Vanguard

Issue date: 11/5/07 Section: News

The petition drive and overall effort to bring NCAA Football to the University of South Alabama's campus has caused a group of students to voice opinions against the establishment of a team. From a few refusals to sign the NCAA petition to a new Facebook group created by USA student Justine Cauley, these students are committed to raising awareness about why they think NCAA Football at USA would be bad. The Facebook group, Students against NCAA Football at South Alabama, has close to 100 members as of last Sunday.
One of the major arguments the group makes is that since South Alabama is a commuter campus, the majority of students would not support the program. Around 18 percent of the student population at USA lives on campus.
The description of the Facebook group says, "The majority of the student population would never attend a game or support it. We are a commuter college, most of the population isn't stuck on campus .... Student involvement will always be less. Most students are not going to bother driving back out for a game after they are done with classes for the day. How many students actually attend our baseball and basketball games? .... Why would football be any different?"
Another qualm the group against South Alabama NCAA Football has voiced is the community's allegiance to other Alabama teams, such as the University of Alabama or Auburn University. The argument contests that the community will not advocate a team for South Alabama at the expense of their loyalty to other colleges.
"Mobile is not going to abandon their favorite college teams to support USA," the Facebook description states.
The most fervent argument from the group concerns capital for the team and how the University plans to raise the funds, stating that $150 for a team is unfair to the students who do not want football, and 2,000 signatures does not represent the 14,000 students on campus.
"You're siphoning money away from everybody to pay for a few people to run around and play ball," said Jeffrey Harris, a USA student who opposes the NCAA petition. "It won't pay for itself, so you're paying for this useless toy out of the pockets of people that are here for academia in perpetuity."
"The plan for it is not just in that it forces all people, even those who would never go to a game, to pay for the team, instead of simply charging the people who actually attend the games," said Matthew Peterson, a leader for the movement against NCAA Football. "Additionally, while it may be good to have students who would like to see a program implemented, it simply doesn't translate into people who would go to the games." Peterson asked, "Does it have financial support? Why not raise money to form this team instead of getting other people to pay for it?"

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