Pacific's A.D. makes his pitch for football

A little over a year ago Catdomealumni.com interviewed Pacific University Athletic Director, Ken Schumann, about the possibility of the Boxer football program coming back from the dead. At the time, A.D. Schumann said the Pacific athletic department is over half way to their goal of 1.5 million dollars needed to restart the program. He also stated that while 2009 would be the most optimistic goal of football back at Pacific it would be most likely that 2010 would be the target of the University.

One year later and A.D. Schumann made his pitch to Pacific's "College of Arts and Sciences faculty". As reported by Pacific’s student newspaper, The Pacific Index, A.D. Schumann presented a 5-page document that contains the proposal to bring back football.

From the Pacific Index: “The five-page document points to two main reasons why the football program should return to Pacific: the university needs some modest growth to keep our budget afloat, and football would bring the male/female proportion closer to even (it currently sits at 66 percent female, 34 percent male).”

Below is a link to the proposal from the athletic department (as well as projected numbers) that the faculty will vote to either allow the department to continue working towards securing the funds needed to green light the program or will vote to kill the movement. As of now that 1.5 million dollar figure has not been reached and the shortfall of dollars was not provided.

While the Football Revenue & Expense Template was interesting to review (The travel figure of $50-$64K looks really low unless Pacific is not planning on flying down to Menlo) but the real fun is in the questions section that have been asked by faculty where A.D. Schumann has to talk realllllly slow to the faculty members that think if Pacific brings football back that the campus is going to be overrun by a bunch of 300 pound plus thugs who are not smart enough to even be accepted by Western Oregon’s fast food style admissions department.

This is a true gem:

Question: “Football players are unhealthy because of their size; the sport is rife with 300 pound lineman.”

Answer: “While that might be true for Division I and II, it is not true for Division III. Of the 623 players in our conference (NWC), only 14 (2%) weigh from the high 290’s into the 300’s. Northwest Conference linemen (typically about 28% of a roster) average about 250 pounds.”

So all 14 of you FAT BLOATED linemen in our conference might want to mix in a salad and drop some LBs so you don’t go around scaring the Pacific faculty and help swing a few “no” votes to “yes”.

In all seriousness, I’m really pulling for this to happen and to bring the total number of NWC football playing members to 8, or we can keep it at 7 and just tell Menlo to go pound sand as an independent member again.

Here are the links:
Red and Purple Interview: Pacific A.D. Ken Schumann
The Pacific Index “University entertains football proposal”
Support for Starting a Football Program at Pacific University (Proposal)
Projected cost and revenue breakdown