It has been over 10 years since Hofstra University terminated its football team, yet contention remains as to whether or not it was a good idea. Looking closely at the facts, it doesn’t take too much thought to understand whether or not the decision was a good one.
The fact of the matter is that Hofstra University doesn’t need a football team. Hofstra has 21 NCAA Division I sports teams that compete at the collegiate level and have successfully brought home laurels. To sustain the football program, funds would need to be allocated away from these other teams, only to elevate an expensive team that was subject to waning interest in its final years. The decision was made to cut the team from Hofstra’s roster, and in doing so allowed the money to go to better causes.
After cutting the football team, Hofstra was able to use the money to launch the Zucker School of Medicine, creating a much stronger medical program to compete with other New York schools like NYU and Columbia. The money that went to academia also helped fund other hard sciences as well as engineering, which no doubt had a hand in generating interest to expand the new Cybersecurity Center in association with the Zarb School of Business and the DeMatteis School of Engineering and Applied Science. Academically, Hofstra has been stronger than ever.
And as for athletics, Hofstra soccer, lacrosse and basketball teams have kept the Pride strong, contributing highly to student morale. The money issued to these sports programs (among others) allows Hofstra athletes, who were successful before the influx of funding, to bring even more glory and prestige to the institution. The men’s basketball team also boasts a higher number of student athletes who have gone on to play professionally. But the fact of the matter is that very few college players get selected to play in the pros, and sustaining a debt-ridden team for the sake of a few students would not be a profitable idea.
Other schools in the state that have defunct college football teams include New York University, Long Island University, Niagara University, St. John’s University and St. Bonaventure University, among other colleges in the area. As for former Division I football teams, Boston University, Drexel University and Texas A&M University (Corpus Christi) are among many others who have dropped their debt-inducing football teams and focused more on the money-generating aspects of their schools.
School football teams have always been given a special pass and extra funding at the expense of other extracurricular activities. Fine arts, other sports, academia – all have been sidelined in favor of perfecting a single sports team regardless of whether or not the team is successful. Hofstra’s decision to better improve the overall school instead of pouring obscene amounts of money into a single program was an easily calculated risk, which has paid off in the highest of dividends.
Pro/Con is a column in which members of the Hofstra community argue opposite sides of a given issue. Yashu Pericherla is a freshman English major from Texas.
