End Of Football At Hofstra
Written by Chriso, Friday December 04 2009
Disclaimer: I am not going to pretend for a minute that I ever watched a minute of Hofstra football.
However, I found the announcement by Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz noteworthy as Hofstra became the second division 1-AA to discontinue their football team over the past 10 days. The first was Northeastern.
Now Northeastern I do know something about. I spent a bit of time there as an undergrad some 20 years ago. At the time, Northeastern was more of a commuter school, and their school year was divided into trimesters, not semesters. This meant that if you transferred out (which I eventually did) 3 NU credits equalled 2 credits at another college.
Hofstra and Northeastern are both in the CAA. On sports radio in Hampton Roads, Virgina, host Tony Mercurio is suggesting that the CAA get rid of Hofstra and Northeastern. They were added to the conference to improve the CAA as a football conference. Now their football programs are gone, Mercurio was suggesting the schools should follow. Some reports say that Hofstra wants out of the CAA anyway. Mercurio also questioned why Northeastern was added. He suggested that the other schools were told that Boston was a major market and it would help the conference.
The problem with that logic is that Boston is a pro sports town. Any interest in college sports usually goes to Boston College. Northeastern does well in Hockey, but in Boston, for college hockey fans, Boston University is number one and BC again is more popular than NU. In Boston, there is "the beanpot" tournament every February with BC, BU, NU, and Harvard. NU has not won this tournament since 1988, the longest streak without a title.
NU has changed since I was there, many dorms have been added but the campus still has an urban feel and the football stadium was in a remote location. NU sports did produce former Celtic Reggie Lewis, but otherwise, NU sports does not bring much attention to the Boston sports scene. NU covered the announcement about the end of their program on their website.
Another aspect of this story that I thought was interesting to me is the question if these two decisions are isolated, or if there will be other Division 1 AA teams to follow? Or will this be something that extends into other sports? In tough economic times, can teams survive? When expenses for running a program rise and there is declining interest and income, what other teams will meet their demise?
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