The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia has postponed the decision to allow Kennesaw State University to proceed with football and Title IX women’s sports programs.
The decision to approve the feasibility plan was to take place on Tuesday, Jan. 8 but has been pushed back to February. Moving the date of the vote back another month affects KSU’s proposal significantly.
By the time the next Regents meeting will take place, KSU’s student survey regarding the football team will be over two years old. An outdated survey could be disregarded by the board entirely.
“I strongly would prefer not to do a new survey.” President Papp said. “Quite frankly, I don’t think we can get it done by February.”
After a nine month long study, the KSU Football Exploratory Committee (FEC), led by legendary football Coach Vince Dooley, told KSU to move forward with plans for a football team. In October 2010, one month after the FEC approval,
KSU took a student body vote. The survey asked students if they would support a KSU football team and an overwhelming 7,000 students said yes. Of this strong 33 percent rate of approval, 55.5 percent also reported that they would support a $100 increase in tuition to support both football and women’s Title IX sports. KSU took this small victory and continued to move forward with the process of obtaining these teams.
Despite the years of work and a series of small victories, KSU saw a crowd of petitions for increased spending. Regents Chancellor Hank M. Huckaby told President Papp over a phone call that the board had questions for KSU regarding the proposal of increased tuitions. Huckaby has put together a committee of six Regents to study the proposal to begin football and Title IX sports at Kennesaw.
“We just got stuck with some bad timing,” President Papp said to SGA on Tuesday. “There were 40 requests for fee increases from around the university system. 16 of the 40 concerned different collegiate athletics.”
Along with the poor timing of presenting the proposal, the Board of Regent’s also has five brand new members. The new members’ presence is spurring discussion of whether or not a board should vote for a particular issue when one third of the collective has no experience with such a vote.
Football and Title IX sports still have a chance, but student approval is a needed.
“I am requesting a resolution from the SGA saying that the SGA strongly supports, hopefully unanimously supports, KSU moving forward with football.” President Papp said to present SGA members and students.
“I’m begging, yes begging is what I said, for support for the resolution that would ask the Regents to move forward.”
SGA responded quickly to President Papp’s plea and wrote a letter expressing their approval and support of an increase of $100 per semester for helping to fund a football program and additional female sports. The letter was supported with a 24-1 vote and will be presented to Regents on Jan. 24.
If Regents were to approve the increased tuition, KSU could move forward and begin looking for a head coach.
KSU could also begin to fill existing women’s scholarships in track and cross country. With time, the university could also add equestrian, sand volleyball, women’s crew and a competitive cheer team.
Competitive cheer is a combination of acrobatics and tumbling and would build on KSU’s previously existing all-girl cheer team. The team has experienced tremendous success and is renown in the collegiate competitive cheer world. Acknowledgement of the program came after they won three national titles, with back to back titles in Division II in 2004 and 2005. More recently, the team added a fourth title with a Division I National Championship title in April 2011. Adding a competitive cheer team would bring KSU into the ranks of Purdue University and Ohio State University, who both recently added cheer as a Title IX sport.
The Board of Regents meeting will be on Feb. 12-13.
