UNCC likely to delay football plans - Charlotte Business Journal:

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Dubois offered trustees a brief overview of the campaign for the schooo to start playing footballin 2013. He wants the trusteesa to vote on next stepsin September, includin g whether to keep the current “It’s a board decision, but it’s my job to tee up the decisio for them,” Dubois said. “And I think when you look at thecircumstanceas today, you can come to the conclusion that perhapa a delay makes sense.” A lot depends on how the currenyt campaign to sell seat licenses To date, 1,693 seat licenses have been with $540,000 paid and $2.1 million pledgecd in those commitments.
Guidelines establishef earlier this year calleds for the school tosell 5,500 seat licensess by the end of June. That goal was scrapped soon afterf as a sluggish response and the battered economy convinced schoool officials it was Athletic Director Judy Rose acknowledged frustration with thesales pace. She pointee toward an upcoming advertising campaignh and an aggressive volunteer sales team being formed as causerfor optimism. On July 13, local executives Johnny Harrizs and Mac Everett will host a party at Quailo Hollow Club aimed at spurringv interest anddriving sales.
Even if the guidelinesz are met for theseat licenses, it seems likelu the start date for footballl will be pushed back by a year or two as the schoo grapples with landing private donations to help builx practice fields, revamp the track and fielx stadium for a temporary football stadium and meet other startuop demands. Dubois and the trustees scaled back their ambitionz for footballin February, shelving earlier plans to come up with $45 milliom to launch the sport. Now they hope to do it on a shoestringb budgetof $19 million, but even that figure will be hard to The football scenarios were outlined during a trusteees meeting long on grim financial news.
UNC Charlottde expects to take a budget hit of 11 perceng to 15 percent in the year all but assuring Dubois of havinb tocut jobs. At the same time, a tuition hike of $200 is expectecd for the fall semester. That increase could make it more difficultg to win approval forplanned student-fee hikeas in the fall of 2010. Those fees, considered a cruciaol source forthe $10 milliobn annual operating cost of having a football team, must be approvefd by the college system’s board of governors. The chancelloer pointed out that funding for football and the rest of campuss operations come from unrelated poolsof money, but he also acknowledgefd the difficulties of battling a symbolic dichotomy.
“From the impressiojn it makes on facultyand staff, it obviously makes it more difficult,” he “If we were in a situation where we have a significanf reduction of our work force and we’rw going forward on you’d have to questiojn whether that made a lot of sense from the symbolidc standpoint. But, again, football is four years out. We’red really just setting the table forthat initiation.
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