Dear Editor,
Construction was underway on a soccer stadium as ETSU students voted in April on an athletic fee increase for the restoration of football. The new $8 million soccer stadium is one of the early projects in ETSU’s ambitious $100 million capital campaign for athletics, a campaign announced just 18 months after the last football game.
Supposedly, this vote was mandated by the Tennessee Board of Regents while Memphis and Middle Tennessee plan similar fee increases without a student vote. On the other hand, no student vote was required for the new soccer stadium and men’s soccer team as ETSU struggles to comply with Title IX, a key reason given for dropping football in 2003.
While ETSU has been the only regional university in Tennessee and the nation to drop football, it can embark on a $100 million athletic capital campaign that can’t afford the restoration of football without a student athletic fee increase. And soccer can have an $8 million soccer stadium under construction while football would have had to raise $15 million up-front money in order to begin a stadium if students had approved the fee increase.
Interesting, there’s a $15 million parking deck on the athletic field, $3.3 million for tennis, $4.9 million for softball and $12 million for BEST enhancement. Much of this is earmarked for minimally visible sports that are already spending more than several major universities and have little or no chance of generating revenue or fan interest.
The current student athletic fee was established soon after the elimination of football, without a student vote, and against a promise not to increase student fees for athletics.
And, students don’t seem to have any say regarding a portion of their tuition that’s going to cover the $3.9 million deficit in the athletic department’s $6.7 million annual budget, a budget that is at least as large as number of schools with NCAA FCS (I-AA) football.
ETSU’s athletic department direction for the last several years has been described as incoherent. For a 12,000 student regional university that got kicked out of the Southern Conference and landed in the dead-end conference to embark on a $100 million capital campaign for athletics without football and basketball as its centerpieces is incoherent, absurd and preposterous.
And, to add insult to injury, ETSU calls all of this “winning the right way” on “the pathway to excellence.”
Tony Dwiggins
ETSU Alumnus

Author