Football fever hits UVSC

OREM — A proposal to field a football team is under review again at Utah Valley State College.

Student body president Jared Sumsion has tossed the figurative red flag onto UVSC's field of dreams and revived a longtime battle to bring football to the school, which is slowly laying the groundwork to become a university.

"We're basically looking at a three-year plan to implement a football team," Sumsion said Tuesday. "We need it. I feel that to have a collegiate experience at UVSC the students deserve a football team."

Sumsion reintroduced the topic last week during the college's annual planning, budgeting and accountability process.

During the process, held each November and December, the various campus organizations, including Associated Students of Utah Valley State College, present to the campus any plans and initiatives for one to three years.

"(The proposal) went over very well in a packed room last week on campus," Sumsion said. "It looks very positive right now."

UVSC President William A. Sederburg said he was impressed with the students' proposal, but the pitfalls of past bids to bring football to UVSC remain: cost and community support.

"The big problem is just the limited resources we have and the fact that we're needing to finance our current athletic programs. We've got to take care of those first," Sederburg said. "Then we need to figure out how to get the attendance up and make sure that we can do it right."

UVSC is still trying to establish its athletic teams at the NCAA Division I level, the president said, and he doesn't want to disrupt that by trying to work football into the mix.

"My sense is we're not ready to go there," Sederburg said. "The students are pushing it, and we have an obligation to pay attention to what the students are saying. I think in time UVSC will have a football team, but probably not in the near future."

Still, the students' football game plan got his attention.

"They gave us a good sales pitch," Sederburg said.

The proposal basically calls for an increase in student fees to fund the start-up and operating costs for the football team, which would compete as a Division I-AA program — the same level at which Weber State University and Southern Utah University play.

The fee increase would also have to fund any additional women's sports that would need to be added to comply with Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in schools in both athletics and academics.

The ASUVSC proposal calls for $1.5 million per year in operating costs, but Sederburg estimates that figure would be closer $1.75 million. It would also cost between $10 million and $15 million to build a football stadium, he said.