kchats
07-02-2006, 07:25 PM
http://www.cjonline.com/stories/070206/kca_shocker.shtml
Wichita State football is a hot-stove topic, and, every now and then, talk simmers about reviving the program. It happened in 1998, when a WSU committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of reinstatement, and it's happening now that Wichita's mayor, Carlos Mayans, came out in favor of using city tax money to help fund a program that once swam in the red.
The mayor attributes at least part of enrollment declines at WSU -- and it's down almost 3,000 since 1987 -- to the absence of football and the pride and diversity it engenders. He says the city has suffered to the tune of $144 million.
Honestly, football might have been affordable had the program pulled back to the Division I-AA level, but that received little consideration, mostly because Warren Armstrong, the university president, wanted no part of it."His point," Weiser said. "was 'If we can't fly first-class, I don't want to fly at all.'"
"I don't know if the city would accept the so-called stigma of being I-AA," he said. "They like to be on the same level as KU and K-State."
If that's the case, football will never succeed at Wichita State.
Scholarship limits have made Division I-A football more competitive than ever, but WSU is years from being big-time.
Wichita State football is a hot-stove topic, and, every now and then, talk simmers about reviving the program. It happened in 1998, when a WSU committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of reinstatement, and it's happening now that Wichita's mayor, Carlos Mayans, came out in favor of using city tax money to help fund a program that once swam in the red.
The mayor attributes at least part of enrollment declines at WSU -- and it's down almost 3,000 since 1987 -- to the absence of football and the pride and diversity it engenders. He says the city has suffered to the tune of $144 million.
Honestly, football might have been affordable had the program pulled back to the Division I-AA level, but that received little consideration, mostly because Warren Armstrong, the university president, wanted no part of it."His point," Weiser said. "was 'If we can't fly first-class, I don't want to fly at all.'"
"I don't know if the city would accept the so-called stigma of being I-AA," he said. "They like to be on the same level as KU and K-State."
If that's the case, football will never succeed at Wichita State.
Scholarship limits have made Division I-A football more competitive than ever, but WSU is years from being big-time.