S M U Athletics Losing Millions !

[Go_UTA]

---On the surface this is likely very true.....BUT.... college athletics also causes people to contribute back to their schools in many other departments. This just can't be truely evaluated. Check out our donations to any department and then compare them with UT or A&M or other school our size with a high-profile athletic program.. Athletics is also cheap advertising... UTA was identical to us in size when I was in college (about 13,000) ... they have grown very little compared to us since dropping football..... Our enrollment has increased more rapidly since going back to I-A. I also think it help graduates in getting jobs as well when people have actually heard of the college.

I'll agree that your enrollment has grown larger than ours, but you are making a huge leap in trying to infer football as the cause or even a contributing cause. You can say that, but you have no evidence. And, there is simply a staggering amount of other factors that add-up to student population growth, e.g., demographic changes, transportation changes, desire to grow, popularity of degree offerings, good or bad leadership, recruitment efforts, etc. It is my belief that f-ball has had little effect on our enrollment one way or the other. Just to make some broad strokes: 1) enrollment continued to climb after f-ball was gone, 2) enrollment took a dip in the 1990s that was concurrent with a disastrous presidential administration (moral plunged, faculty was in revolt, many bad headlines and articles...was finally forced out in disgrace...this was a period when all institutional momentum fell backward), 3) with new and competent leadership, in the early 2000s we were again the fastest growing university in the state, 4) enrollment growth slowed in the middle of this decade, but it was planned as a step to increase the quality of the student body (by increasing both freshman entrance requirements and transfer student requirements).