Georgia State officials will not take a "build it and they will come" approach in deciding whether to take up football.
GSU athletics director Mary McElroy said Tuesday the Panthers' home would be in the Georgia Dome if the school decides to add a football team. But that remains a big if based largely on a tough question: "If we play it, will they come?"
As Georgia State held two town hall-style meetings Tuesday to discuss the prospects of football with students, faculty and fans, there was sentiment that such a move would foster school spirit. But the $14.3 million question is not warm and fuzzy. It's expensive, even to start a University Championship Division (formerly Division I-AA) program.
At a school where McElroy hopes the recent hire of former Ole Miss basketball coach Rod Barnes will boost attendance for that Division I program, she did not pretend to have all the answers as projections call for football start-up costs of $7.8 million and up to another $6.5 million for a practice facility.
A faculty member stood before a microphone in the GSU gym and wondered aloud if there is a way to be sure that football would not be like most basketball games with "two or three hundred" fans.
"Nope," McElroy said. "We don't have any guarantees."
GSU is exploring football because McElroy said school President Carl Patton "has been receiving continued interest from people regarding starting a football program, and he thought it was time to see if there is merit to that."
Although pre-approval was not universal Tuesday, it was mostly positive.
"If you were to ask someone if they were proud to go to Georgia State, they'd be like, 'Um, I'm not sure.' They don't have a real connection to campus," said sophomore Keesha Bellamy of Eagan, Minn. "But something like football would be a way for people to come together and become more involved."
Matthew Simmons, a senior from Atlanta, said, "I think we'd get a lot more media coverage locally ... regionally and nationally, which is going to open up different markets to students that don't know anything about Georgia State."
Yet George Rainbolt, chairman of the GSU philosophy department, said heightened alcohol use at games could be a problem. He also worried the school might lower admission standards for some athletes.
Rainbolt said his experience at other institutions led him to believe some athletes "degrade the intellectual experience in the classroom because they are simply unable to keep up."
GSU is in the Colonial Athletic Association, where six of 12 member schools will begin playing a conference schedule this fall. McElroy said a final decision will be made by Patton. "There is no set timeline" for that decision, she said.
GSU is building soccer and tennis facilities at Panthersville in DeKalb County, but McElroy said a football practice facility is not feasible there.
Jerry Rackliffe, vice president of finance and affairs and a member of the steering committee, said rental and operating costs at the Dome would come to about $47,000 per home game, "which is a lot less than $6 million to $24 million a year" to build or refurbish and maintain a stadium.
Rackliffe said a raise in athletic fees paid by every student would likely jump $85 per year to $369 to help fund the program.
Start-up costs include projections to begin a women's lacrosse team as the addition of football and all the male athletes that would play it would, by Title IX requirements, mandate the addition of female athletic opportunities.
Field hockey might be considered if GSU needs to add another women's sport.
McElroy did not dismiss the possibility of eliminating a male sport. "That's a possibility always, but that's not an option we're looking at," she said. "That would be a last resort."
