Alumni, Students and Faculty:
I am still amazed at how small minded the ETSU community has been and continues to be. I am long removed from my days at ETSU, but some things never change. I was again saddened to learn that football had been killed once again at ETSU? I find it amazing that the university is in the midst of a $100 million althletic expansion program and these plans do not include football. ETSU is spending $8 million on a soccer stadium? Give me a break!!! The students at ETSU should be asking why are we having to pony up money for an $8 million soccer stadium! I am an alumnus of both ETSU and UT. I currently am a director with a Fortune 200 company and guess what gets brought up in board rooms during idle chit chat? College football is an all time favorite subject during these periods. Unfortunately, I can now never refer to ETSU and my days there because there is no football team and, evidently, never will be. Football’s main benefit for any university is notoriety. Trust me, even smaller schools get talked about at the corporate level and athletic programs help in the promotion of a school and getting a school recognized as a place to find top talent. We recruit at Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Georgia Tech and Georgia Southern, to name a few. See any common themes? Georgia Southern is a peer institution to ETSU! As much as I would like to direct our recruiting staff to recruit at ETSU I can not based on the decsion making made evident by the recent “NO” vote on football and the $100 million ear marked for soccer, softball, etc. Students, I wish you well in your future job search. You are going to need all the recognition you can muster. It is hard enough to get a well paying job from a school with little national recognition, but you have virtually assured yourself of being asked “ETS … .where is that???” and then being placed in the rejected resume pile.
Regards,
Daniel

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