'If you have football, I'll buy tickets,' '' Gottfried said in his July announcement. ''Now this is the opportunity for the community to step forward.''
The ticket drive is the first of four phases, according to Smith. If the ticket goal is achieved, phase two would be to request an $11 increase in the student athletic fee that is already assessed each student.
Phase three would be to hire a coaching staff - don't expect David Hilton's resume to be sent - and phase four would be to raise funds with a goal of $8 to $10 million. If all that is accomplished, USA would begin as an NCAA Division I-AA non-scholarship program in 2004, playing its games at 40,000-seat Ladd-Peebles Stadium, home of the Senior Bowl.
Skeptics point to a Mobile fan base that broadly supports Alabama and Auburn, and a powerful program in Southern Mississippi that is nearby.
Even Hilton admits the focus on Alabama and Auburn ''is a concern. Any time anybody is trying to start a new program, that's a concern.''
''I understand the Alabama and Auburn situation,'' Gottfried says. ''But we're four hours removed from Auburn, four hours removed from Alabama. We've got people who can't get tickets South Alabama team isn't under athletic department yet Hike Continued from 11 for those games who are college football fans. We've got a million people within an hour's drive of Mobile.''
The USA club team, which works off a $75,000 annual budget and wears hand-me-down pads from a defunct Mobile pro team, initially drew 5,000 to the on-campus field, in the middle of the track near the school's P.E. facility. ''But we've had peaks and valleys,'' Hilton says. ''We started losing, and some of the excitement went away.''
USA tries to have a typical college football atmosphere. There are cheerleaders, a pep band and local high school bands come to march at halftime. Concession stands are set up. Rented bleachers are brought in. There is no admission for faculty, staff and students, and only $5 for the general public.
Its players are symbolized by guys like Jarred Easley, a 6-foot, 316-pound lineman who will play on both sides of the ball. Three inches taller, and Easley starts on anybody's line in the SEC. And there is Ryle, who received no significant offers to play college football, took a year off from college, started playing rugby for recreation and realized how much he missed football. He read about the USA program, and enrolled in school.
The Jags' new coach is Bill McWhorter, who has ''done it all,'' he says, from coaching in Finland to Birmingham high schools to the Birmingham Steeldogs to the Alabama Raiders pro team in Gadsden to a scouting service. He maintains a home in Birmingham, but hopes the opportunity arises to move to Mobile permanently.
''I won't pull any punches. I want to stay here,'' he says, pacing the sidelines on the intramural basketball court where his team works out as a torrential rain pours outside. ''This is a great opportunity. I want to be the guy that stays and takes them to the future. It's a win-win situation.
''We don't know what they're going to do upstairs (in the athletic department). They're going to what they have to do. What we're going to do is take it up a notch, put the last brick in place for club football and put it in good position to go NCAA.
''In fact, we're going to pretend we're already there. Because,'' says McWhorter, ''when these guys buckle the chin strap up against a Division III team, it's still football, no matter what division it is.''
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