BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) -- Lamar students have approved a fee that would help fund the return of a football program dormant since 1989.

Football would return in 2010 if the Texas State University System Board of Regents approves the plan at a meeting on Feb. 22. With board approval, the school said it would start renovating Cardinal Stadium and looking for a head coach.

ADVERTISEMENT


The Cardinals would return to the Southland Conference in the Football Championship Subdivision, known as Division I-AA the last time they played.

Brian Sattler, Lamar's director of public relations, said 17,150-seat Cardinal Stadium still hosts high school games but needs upgrades. If football returns, the school plans to address Title IX concerns by adding softball and one other sport for women, he said.

"We've looked at all the scenarios and crunched the numbers," Sattler said. "If the board says yes, we plan to move forward."

Approved by 79 percent of the 1,294 students who voted Tuesday and Wednesday, the measure calls for fees of $8.75 per credit hour in the fall and spring semesters and $4.50 per credit hour in the summer. The fees would start in the fall of 2009.

All students who pay the fee before the scheduled return of football would be eligible for free tickets through 2013.

Lamar had a 171-225-9 record in 39 seasons as a four-year school, most notably beating Baylor 18-17 in the 1981 season opener, a year after the Bears went 10-2 and won the Southwest Conference.

Lamar played junior college football on and off for 20 seasons from 1923-50.



Maybe Etsu could bave done it this way. The students who are going to pay the fee before football returns get freetix thru 2013

You have to remember something.

That is Texas. This is Tennessee.

Football is bigger down there.

Agreed, but the whole thing is interesting in that they let the students who would be paying the fee before the program gets up, to recieve free tixs as a reward.

Wasn't ETSU going to let students have free tickets in a similar fashion? The whole way the student vote episode was handled was so poorly done I doubt if the average student even knew that.

If memory serves they did.

They knew about the free tickets. And the fact that current students would receive free tickets for the amount of years they paid the fee. The students knew exactly what they were voting for.

They still didn't want it. Which is sad in many ways.

I will just quote what Frank Pergolizzi told me when I interviewed him about reviving football at Southeast Louisiana while ETSU was dropping their program.

"The culture is different in Louisiana than in east Tennessee."