Division I-A Status and Fundraising

The Division of Athletics argues that Division I-A status is essential to the university's fundraising efforts.  But there appears to be no truth whatsoever in this argument.

Cal State Long Beach did the rational thing and got rid of its football program in 1991, during the last state budget crisis.  However, during 2002/2003, Cal State Long Beach raised $30 million in contributions, while SJSU raised $12 million, less than half of this amount (California State University 2002).  Similarly, San Francisco State, Northridge and Los Angeles are all campuses of roughly the same size as SJSU.  None of them has a Division I-A football team, yet all of them raise substantially more money than SJSU does.  Similarly, Santa Clara University dropped its football program a decade ago and has seen an increase in donations both to the university in general and to athletics in particular (Emmons 2002). 

The administration�s argument that football leads to better financial support from our alumni and the community is simply false.