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Sports blog post: Oakland deserves NCAA Football

The Oakland University campus becomes a ghost town when students make their weekly commute to other universities for sporting events on the weekends. Since freshman year I’ve noticed people talking about going to Michigan State, Central Michigan or University of Michigan tailgates. Some people would even go as far as Grand Valley State, a Division II school, for the football tailgates.

The problem isn’t that Oakland lacks a football team, it’s that we don’t have a NCAA football team.

The undefeated underdogs

Since 2013 Oakland University has had an official club football team that is recognized as a student organization. It has a pretty good support system, with loyal fans showing up to the games even though the team doesn’t have a spot on campus to play. All home games are hosted at the Auburn Hills Civic Center across from campus. I’ve found the stadium to be almost full for the handful number of games that I have attended the games there.

For homecoming events this year, Oakland University hosted a tailgate for the men’s and women’s soccer games, which took place on campus. Across the street, the club football team members put on their helmets and defeated MSU’s club football team 35-0 but more people attended on-campus events than the football game. I understand that not everybody cares for sports. I understand that we’re a commuter school and that’s why a lot of people can’t attend weekend events. But at least for homecoming, when thousands of alumni come back to campus, the school could have let the club football team play on campus or at least scheduled events so they don’t overlap with the NCAA sports.

 

As of Nov. 16, the team has outscored their opponents 139-0, according to its Facebook post. The Golden Grizzlies are recognized as the Great Lakes Conference-East champions and are headed to claim the National Club Football Association championship title. This team has finished the season undefeated (7-0), but possibly more than half the students on campus are unaware of it.

The obstacles to overcome

According to a recent interview done by the Oakland Post, Director of Oakland Athletics Jeff Konya said there would be several issues with staff funding and facilities management in order to start up a football program at Oakland. Even if those are overcome, the program would still most likely have to begin with non-scholarship players. He also said that the campus community would have to support it enough so it can be “viable.”

He made it sound like it would take a miracle to start a NCAA football program.  But would it really?

If the effort was put in by the university to get alumni to donate or sponsorship from companies to start a NCAA football program, no matter what the cost is, it could be covered. What Konya said is true, we would need the campus community to show up to the events and show more support, but they need to be guided there.

Oakland struggles to get students out to the volleyball and other women’s sporting events, but those are still being funded by Athletics, so why wouldn’t football? It just seems like Athletics is more focused on trying to improve the sports that currently exist instead of daring to start something new that could fail.

I think it’s time Oakland looks at the pros instead of cons of trying to start up a new program and get together with the brightest minds in Athletics to come up with a plan. Maybe not this year or the next, but if a plan is made and pursued, it could succeed within the next decade.

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