By James Irwin
Mark Hyman wants you to know that football will not return to George Washington University. Not now, and probably never.
“There are obstacles that would make this very problematic,” said Mr. Hyman, an assistant professor at GW. Business School. “There are very few urban private institutions that play major, highly competitive college football. Football is not coming back.
With that caveat in place, Mr. Hyman invites you to imagine what it would take to restore GW football. The semester-long research project in his Issues in Sport and Event Management course is an academic exercise at the intersection of college sports and business. Using GW as a setting, 20 students, divided into small groups and assigned to problem areas (fundraising, history, applications, health and expenses), work to build a holistic view of risks, rewards and challenges associated with the restoration or launch of a project. college football program.
Dick Duenkel was captain of the 1963 GW football team. The Colonials, he said, practiced on a patch of grass between Memorial Bridge and Washington National Airport, near the present site of the park Lady Bird Johnson. (William Atkins/GW Today)
GW football, founded in 1881, was disbanded after the 1966 season due to lack of fan support and high expenses. The premise of the mission, Mr. Hyman said, is that the program would return as it was started, as a Division IA program – now Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). The economy is the fundamental question. FBS programs can award up to 85 full scholarships. In addition to expenses, this also means the university would have to add an equivalent amount of scholarships for women’s sports or eliminate men’s teams to comply with Title IX. Travel to road games and major coaching staff salaries are huge line items. There is also the question of where to play.
“GW would have a lot of things going against it. There’s no room to put a stadium,” said Michael Martenak, a School of Business graduate and sports director for WRGW Internet radio. His mission is to debate the profitability of college football. It’s a big challenge. Only 20 of 120 FBS sports programs reported positive net revenue for the 2013 fiscal year, according to the NCAA’s annual revenue and expenditure report.
“Not many programs make money,” Mr. Martenak said. “You learn very quickly that there are many issues to take into consideration. Here we get to know our topic well and understand how it overlaps with others.
The course has a practical element that might prove useful one day to an aspiring university athletic director or CFO. College football is constantly evolving. The University of North Carolina-Charlotte launched its football program in 2013 and will move to FBS this fall. The University of Alabama at Birmingham canceled its program at the end of last season due to rising operating costs.
“When schools make the decision to go big, it’s with the hope that their revenue will increase,” Mr. Hyman said. “How can you make this jump?” Is it difficult to make money? Is there a causal link between playing good football and raising funds? Are school applications influenced by the football team? We can talk about all these variables.
Mr. Duenkel, a member of the GW Athletic Hall of Fame, shared stories about his college experience and brought equipment from his playing days. (William Atkins/GW Today)
The course is not designed to investigate GW football history, he said. Yet it provides an opportunity to explore the past. At the end of February, Dick Duenkel, a GW Athletic Hall of Fame and captain of the 1963 football team, introduced the program of the 1960s. In a conversation that touched on the games, the city and campus life, Mr. Duenkel also shared anecdotes from his playing days .
The athletes played offense and defense, he said. The biggest player on the team weighed 235 pounds, which is tiny compared to today’s linemen who weigh 300 pounds. Student-athletes lived in Welling Hall on Northwest 22nd Street, the current site of Science and Engineering Hall. And on October 27, 1962, GW played Army at DC Stadium (now Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium) on the day World War III almost started. At noon, a U.S. U-2 plane flying a reconnaissance mission over Cuba was hit by a surface-to-air missile, bringing the Cuban missile crisis to a boil.
“They announced at halftime that anyone working at the Pentagon at this level or above should report to your office,” Mr. Duenkel said. “The stadium was practically empty.”
The shared history, Mr. Hyman and Mr. Martenak said, adds a connection for the students in the class, even though they are two generations away from the last GW football game.
“It feels personal to them,” Mr. Hyman said. “Again, it’s not going to happen – it’s not real. But it’s real for us for 14 weeks.
