By Hayden Carter
Staff Writer
“There’s nothing to do on campus” is a phrase uttered numerous times by students attending California State University, Bakersfield. Although that statement is not entirely true, the CSUB campus does lack a sense of community.
There are multiple athletic teams on campus that garner a lot of attention from the media and public, but imagine the whole city of Bakersfield shutting down and flocking to campus for the ‘Runner football game every Saturday afternoon.
And when I say the whole city, I literally mean the whole city.
At Bakersfield College’s Memorial Stadium, over 16,000 people attended the California Community College Athletic Association state title game between BC and City College of San Francisco. And that was for a junior college game.
Think about how many people would come to see Fresno State take on CSUB in Bakersfield. Businesses would close for the day and friends and families would spend the day tailgating in the parking lots before the ‘Runners battle the Bulldogs. It’d be an all day social gathering for the entire valley population. That single game could easily attract 20,000 people to the CSUB campus.
There’s a perfect location for this stadium, too. The dirt field between Camino Media and the baseball stadium could allow for a decent sized football stadium to be built.
Plus, the parking lots off Roadrunner Way and in front of the old dorms are walking distances from the proposed location, so no new lots need to be constructed.
So, all of this sounds wonderful and CSUB should definitely create a football program here, right? Well, let’s realistically assess this football idea.
First, the costs to fund a football program from the ground up are enormously out of CSUB’s price range.
“The expense of having a successful football program with 85 full-scholarships is $1.7 million. And that’s an annual thing,” said interim athletics director, Kenneth “Ziggy” Siegfried. “And then you have the cost of [building] a stadium.”
Although football brings in millions of dollars for universities across the country, the sport can also be detrimental to an athletic department’s financial success.
The University of Hawaii has to cancel multiple sports teams because of its increasing financial debt. Keep in mind, Hawaii made it to the Sugar Bowl in 2008, so the money dries up fast if the team doesn’t perform.
“Right now, the NCAA has it heavily favored in the direction of the people who have the most money. So for someone like us right now to add football, the return on investment wouldn’t be very good,” said Siegfried.
CSUB is near the bottom of the financial food chain among Division I schools, so it’s hard to believe that CSUB would be able to consistently earn enough money to sustain a football program.
“We don’t have what we need to have a successful team. Successful football takes a lot of money and a bigger school,” said assistant athletics director for communications, Corey Costelloe. “I don’t think we’d be successful, we wouldn’t have the right funding and it would probably hurt way too many of our other programs that are already established.”
Budgets for existing teams at CSUB are already low as it is, so adding a sport that requires a large budget should not be a top priority.
“There are so many variables when you’re trying to add a new sport. I’m sure there are people who would love to have a men’s volleyball team and men’s water polo team,” said vice president for student affairs, Dr. Thomas Wallace. “At this point, [creating a football program] is not something that’s on the radar.”
Being a current student-athlete, I honestly wouldn’t be very happy about adding a football program. It’d be awesome to attend the games and I think it would create more school spirit throughout campus, but my own team would lose out on resources and finances given to the football team.
“Right now, our true priorities are based around student-athlete welfare,” said Siegfried. “We have to improve our locker-room situations, our sports medicine facility, strength and conditioning, and we have to finish the projects we’ve already started.”
The athletic department has to improve existing facilities before making such a drastic step like adding another sports team. The Icardo Center needs upgrading in order to attract more big-name schools and better recruits while the softball complex is in dire need of new dugouts.
In the end, it doesn’t seem likely that football will be coming to CSUB, at least in the short term.
“One of these days, having football could be a possibility,” said Siegfried. “Maybe like a 10 percent chance.”
As the wise Lloyd Christmas once eloquently said, “So you’re saying there is a chance?”