The Weber State University Board of Trustees voted Friday afternoon to continue the football program at the school.
The vote came after nearly a month of study by a variety of people at the university and an aggressive campaign by football coaches, players and others to keep the program alive.WSU president Paul Thompson recommended to the board to continue the program after the school's athletic board unanimously voted Wednesday to keep football afloat. The Board of Trustees agreed with Thompson's recommendation with a unanimous voice vote.
Thompson's recommendation was as follows:
"Based on input from a broad range of constituents, I recommend that Weber State University continue to play football. The university should identify a reasonable level of institutional sudsidy for football and challenge the community to generate the additional resources needed to suport the program."
Thompson's original statement recommended playing football for next year, but was amended by the board to delete the words "next year" to show more confidence in the program for coaches and future players.
However, Thompson identified four problems that will have to be addressed by the school's Strategic Planning Task Force during the next few months in order to keep funding the Wildcat football program beyond next year.
The four problems are 1) WSU's discretionary dollars are decreasing; 2) Regents and taxpayers demand that state dollars going to athletics be reduced; 3) Gender equity (Title IX) requires an equalization of support between men's and women's programs; and 4) Athletic facility maintenance can no longer be deferred.
Thompson said the football program has been running a deficit of around $900,000 a year since he became president three years ago (and similar amounts in previous years). He said, in retrospect, he should have addressed the issue before last month.
"We've delayed it for three years, but finally we could wait no longer," said Thompson. "It's been painful for the players and coaches, but unfortunately there is no good time (to address the problem)."
Coach Dave Arslanian spoke to the board before the vote and after the positive vote he called it "one more victory under our belt."
"It's been an interesting three weeks," said Arslanian. "There are still a lot of questions to be resolved, but at least we have a mandate that says Weber State will play football. Now we need to make sure the commitment we receive from the community will be long term."
Arslanian, who has been out beating the bushes with his staff and players for the past three weeks, said he has a long term plan to contribute $500,000 annually to the football program.
"It will come in a variety of ways," he said. "We've already sold three times as many season tickets (2,500) and have a promotion that will generate another 2,500 to 3,000. Before we're through we should have close to 6,000 to 7,000 season tickets which is twice as many as we've ever had before."
Two other sources, according to Arslanian, are increased student fees, which the majority of students favor according to surveys and larger guarantees for road football games.
Athletic director Tom Stewart said Weber State is trying to schedule some big-name schools to generate more money.
"It's a tradeoff, because we need to make more money to survive, but it could cost us in the win-loss department," said Stewart. "But it's getting harder and harder to get big-game guarantees.
"I'm happy it's behind us," continued Stewart. "I'm looking forward to moving on and raising money for the athletic department."
Arslanian said he found "an unbelievable amount of support in the community," during his campaign to save Wildcat football. But he knows that the support needs to be shown on a long term basis.
"We don't want to be back at this table again next year," he said.