It’s on you: VCU President Rao wants to hear from students on football

Adam Stern
Executive Editor
 Commonwealth Times Sports’ Twitter

Football at VCU has long been the dead horse that couldn’t stop being beaten if somebody tried.

So much so, in fact, that VCU athletic director Norwood Teague actually is trying these days.  When you call his office, the first thing you’ll be told if you’re a reporter is he’s not taking any questions on the topic.

Similarly, the issue is so maligned by higher-ups at the school that, when the subject of football was brought up to VCU President Michael Rao in a wide-ranging interview with The CT two weeks ago, he jokingly quipped “oh, times up” with a smile on his face.

And while it may be true that administrators feel the football question has been posed ad nauseam, the reason they’d prefer not to be asked isn’t because they don’t ponder about the pigskin.

It’s because they want to hear from us.

With startup costs that were estimated last year by Teague to be in the range of $50 to $100 million, there’s no doubt that bringing pigskin would be an exceedingly pricey venture— including for students. And, since Rao has been faced with constant cuts since he came to VCU two years ago, he said he’s not so much interested in his thoughts on the subject as much as he wants to hear from students.

“I mean, that’s really a bigger source of information for me than what I think,” Rao said about students’ opinions. “I’ve been there, I’ve done that; football is fun but, you know, if you’re the president, it has just as many challenges with it as it does the great aspects.”

Rao has seen the peaks.

He was president at Central Michigan when he helped oversee a dramatic reversal in the school football program’s fortunes. With now-Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly at the helm of the program, the Chippewas went from averaging 7,500 people a game to over 33,000. That experience helped him see the upside: with college football, the potential is that “great things can happen for everybody.”

But Rao has also seen the valleys.

“I think at this point there are maybe seven Division I programs making money,” Rao said. “These are not money-making things.”

That’s especially true at medium-range schools like VCU.

A recent study by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that, out of the 125 different schools that compete below the elite Football Bowl Subdivision echelon of college football— where VCU would surely play—, almost a third of them have increased their athletic department’s spending by more than 40 percent in a recent five-year period.

And the simultaneous skyrocketing in expenses and plummeting of revenues have seen the median deficit at those schools grow to more than $9 million.

Most schools in the FCS— and even many in the FBS level— are far from financially sustainable on their own and rely on student fees to cover a large chunk of expenses. These schools struggle to create the sort of mega-wealth sometimes stereotyped with college football because they don’t have the lucrative media contracts, colossally sized stadiums and monstrous fan bases that schools like Notre Dame make look routine.

So can VCU do it?  It’s a question that’s answer may still be some time away from answering. But Rao believes that, if he gets a better reading of the student pulse, he’ll be closer to knowing the answer.

“The first things we’d ask students are, one, do you like the idea (of bringing football to VCU)?” Rao said.” And, two, are you going to be willing to pay for it?”

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Illustration by: Hannah Swann