There’s an intriguingly one-sided article on the front page of the Eastern Echo that has made it to its web site, “The problem of dropping athletics to Division II.” It begins:
In a letter written to The Echo in October from Zachary Jones — an adjunct instructor and research assistant at EMU — he suggested what many associated with the university have said.
“Maybe our school could do without a football team,” Jones wrote. “Maybe we could go down to Division II football so we could be more competitive?
“We could compete in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Here we would be very competitive, we are the same size as Grand Valley State University and smaller than Wayne State University; both schools are in that conference.”
I think Jones makes some good points. But a letter back in October as the reason for an article now? That seems a little odd to me.
The writers/reporters then go on to interview exactly one source, the completely unbiased (not!) EMU athletic director Derrick Gragg. And basically, there are two arguments given for EMU to not drop football down to Division II: other sports and money.
I have to say, it’s really an op/ed piece (and ought to be labeled ad such), and it is less than convincing to me.
First off, I’m not entirely convinced that if EMU changed the status of its football team (gave it up entirely, dropped it down a division, etc.) then these other sports would be so dramatically impacted. I don’t think it’s uncommon for a university to play in different divisions and conferences for different sports.
But the main argument from Gragg for playing in the top ranks is money. This strikes me as wrong for at least two different reasons. First, Division II teams play these “payday” games too– Appalachian State versus Michigan immediately come to mind, and I believe we played a Division II team at home recently too (but I can’t remember who).
Second, Gragg presents this as if football is a “profit center” for the institution: that is, we’re just making so much money off of football and these games that if we didn’t do this, then all of college athletics would suffer. That’s just flat-out wrong. As we’ve discussed here many times before, college athletics in general and football in particular may or may not be good things for all kinds of reasons, but making money is definitely not one them.
It doesn’t surprise me that Gragg is saying what he’s saying here. But I guess what disappoints me about the Echo article is that there is clearly so much more to say on this. I think if they were interested in reporting about a real issue, they could have made at least one more phone call to someone who was not EMU’s athletic director.
