VCU Football Pro's or Con's

Collected Arguments:

1. Expanding on any of our academic programs to the same extent as a football team's start up costs would produce the prestige (and alumni donations) that the online survey hints at.

---Academic programs or even infrastructure projects: Pedestrian bridges, cycle commuter programs, extended art galleries, additional bus routes, updating older buildings, a larger recycling program, solar panels, doubling the size of the library media collections and making more text books available with longer borrowing durations, university based think tanks, expanding the community relationship of VCU's non-profit factions.---


2. A large up-front cost, a recession, and the real possibility of encompassing debt?

---How long can we support a football program before (if) it becomes successful? Recruitment, personnel, equipment, a stadium and all of the associated upkeep; it could be several years before a budding football program, overshadowed by, and in logistical competition with, other VA universities, would produce a profit along the same lines.---


3. Growing the athletic programs that we already have.

---If we were comfortable suggesting additional student activity fees for a non-existent football program, why not do the same and expand support for one of our already existing sports programs instead? We already have the framework of these "other" athletic programs to assign growth and a building on a successful soccer team or football team would also produce the "prestige" and "alumni donations" that accompanies success. ---


4. Priorities

---If the goal was simply to build a recreational football team, a successful fundraiser event would have our costs met in one semester. Goal accomplished. Building a revenue producing athletic program is a completely different business venture. Is revenue the goal? Is VCU even a "sports" school?---


5. Where would the stadium be?

---Good luck parking.---