Football to come to UNC Charlotte?

Dubois: Add football in 2013 – if boosters will pay
UNC Charlotte Chancellor suggests 6-month campaign to raise $5 million with $1,000 seat licences
By David Perlmuttdperlmutt@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Thursday, Sep. 18, 2008

UNC Charlotte Chancellor Phil Dubois recommended to university trustees this morning that UNCC suit up a football team by 2013, but punted to boosters and other football supporters to raise $5 million in six months to help pay for a $45.3 million stadium complex.

As expected, the trustees took no action, but will vote on Dubois' recommendation – including the lofty benchmarks to gauge public support -- at their Nov. 13 meeting.

Dubois made his recommendation during a trustees meeting, telling the crowd, "I believe this is the time when there's white smoke coming from the chimney," referring to the signal given by Roman Catholic cardinals when they select a Pope.

Dubois' announcement then received extended applause, some of it apparently coming from trustees.

A huge hurdle would be raising the $5 million through non-transferable seat licenses -- he calls them Forty-Niner Seat Licenses -- at a time when the economy continues to sour. Dubois proposed selling 5,000 licenses for $1,000 just for the right to buy season tickets.

He said trustees could extend his six-month deadline to nine months, or a year.

"The people who say they want football, now have to help pay for it," Dubois said in an interview with Observer reporters. "The surest way to demonstrate you're willing to pay is to put out a tangible amount of money that shows that support.

"Let's not wait for some long period of agony to decide if the support's going to be there. Let's decide now. And if it is, then we'll go forward."

If not? "Then it goes away."

He said UNC Charlotte athletics director Judy Rose is confident the money can be raised.
To pay for football, Dubois put less of a burden on students than what was proposed by a football feasibility committee.

That committee recommended student fees increase by $300 per year, or $150 each semester, phased in over the next four years.

Under Dubois' plan students would pay $25 each semester in 2010, $50 a semester in 2011 and 2012, and $100 each semester in 2013, when the team would start playing.

The $200, or a 1.4 percent increase in student fees, is "consistent with the amount that the vast majority of students ... indicated that they would be comfortable paying for a football program," he told trustees.

Dubois said he's heard concerns about raising fees from adult night students and graduate students.

"We have an obligation to consider that education is expensive, and we have an obligation to help them get their college degrees," he said.

Dubois proposed that a team start playing in a Division 1-AA conference "for the foreseeable future," and not set a timetable to elevate the program to Division 1-A by 2016, as recommended by the feasibility committee.

"You have to build a solid program with a solid fan base," he told the Observer. "If you want to move to Division 1-A by Day X, you'd never be admitted to a Division 1-AA conference because no one would want you."

To satisfy federal Title IX regulations, UNC Charlotte would introduce three women's sports: Lacrosse in 2016; field hockey in 2019 and swimming or another third sport in 2023.

Dubois said he'd prefer an on-campus expandable stadium, starting with 12,000 seats, near the light rail that is scheduled to be extended to UNCC by 2015. The $45.3 million complex would include a sports building with offices for coaches, locker rooms and practice fields.

Football, he said, is part of the university's long-term strategy for growth. The Charlotte campus is expected to enroll 35,000 students by 2020.

Other research universities that size play football, he said.

Yet in making his recommendation, Dubois said he doubts a football team would bring significant private donations, or draw higher quality students, or that a team would open a floodgate of private donations.

"There is nothing in our institutional history or in our alumni profile that suggests that our coffers will be filled by gridiron gold," Dubois told trustees.

Football, he said, would "enrich the student experience," boost school spirit and create a stronger bond between students and school -- a key ingredient "in helping a student persist to achieve his or her academic degree."

It would also give the Charlotte region "ownership" in UNCC.

"Like it or not, athletics have a lot to do with capturing the public's imagination about public institutions," he told the Observer. "I would like to think that the public is fascinated with our research and public service. Sometimes it is. But athletics opens doors for research partnerships -- for student internships. It gets the public to pay attention to ... your academic enterprise.

"Getting Charlotte and the Charlotte region to own this institution, I believe, will be enhanced by football."

Dubois said he's a football fan, but likes basketball more. Yet football, he said, has consumed 80 percent of his work at UNCC the past six months.

If his recommendation is approved, it will be up to Rose and her department to raise money and field a team.

"I've done my part," he said. "I have other responsibilities and I intend to get back to them."

Read the article here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/104/story/199771.html