2015 Football

[PantherU]

Some background: The NCFA (National Club Football Association) organizes college club football. It's relatively new, as 2015 is its sixth year in existence. It's not as strong as, say the ACHA (Club hockey, which has had multiple champions turn into NCAA D-I teams) or the MCLA (Club lacrosse, which has placed several schools in NCAA, has had its best teams beat NCAA powers such as Johns Hopkins or Duke in sanctioned regular season games, and covers the whole country whereas the NCAA only has somewhat crossed the Appalachian mountains), but it is getting stronger every year and it's growing every year as well.

The MCLA is really the model, as they've sold out the Cowboys' former and current stadium for championship games. The NCFA could find footing like that, especially if the schools like Milwaukee (big enrollment, no NCAA football) embrace the teams.

The 2014 season saw Milwaukee finish 4-3 with a 2-1 record in the Great Lakes Conference's West Division. Games outside the division don't count toward the record, so for all intents and purposes the West Division is pretty much its own conference. The Panthers shared the GLCWD with Robert Morris (Peoria), Loyola (Chicago) and SIUE (St. Louis area). This year, DePaul's club football program has joined the conference.

Schedule:

9/19 at Oakland. The season opens at the defending National Champions, ranked #1 in the preseason poll.

9/26 at George Mason. The Patriots are ranked #11 in the preseason poll.

10/3 at Wright State. WSU is #6 in the preseason poll.

10/10 vs Loyola (Homecoming)*

10/17 at UM-Flint

10/24 at Robert Morris*. RMU is #2 in the preseason poll.

10/31 vs Southern Illinois-Edwardsville*

11/7 at DePaul*

* - Denotes Great Lakes Conference - West Division game

Overall, Milwaukee is ranked #10 out of 14 ranked schools. The NCFA has 25 schools in it, so Milwaukee's #10 ranking is fairly indicative of the 4-3 record - just beyond .500.

Here's where it gets murky. The Panthers lost last year's season opener at Oakland, the eventual undefeated national champion, by ONE point (27-26 in Rochester, MI). They lost a home game to last year's runner-up, Robert Morris, by a touchdown at Shorewood Stadium.

All in all, the Panthers lost two games by a total of eight points to the best two teams in club football. It's a fair bet to say the Panthers are ranked low, when a swing of ten points would have put them at 6-1 and in the National Championship game.

The third loss came to Ohio State (yeah, they have a club team) by three points in Columbus.

The Panthers had four All-Americans last year, but only two of them - quarterback Sam Clark and offensive tackle Nick Lenski - were seniors.

And for the first time in the club football team's history, the head coach - Dave Mogensen - spent a full year recruiting. Yup, the football team recruits. And they've got a full stable of players who were recruited to play football. Some of them are players who fell out of NCAA Division I programs. Some of them never got recruited by NCAA schools. Some of them, believe it or not, picked playing club football for Milwaukee over offers to play for D-III schools in the WIAC.

I'm a big fan of football. It may get buried because not everyone reads the volleyball thread, but I'll share my thoughts on the sport here as well in the next comment.

[PantherU]

Aug 31, 2015 15:49:24 GMT -6 PantherU said:

Always a solid student crowd on move-in weekend, whether it's volleyball or soccer. They can't wait to be college students.

We've done a piss-poor job of grabbing hold of that excitement and carrying it over to basketball season. Normally this would be held by football, but I'm not a billionaire yet so we can't get scholarship football.

I honestly believe football should be a part of our plans, but only in one of two cost-effective ways. One way is to keep the current club football program, elevate them to "Varsity Club" status, give them space on the athletics website and assign them an intern from SID to "cover" the team. Danny Zielinski would be perfect for it. Allow them to use university marks for their unis (although I'd prefer to keep Illwauk's Panther M) and give them some space to market their team's games.

The other option is to fund the team as a Division I Pioneer League team. That conference doesn't allow scholarships, and plays its own bowl separate from the rest of I-AA at the end of the year. They technically get a bid to the NCAA Tournament, but they always abstain from the tournament. You could resume the rivalry with Butler while also playing relatively close conference games against rivals Valpo, Drake, Dayton and Morehead State. Other teams are Jacksonville, Campbell, Stetson, San Diego, Marist and Davidson. It's a fun league and while no one would confuse the team with the Badgers, they are a legitimate NCAA Division I football program. The operating expenses for all these teams are under $1 million per year and since there's no scholarships, you can count those 85 players' tuition as straight-up profit for having the team (not to mention those students you get to come to be in the marching band) since the university wouldn't otherwise have these students (assuming they'd go to D-II, D-III, or other Pioneer League schools that have the sport).

That's about $800k per year alone from tuition and fees. To reach $1 million in income, say you'd need 200,000 bucks to come out of ticket sales alone. At eight games a year, you'd need to get 2,500 paying fans per game at $10 a pop. Does anyone think even a non-scholarship football team couldn't do that? Valpo does that and there's something like 400 people in their metro area. The team's already profitable and you haven't even figured in concessions sales or corporate sponsorships or added donations to the school (there would be plenty).

That $800k per year number from tuition is counting it as if you will only take in athletes from Wisconsin. Valparaiso had 70 players on its team last year come from out-of-state. Since Valpo is in a state with plenty of D-I teams, let's say Milwaukee gets 35 of its 85 players from Wisconsin (roughly the same as UW). Using the Fall 2015 tuition and fees schedule, a Milwaukee team with 35 of 85 players in-state would raise $330,019.20 from the in-state players and a whopping $980,148 from the out-of-state players for a grand total of $1,310,167.20 just from tuition alone. We're not even talking room and board, which will be a big help considering UWM is still considering adding to its on-campus housing.

Is there any wonder why schools with multiples of our tuition play non-scholarship football? At Valpo, where tuition alone is 35k per year, they're getting nearly $3 million per year from tuition alone. That team is profitable before they snap the ball. Even we would be close to that immediately.

More than anything, a Pioneer League Panthers team would cost work hours for employees. Where they'd play would be something to work on too, but for the time being Shorewood HS would be fine. Creating a true stadium out of Engelmann would create a unique college football experience while creating revenue for tailgaters in the Engelmann lot (Premium, $25 per vehicle), Cunningham lot (Gold, $15) and Sciences lot (Black, $10).

I realize this is a volleyball thread. I love volleyball, and I'll be tailgating on Thursday at the Milwaukee Cup match. But do we really believe that those sports alone can keep student fever up all the way through until basketball season? What about the people who have been crying for football forever? I still get people asking me about a potential team.

We will never play scholarship D-I football (nor should we). But Pioneer League football is attainable and would give us something the school across town doesn't have at a fraction of the price. Valpo turns a profit and they're putrid.

Let's do it. I mean, why the hell not? You can turn a profit tripping over yourself.