Former football dollars help fund

The fate of college football in Johnson City could be found in the numbers. Bringing the quality of all sports up to par is the main goal for managers in the sports department.
“We had some of our programs traveling to competitions in vans and packing peanut butter sand-wiches. That is not Division I athletics,” said Barbie Breedlove, associate director of athletics at ETSU. Breedlove says getting Buccaneer sports fully accredited is something of which she is proud.
In 1997 the National Collegiate Athletic Association listed 37 discrepancies that ETSU athletics needed to address. In March of this year the NCAA made a follow-up report and found no problems.
Gender equality was one of the main compliance issues ETSU had to deal with. The proportion of men and women on campus is about 40 percent male to 60 percent female. This is the ratio administrators want to reflect in the Bucs sports program.
“There are other ways to address Title IX but the way we are doing it is effective,” said Dr. Wilsie Bishop, vice-president for administration at ETSU. “From a statistics point of view we have not seen harm,” Bishop added in regard to school enrollment after the loss of the football program.
The amount of money a university pumps into sports has to be sufficient for both men’s and women’s college athletics. Since the 1997 recommendations from the NCAA, ETSU has added women’s softball.
Now with no football, athletic dollars are being distributed among the other teams at the university. For example since 2001 the amount of money spent on the women’s programs has increased by $1.4 million. The money goes into scholarships, equipment and coaches salaries.
“Having good coaches helps recruit good players,” said Breedlove. She says coaching has been a factor in both the women’s tennis and women’s golf team gaining national rankings this season.
Bishop said she “wants what is best for ETSU.” She said the students and the community will have a big role in any decision about football and whether or not it will ever be played at ETSU again.