A decision made months ago by East Tennessee State University President Dr. Paul E. Stanton Jr. reached its climax Saturday when the Buccaneers played their final football game in the Mini-Dome.
Stanton said that the decision to eliminate Buc football was a decision that was never taken lightly.
“It’s the most difficult decision I have ever made in my entire academic career,” he said.
The decision to make this ETSU’s last football season was actually a consideration for five years and should not have been a complete surprise to many, Stanton said.
In 1999, he created a 30-member task force to take a careful look at athletics and decide what must be done. The football program costs $1.5 million each year, and Stanton said that ETSU loses $1.1 million of that amount.
ETSU spends $800,000 each year in football scholarships. Stanton’s task force came to the conclusion that ETSU had few options concerning the program’s future.
The program could either find new $800,000 funding, have non-scholarship players or simply eliminate the program all together.
He said that efforts were made to raise the additional $800,000, but only $27,000 was raised.
“Despite a lot of good efforts by a lot of good people, it just wasn’t coming in,” he said.
Stanton said that coaches and those in the athletic department knew that there has been a possibility that the football program would be cut long before the final decision was made.
“The people who should have been paying attention just didn’t take it seriously,” he said.
He said that the fact that no state money or previous student money was available to support athletics was the final blow that caused the program’s demise.
“It’s just a lot of things coming together,” he said.
Stanton said that he has received a lot of support from alumni and members of the community. Eighty percent of the letters he has received have been positive, despite the negative publicity that the decision has received. He said that although no one is excited about the end of Buc football, many say they understand the reasoning.
He said that he has been asked if he wants the ending of the football program to be the legacy that he leaves behind at ETSU. However, he feels that considering the circumstances of the situation, it is not necessarily a bad thing.
“If my legacy is I made a good decision in eliminating football, that’s a good legacy,” he said.
The eventuality of football coming back to ETSU does not look promising, Stanton said. Even if money could be raised for the next year or two, things would still not be secure for the future.
“Every year, these players and coaches would see this axe hanging over their heads,” he said.
Concerning current football players on scholarships and coaches under contract, Stanton said that he feels they will be taken care of in the future.
The players’ scholarships will last through the end of the current school year, so they will be covered until May. The coaches’ contracts will last through June.
Stanton feels that many will move to other schools and other football programs and be wherever they need to be by January.
For those students left behind that do not transfer and lose their scholarships, Stanton said that ETSU will work with them to help with the financial hardship.
Many have wondered what Stanton’s platform is concerning the loss of the football team, since his critics say that he single-handedly axed the program.
Stanton said that despite these views, he is just as saddened as anyone else about the loss. He said that he is always with the team on the sidelines before the start of each game. In 19 years at ETSU, he said he has never missed a home football game.
“I don’t know what I am going to do on a Saturday afternoon either,” he said.

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