Have you ever noticed women’s sports at PSU have a lot more variety? It isn’t your imagination. Men and women share most sports but there are a few exceptions. Women get softball, soccer, golf and volleyball. On the other hand, men get football.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love football, especially college football. I think the Vikings play an exciting brand of gridiron, and Jeld-Wen is a perfect fit for them. When a touchdown pass is brought in by the tips of a receiver’s fingers and the Viking Horde section (which is always full, even on slow days) lights up, it’s an amazing experience.
Even though Jeld-Wen feels like it was made for football, it was actually made for soccer, of course. And before that, when it was PGE Park, it was made for baseball. So I do find it a little sad, sitting in those stands, that no PSU baseball or men’s soccer team will ever set foot on that hallowed turf.
As a matter of fact, no PSU men’s soccer or baseball team will ever set foot on any turf, because there is no varsity men’s soccer or baseball. Because of football.
I’m not under any illusions about a college soccer team occupying Jeld-Wen stadium. The women’s soccer team plays at Hillsboro Stadium, and they do well there, but they never come close to filling it up, even in a championship season. The reason football gets to play in Jeld-Wen, and the reason football gets great television coverage, is money. Football is by far the largest revenue generating college sport, and that’s as true at PSU as it is at the University of Oregon.
According to the SEC, in 2010–11 PSU reported $3,329,933 in revenue from its college football program. It also reported $980,216 from men’s basketball, a little less than that from women’s basketball, and just $345,779 from every other sport at the college. I didn’t drop a digit there. Last year football brought in significantly more than every other men’s and women’s sport combined and more than ten times as much as every other sport except basketball.
I’m not advocating for punishing football for its success, I’m just not sure college football at PSU is all that successful, or even makes sense.
Montana State, one of PSU’s rival schools, took in $5,232,738 from football last year. And it operates in a much smaller media market. The state of Montana, which hosts two division I-AA college football programs that make more money than ours, has a total population of less than half of the Portland metro area’s. Do you remember when PSU signed that broadcasting deal with Root sports, and the administration said PSU would be competitive in getting our games produced because of our media market and the broadcast friendly environment at Jeld-Wen? Well, we’re actually only going to get one game on cable next year, unlike aforementioned Montana and Montana State, who’re getting a whopping 13 games produced next year. To be fair, Montana is called the “big sky state,” and we play in the Big Sky Conference, so I guess that follows some kind of twisted logic.
The thing is, even if football makes money, PSU athletics still isn’t profitable. And your student fees help pay for it, so shouldn’t PSU athletics reflect the student body’s interests? Do we really need to spend more than a $115,000 a year in recruiting costs to woo players like junior running back DJ Adams away from the University of Maryland to play football for us, when we have the talent to make a varsity soccer team right here?
Does the largest university in Soccer City, U.S.A really demand a Division I-AA college football team? More students run around on campus in Beavers and Ducks gear anyway. I’ve heard complaints from people passionate about baseball and soccer that the problem is Title IX, which mandates that if PSU wanted to expand to include a men’s soccer or baseball or lacrosse team, it would also need to find an equally sized varsity women’s sport. But I wouldn’t blame Title IX. I’m not even convinced that, given the opportunity to spend its money wherever it wanted, PSU athletics would use it to expand the opportunities here. It might just sink more into King Football.