The vast majority of all universities in the CSU thrive
without Division 1-A status. Of
the 22 other campuses, only Fresno and San Diego retain Division I-A status
and field football teams. Furthermore,
these teams are mixed in their success. �While
Fresno State has become a proven winner and box-office favorite, San Diego
State is struggling like San Jose� (Almond 2002).
Put another way, only 1 of the 23 CSU campuses fields a successful
football team. Tellingly, even Fresno recently reduced the size
of its athletics program in order to save money (____).
SJSU should not blindly follow the crowd.
On the other hand, there may be lessons to be learned from our system
counterparts. There may be a good
reason why the CSU campuses have overwhelmingly come to reject Division I-A
status.
First, fan support for college football is often
determined by geography. Although
there are numerous exceptions, most of the big college football towns
are medium-sized -- neither too large nor too small.
Football institutions such as Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State,
Indiana, University of Texas, and Washington are located in moderate-sized
cities of approximately 1 million people or less.
These cities usually do not have many (if any) other major sports
teams, and therefore the universities� football games represent something of
a social high point of the year. This
helps explain why CSU Fresno is the sole successful football team in the
system. The Central Valley is growing rapidly, but it is still
relatively small. There are no
other major sporting events of the scale of CSU Fresno football.
On the other hand, universities located in major urban
areas often compete with a myriad of other sports teams, often professional
baseball, football, basketball and hockey teams.
As the �Metropolitan University of Silicon Valley,� this is the
situation SJSU finds itself in. By
all accounts, one of the reasons that SJSU�s football attendance is so low
is due to the massive competition for the sports fans� attention �
competition that includes the 49s, the Raiders, the Giants, the A�s,
Stanford, and Cal.
San Jose State�s situation is not unique.
Most of the other campuses in the CSU system are situated either in
urban areas (e.g. Fullerton, Hayward, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Northridge, San
Diego, San Francisco), or in areas so rural that they cannot achieve the
�critical mass� to achieve a successful football program (e.g. Chico,
Humboldt, Monterey Bay, Sonoma, Stanislaus).
During
the last major budget crisis facing the state of California, several CSU
campuses, including Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Fullerton, and
San Francisco State, shed their football teams and left Division I-A as
a method of cost savings. San Jose State should follow suit during the
current crisis.