BREAKING NEWS . . . . NBC6 Reports that UNC-Charlotte Should Start Football in 4 Year

Sorry metro but I've been to most of the games there and we couldn't sell that place out when we were winning CUSA titles. Even the announced sell outs were 1000 short of being full.

 

Part of adding football would be to add some more women's programs (golf and either lacrosse or field hockey would be obvious choices) and that helps with your title nine issues. Football does not have a companion women's partner sport (like basketballs, soccers, baseball/softball), so you get a little leeway on that front. I believe that there are more female than male student-athletes that compete at Charlotte already, so adding a couple or three moderately-sized programs could go a long way to offsetting the numbers. These are all costs that fans don't think about when wanting football (in addition to trainers, administrative assistants, facilities/maintenance, equipment and stats people).

The A-10 dropped football as of last year (not enough teams), so the schools that are in the A-10 for other sports are spread out in a myriad of football leagues.

Do Charlotte fans really want a non-scholarship program? Would there be this much hullabaloo for a team on par with Davidson, Georgetown and San Diego? Is football worth spending all of that money to starting up for non-scholarship football? I thought all of the talk was about doing it the right way, the Charlotte way?! That does not seem to fit the ideals that were expressed with all of the efforts to raise phony moneys in ticket package promises.

Based on the time frame for starting football (and it hasn't been announced as having been approved yet, just getting over the first speed bump as a recommendation), it's so far down the road, you should wait and see where the conferences begin to align by the time the program comes along. There should be a longer term goal in place, with the assumption that you would have to start small and grow into that role. But, I don't think non-scholarship is the way to go. I think that tells the fans, "Here's your football, so go and support it or we can pull the plug on this and not lose our collective butts."

The volumes of empty seats at basketball games do not speak well to the level of support that football may or may not get. That, to me, is the troubling part of the equation. It may cost the fans in the long run, if the administration believes that support will not be there. Having a few big wigs leading the march still would not justify the start-up if the fans don't support the bigger programs that it does have (hoops, soccer and baseball). Football is a backbreaking and expensive program to even fathom to begin to start and the fans that Charlotte already does have consistently prove their wishy-washiness by not filling up the arena that they have (which is nicer than almost everyone in the A-10 and many C-USA programs).

As the old saying goes, you made your bed, now you have to lie in it.

It's early in the process, so there is a lot of speculation left to be shared.

 

The whole plan is to start small and then move up later. It'll take a while but I don't think many Niners want the program to say Div II forever. You are right about the "phony money" though. It will be very interesting to see if people put their money where their mouths are. It's easy to type a number on a website but totally different to pony up the actual cash. Like you said, it's very early but if the chancellor says "no" after all this, he may well have a small mutiney on his hands!

 

You're not joining a league to raise the profile of your basketball team, you're joining a league to help get your football program off the ground. Doing it in a conference that year in and year out competes for national titles is a good way to start. The fact that the hoops team would actually be playing against teams that people around here gave a shit about and might actually raise the Niners profile back above Davidson and Winthrop is just icing on the cake.

 

So what exactly are you going to do for the first four years of the program? Play as a I-AA independent? Or are you going to go ahead and fuck up your football program too by joining a conference that nobody around here can even name more than half the members of?

 

just without the recruiting base and winning and all that, right?

If you guys are hanging your hopes on repeating what USF did, you're as delusinal as everyone makes fun of you for being. There's no way you can recruit at the level they can. If you're lucky, Charlotte will be another UAB.

 

One thing you fail to realize is that no matter where Charlotte may want to affiliate in football, that conference has to want them in. No one is going to be knocking down the door to bring in a first-year football program. Strength of schedule is even more important in football than RPI is in basketball.

 

I suggest that y'all just pick another program to follow in the area. NCSU and ECU already take all the stupid athletes thant can't get into other schools so UNCC won't be anything like USF.

 

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo, I understand we have to start at I-AA level and then work up to I-A . . . I don't see why sometime between 2015-2020 be playing in a Div I-A conference for all sports? BIG EAST or a NEW CONFERENCE, at least when the next conference shake up takes place we will be able to step up vs. having to step down (CUSA > A10) simply because we don't have football.

 

USF doesn't = UNCC

I'm definately in agreement with that statement. USF has all of those Florida kids that didn't get looks from UF, FSU, and Miami (even ones that couldn't get in) while most of the top talent from NC, VA, SC go elsewhere. Tough sell to get major recruits to UNCC.

USF is friggin huge (has an enrollment of more than 45,000 students) so that helped finance the football program. UNCC has about 21,000. Thats a big difference when it comes to $$$ and potential fanbase.