Saturday, Sep. 05, 2009

More colleges add football

By Eric Degerman, sportstricities.com

This isn't the best economic climate for colleges to go adding cash-guzzling varsity football, and Thursday night wasn't the best advertisement for the sport.

First, there was the sloppy second-half play by victorious Boise State.

And then, of course, there were the notorious actions of the University of Nike's LeGarrette Blount. Guess it's safe to drop him from my watch list of Pac-10 fantasy football stars, unless they suddenly add PIMs as a scoring category.

Earlier in the week, though, the National Football Foundation pointed out there are five new college football teams this season. There are 12 more schools gearing up to launch their varsity programs from 2010 to 2013.

Archie Manning, yes, the dad of Peyton and Eli, serves as the NFF chairman. He said in a news release, "With more than one million high school football participants and only 66,000 playing college football, it makes sense that colleges would want to give high school players more options for playing at the next level."

So in 2013 — unless the economy continues to slide — there will be 742 four-year institutions playing varsity football.

The current divisional breakdown includes: 120 Division I Football Bowl Subdivision programs; 126 Division I Football Championship Subdivision programs; 149 Division II programs; 238 Division III programs; and 92 NAIA programs.

Old Dominion — an early power in women's college basketball — is the biggest name to take the gridiron this year.

Next year, Georgia State will join Old Dominion in the Colonial Athletic Association. ESPN The Magazine is following that startup because the highly respected Bill Curry is Georgia State's head coach.

The list also includes South Alabama, Lamar, UNC-Charlotte and Pacific University.

The Forest Grove, Ore., school will play NCAA Division III and compete in the Northwest Conference, joining Lewis & Clark, Linfield, affiliate member Menlo (Calif.), PLU, Puget Sound, Whitworth and Willamette. Neither Whitman in Walla Walla nor George Fox play football.

Pacific has a built-in football rival in nearby Linfield, but Pacific will be the nail vs. the hammer in that series.

If you a riding in a car, don't look at the Pacific helmet. It gave me vertigo. And the school's mascot — Boxer — might be the most confusing in the Northwest. It's a statue that's blends dog and dragon. What?!!

One wonders how these schools can justify adding football right now when institutions such as Western Washington University dropped the sport earlier this year.