Since most of us donât 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 arenât aware, this is Jimmyâs home turf.
I hope itâs OK to post the article, but itâs a register site. Itâs 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
Heâs beating the drum for program
By Marc Pruitt
SPECIAL TO THE CLEMMONS JOURNAL
Something about college football season just hasnât 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 doesnât 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 schoolâs 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 universityâs athletic foundation, who forwarded the e-mail to Darrin Spease, the schoolâs associate athletics director. He got a reply in the form of a four-page outline that gave him a plan of attack.
âI kept hearing that the only way something like this would happen is if the alumni and students demanded it,â Duncan said. âThe idea has been tossed around before by some alumni, but not much has ever been done about it. We are aiming to change that.â
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 49erâs can have a program in place by 2010.
He joined with Eric Vernon, a 2004 graduate of the school, to begin the âCharlotte 49er Football Initiative,â or âCFIâ 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 doesnât include any money for building a stadium.
âWhat we have is a beginning,â Duncan said. âWe just want to show the administration that there is a high level of interest.â
âWeâve always had a fairly successful basketball team,â said Duncan, who has owned 49er season tickers since he graduated. âI love basketball, and Iâm probably a bigger fan of basketball, but Iâve been to my share of football games, and football games are events. You can only have five to six each year,â
Duncan said that a football team would bring alumni back to the campus.
âYou can walk around campus now and some students have college shirts with different teams on them,â he said. âI think having football would create a new level of allegiance for them as well.â
For Duncan, that allegiance would be emblazoned in green and white.
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