The Chronicle of Higher Education
Date: November 9, 1994
Section: Athletics
Page: A35
A small college dropped its program from Division I to
bring
back football
By Debra E. Blum
Abilene, Texas -- Glory days: Hardin-Simmons University, a small Baptist institution in West Texas, has had them.
In the 1930's, 40's, and 50's, the university's football team, the Cowboys, knocked helmets with some of the big boys of college sports, and often won. The Cowboys set records, sent players to the National Football League, and played in bowl games -- four in one year, in fact, back in 1948.
In 1963, however, following five straight losing seasons and facing tough financial times, Hardin-Simmons eliminated football. In this part of the country, where the game is an obsession, it was a bold and perilous move. In the absence of football, the university sponsored 12 teams for men and women, which began competing in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I when it was formed in 1973.
Then, five years ago, Hardin-Simmons did the unexpected: It announced it would move from Division I -- the top of the pecking order in college sports -- to the N.C.A.A.'s Division III, where sports are played without either scholarships or fanfare.
The decision was largely influenced by the university's desire to bring football back to the campus, which it could not afford to do at the Division I level.
"We were a real little fish in a real big pond," says Merlin Morrow, the athletics director. "We decided there were better ways to spend our money than on trying to keep up in Division I, especially since we were doing it without football."
In 1990, the university stopped offering any new sports scholarships -- except in baseball -- and eliminated all but an occasional Division I college from its teams' schedules. It also added football and women's basketball. The following year, the baseball team also left Division I.
This fall, the institution became a full member of Division III, although it continues to compete in the Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association, a Division II conference in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. The league is considering applying for N.C.A.A. Division III membership.
Since 1981, nine other colleges have left the N.C.A.A.'s Division I, including three institutions that moved all the way to Division III. In the same period, 40 colleges have entered Division I, and many more still await their chance to break into the association's big time.
To some outside the institution, Hardin-Simmons's decision to downgrade its program is still a puzzle. The small college, they say, gained national recognition by competing in Division I, and shared in the division's ample revenues. Even on the campus here, there were some coaches, athletes, professors, administrators, and students who believed that the university was giving up too much by abandoning Division I.
But the nay sayers are gone. Most of the athletes who were on scholarship, including all 15 men's basketball players, left the university when it left Division I. The rest of the athletes from the Division I era have graduated or have used up their eligibility. Of the head coaches who were here in 1989, two remain. In the meantime, a new president took over in 1991 and a whole new crop of students has come to the campus.
"The guys on my team and most students didn't come here because they cared if we were a sports power," says Corey Foster, the interim coach of the men's soccer team, who once played at the university. "It's really no big deal to us where the school used to be."
For many sports fans -- including members of the surrounding community -- having the new football team to root for has helped to ease the pain of losing Division I status. In addition, the success of many of the Cowboys' teams -- even at a lower competitive level -- is considered sufficient consolation. Perhaps, too, as one professor puts it, Hardin-Simmons "didn't have that much to lose in the first place."
"The truth is that the glory days of the 1930's, 40's, and 50's were long gone," says Barry King, an accounting professor and the faculty athletics representative. "In the several decades before the change, we weren't winning big, we weren't sending people to the pros, we were struggling. It's not like we were on top and gave it all up."
Hardin-Simmons had never held a top national ranking in football before last fall, when the Cowboys were rated No. 1. in the N.A.I.A. Division II poll. This season, the team is ranked No. 2 in the nation and expects to earn a spot in the association's national tournament.
The men's basketball team has also enjoyed more success since it left the big time. In the decade leading up to the change, the team lost twice as often as it won. Over the last three years, however, the Cowboys have won more games than they lost, and last season they won the conference title.
Last academic year, the women's golf team won the N.A.I.A. championship, and both the men's and the women's tennis teams made it to the national tournament -- the women for the sixth straight year and the men for the second straight time.
The women's basketball team was undefeated in league play in 1992-93, and won its conference again last season. This year, the team begins the season ranked 12th in the nation in the N.A.I.A.'s Division II.
The won-lost records of its teams are not the only numbers that look good for Hardin-Simmons. The number of varsity athletes at the university has more than doubled since 1989, to roughly 325 this academic year. Undergraduate enrollment is at an all-time high, with more than 2,100 full-time students this fall.
University officials say having a football team has helped to attract more students to the campus, especially men. This year, men make up almost 47 per cent of the student body, compared with just over 42 per cent in 1989.
Athletes at Hardin-Simmons are performing better in the classroom than they have in the past, too. Last year, 33 athletes earned conference, district, or national academic honors -- more than ever before in a single year. In addition, while the university didn't track graduation rates before 1990, Mr. Morrow, the athletics director, says the proportion of athletes earning their degrees within five years of enrolling at the university is growing.
Of the 219 athletes who were freshmen at Hardin-Simmons in 1990-91, he says, roughly half have already graduated or are on track to graduate by next spring. About a third of all students at the university earn a degree within five years.
"We have a much better student-athlete than before," Mr. Morrow says. "Kids are coming here primarily for their education."
Perhaps the only number that has gone down since the sports program's move is the number of athletes who are members of a minority group. Although Hardin-Simmons officials say they have never kept track of the number of black athletes, they say there are noticeably fewer now than when the university sponsored Division I sports. The dropoff occurred, they say, because the university no longer offers athletics scholarships and now recruits athletes only locally. Big Country, as the 22-county area around Abilene is known, is predominantly white.
Surprisingly, a figure that has not gone down at Hardin-Simmons is the one for its athletics budget. The university spends about $860,000 a year on sports -- including all operating expenses and department salaries -- about as much as it did before 1990.
Jesse Fletcher, who was president of Hardin-Simmons from 1977 to 1991, says the athletics department didn't need to save money; it just needed to spend it more wisely. He says, for example, that travel costs were unnecessarily high because only two other colleges in the university's Division I league -- the Trans America Athletic Conference -- were from Texas.
"We were becoming increasingly uncomfortable spending so much money on the relatively few students in intercollegiate athletics," Mr. Fletcher says. "Doing so didn't really fit with our broader institutional goals."
The men's basketball program was the hardest hit by the transition because it had received the most money. In 1989, it handed out $300,000 in scholarships and spent about $80,000 on travel. By the following year, that money was being parceled out to all of the university's teams, including football.
Dennis Harp, coach of men's basketball since 1988, acknowledges that he misses the excitement and perquisites that came with competing in Division I.
"It's every coach's dream to be a head coach in Division I," he says. "I'm glad I had the opportunity to do that, and I would have liked the chance to finish the job. Sometimes that's frustrating. But I'm very proud of our players and what we have accomplished here. The school can do whatever it wants, I guess. I have no complaints. I'll do the best job I can for them."
Jim Jennings, a Hardin-Simmons football player who graduated in 1932, has had season tickets for men's basketball for years, and now also attends every home football game. Sitting with his wife at a recent match, Mr. Jennings sums up the feeling of many on the campus here. "Basketball is basketball. Football is football," he says, nodding to the field where the Cowboys are taking on West Texas A&M University. "It's exciting if it's your team, and it's exciting if the game is competitive. We don't need to be in any certain division to have a good time."