FGCU Athletics, what could be?

If someone said to you “Florida Gulf Coast University doesn’t have school spirit”. As a student at FGCU what would you say? Would you try and defend the University you attended? Or would you quickly think back to the infinite amount of University of Florida shirts people wear on campus? How about all those fans of the University of Miami attending our school during the week and attending the games on Saturdays? No? Not convinced?

I’m bombarded with Big 12 schools, Big 10 schools and once I even saw a Mount Union College (Div 3) shirt. If there was one correlation between all the schools and conferences I named what do you think it could be? The presence of a football program? Nationally televised games? How about the poor effort FGCU does at marketing and communicating to the student body when athletic events are taking place?

Not convinced yet? How about if the sale of alcohol was allowed at games? Would you go then? The main problem as I see it is the student population at Florida Gulf Coast University has ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in attending any type of event if it’s not a shit show. Meaning booze of any kind has to be involved. Hey, its college what do you expect?

I want to make it clear that the venue is NOT the problem. Alico Arena, Swanson Stadium, and the Aquatics Center are top notch facilities. The problem is that the one event we need on campus to make life even better is the presence of a FGCU Football Program. I understand the road blocks but at the same time if we want to be the UCLA of the South as FGCU President Dr. Bradshaw envisions the school we desperately need a football program.

Ok, let’s get to the nitty and gritty. The cost of starting up a football program has been estimated to be within the range of $50 to $70 million. That isn’t including the cost of land to build a stadium. To be in the safe range I would say it could cost another $20 million for land costs. So about $90 million dollars…

Let’s get to the unnecessary spending that FGCU does with our tuition dollars. They spent $14 million dollars for the solar panel field we built during the summer. It will only generate 85% of THREE total buildings at our university. Let me repeat that, ONLY 85% OF THREE BUILDINGS (Holmes Hall, Lutgert Hall, and AB7).

I feel embarrassed to know where my money is going, where your money is going and where future generations of FGCU student’s money will be going.

Back to my point about how to make our school the UCLA of the South and to get students to attend athletic events, simply start a football program, we do have the money. We have a student population willing to attend football games and once they begin to attend the football games they will go to basketball, soccer, baseball, etc. Just look at how other schools have progressed within a short amount of time. UCF, USF, FIU, hell even Bethune Cookman College in Daytona Beach has a football program (even if they share a stadium with Mainland High School).

We need to think outside the box, there are a lot of star athletes coming out of this area and we could easily have top recruits if we were even an option.

President Bradshaw, if you EVER read this understand your legacy at FGCU would be much greatly if you were the man to help put in place a Football Program.