W-S Journal - UNCC graduate wants some football

Since most of us don’t get the Winston-Salem Journal, this came out in of the local sections today. Big thanks to Jimmy getting this in there. For those that aren’t aware, this is Jimmy’s home turf.

I hope it’s OK to post the article, but it’s a register site. It’s a decent sized article, so here goes:

[URL=http://www.journalnow.com/scripts/isapi_srun.dll/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149190722018&DPL=JvsIDSP7Dg0m5hcQJfsKFjvlCA0l4zs%3d&tacodalogin=yes][U]UNCC graduate wants some football[/U][/URL]

[QUOTE]UNCC graduate wants some football
He’s beating the drum for program

By Marc Pruitt
SPECIAL TO THE CLEMMONS JOURNAL
Something about college football season just hasn’t felt right to Jim Duncan for the last 15 years.

Duncan is a 1991 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a loan officer at American South Lending in Clemmons. He finds himself rooting for Wake Forest and Marshall on Saturdays because his alma mater doesn’t have a football program.

Duncan said he is on a mission to do something about it.

Duncan is leading an effort to start a football team at UNCC and has taken to grass-roots marketing techniques to support the initiative.

The idea began on the school’s Internet message board, ninernation.net, back in April as a type of online petition to gauge interest. The subject garnered more than 600 responses from current students and alumni who were interested in helping bring football to the school.

He sent an e-mail to the head of the university’s athletic foundation, who forwarded the e-mail to Darrin Spease, the school’s associate athletics director. He got a reply in the form of a four-page outline that gave him a plan of attack.

“I kept hearing that the only way something like this would happen is if the alumni and students demanded it,” Duncan said. “The idea has been tossed around before by some alumni, but not much has ever been done about it. We are aiming to change that.”

Duncan used this initial correspondence on the message board to begin a list of those willing to help coordinate the effort, donate money for start-up costs and gauge interest in season-ticket sales, as well as yearly contributions to keep the program going.

He has called faculty members, athletic administrators and school officials to get a feel for what the support would be for a program internally. He said he sent an e-mail to the faculty outlining his plans, and received positive feedback in a 2-to1 ratio.

Duncan said he has researched the roadblocks he perceives would come up along the way, including speaking with officials with the Carolina Panthers about the possible use of Bank of America Stadium for home games until a stadium for UNC Charlotte could be paid for and built.

Duncan called officials at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., which has recently added a football team, to learn some specifics on how they went about getting started. He said that ODU is comparable to UNC Charlotte in terms of size and is among the most recent universities to add football to its interscholastic athletics programs.

ODU will begin football in 2009, and Duncan thinks that the 49er’s can have a program in place by 2010.

He joined with Eric Vernon, a 2004 graduate of the school, to begin the “Charlotte 49er Football Initiative,” or “CFI” for short, and they have a Web site, Charlotte49erfootball.com, to go along with it, as well as a mission statement for the organization.

The group had 15 members attend each of their first two meetings, and four different committees were formed with a chairperson for each. The group also has a student arm to it, and plans to sell T-shirts and other novelty items at basketball games and around campus to help spread the news.

The group has gotten financial commitments in the amount of $221,545 in start-up pledges, $105,445 in yearly sustaining pledges, as well as a commitment for 760 season tickets to be sold if the program gets off the ground.

Athletics officials have estimated that having a football program would cost a minimum of $7 million, and that doesn’t include any money for building a stadium.

“What we have is a beginning,” Duncan said. “We just want to show the administration that there is a high level of interest.”

“We’ve always had a fairly successful basketball team,” said Duncan, who has owned 49er season tickers since he graduated. “I love basketball, and I’m probably a bigger fan of basketball, but I’ve been to my share of football games, and football games are events. You can only have five to six each year,”

Duncan said that a football team would bring alumni back to the campus.

“You can walk around campus now and some students have college shirts with different teams on them,” he said. “I think having football would create a new level of allegiance for them as well.”

For Duncan, that allegiance would be emblazoned in green and white.
[/QUOTE]

Good work!

Eventually there’s going to be an article with a full page picture of all of us standing on the new football field. I know you can picture it.

Hell maybe we’ll get on tv someday :shades:

Sweet… Great exposure…

must point out the best part however… the student arm

Great job Jimmy. That’s not bad for the paper that still refuses to call us “Charlotte”.

[QUOTE=Over40NINER;189272]Great job Jimmy. That’s not bad for the paper that still refuses to call us “Charlotte”.[/QUOTE]
I’m surprised the paper didn’t rename CFI --> UNCCFI

When I first saw the title of this thread I thought W-S Journal was the Wall Street Journal.

haha.

We should get a copy of it and put it on the Chancellor’s front door steps.

It makes me think that it would be valuable to have some CFI members in the Triangle - and for them to court their own articles in the N&O and Durham Herald-Sun. There are UNCC grads everywhere - and there’s A LOT of money waiting to be pledged in the Triangle.

I also thought it was the Wall Street Journal at first glance and was about to lose control of my bodily functions…

Regardless, that’s a great article and great exposure. Good job to Jimmy and everyone involved.

By the way, I submitted a request to the folks at Charlotte’s public relations & marketing department at: mailto:pubinfo@email.uncc.edu
when the last article ran in the Charlotte Observer.

They have a section ([URL=http://www.publicrelations.uncc.edu/default.asp?id=24]http://www.publicrelations.uncc.edu/default.asp?id=24[/URL]) where they post all of the articles different media have written and published about UNC Charlotte.

I requested they also put this football article on the site (they literally have EVERY article ever written about the university on there). Not surprisingly, I never even got a response. :hammer:

I assume they don’t want to rock the boat… would be nice, however, if someone over there grew a pair. How cool would it be to have a football article posted on the university’s own website??? :shades:

i am attempting to get something in the Hickory Daily Record, not quite winston but its something.

It makes me think that it would be valuable to have some CFI members in the Triangle - and for them to court their own articles in the N&O and Durham Herald-Sun. There are UNCC grads everywhere - and there's A LOT of money waiting to be pledged in the Triangle.

That’s a good idea.

If we can coordinate this in the different cities throughout the state of North Carolina, the more exposure, the merrier.

The Triangle, Hickory, Boone, Asheville…etc…

Jim, could you advise us on how to get similar articles in other newspapers around the state?

i am attempting to get something in the Hickory Daily Record, not quite winston but its something.

Do you live in Hickory?