This letter was sent to the Colorado College administrators named below and later posted to the Save CC football mailing list:

Richard Celeste, President
Ken Ralph, Director of Athletics
Susan Ashley, Head of Faculty
Colorado College

Dear Mr. Celeste, Mr. Ralph, and Ms. Ashley,

My name is Ray Urban and I am the father of Luke Urban, CC class of
2012 and starting linebacker this past season for the CC Tigers. I am
writing this letter not to argue whether or not football should be in
CC’s future but to outline a road map that is more in the spirit of
what CC is (or should be) about.

PERCEPTION

Let’s face it, canceling an 0-9 program is much easier than canceling
a 9-0 program. To the casual observer and general public, the team was
uncompetitive. Even with living in Boston I managed to attend three
games and watched video feeds of all of the rest. This is a team that
with a few breaks, a few less injuries, and offensive play calling
that better matched the players skills could easily have been 4-5.
From the DePauw overtime loss to the final game against Centre College
we saw a team that deserved to be on the field.

PROCESS

Yes, the fiscal crisis demanded attention and football is a relatively
expensive sport. What should have happened is an open, transparent,
frank discussion amongst all stake holders including the players,
alumni, and the larger CC community as to the best course of action.
What actually took place was the exact opposite; closed, opaque,
dictatorial.

SCHEDULE

The proposed three year time frame is right; it just needs to be
implemented 180 degrees from the way proposed. Commit to playing for
three more seasons while the future of the program is discussed and a
plan is implemented to either continue or end the 124 year tradition.
That allows CC to honor the commitments made to the football players
in the classes of 2010, 2011, and 2012 and builds on the strong
athletic and football core represented by those players. Discontinuing
the program for three years guarantees its death.

SUPPORT

The talk of requiring the football program to raise a sufficiently
large endowment to would allow CC to not support it at all is patently
unfair. Surely the 124 year old program should receive at least the
level of financial support from CC that the average CC Division Three
sport at CC receives.

Football is indeed old fashioned. It rewards teamwork more than
individual excellence. It is complicated, rewarding studiousness. It
demands practice. It is never easy. Colorado College owes to the
history of the program, the players, and the integrity of the College
to make this important decision the right way.

Sincerely yours,

Ray Urban

There are professional football leagues in many European countries, and Division III football players often play professionally for a few years, earn a living and see the world.

Consider it an extension of the liberal arts education.

I recently stumbled across the blog of one of those players, former Grinnell wide receiver Nick Merklin. He’s playing for the Kragujevac Wild Boars and paints an interesting picture of what it’s like as a Division III football player in Europe.

The blog can be found at http://footballinserbia.wordpress.com/

Two SLIAC teams dropped football this offseason, and now the rumblings are growing that the SLIAC and UMAC are getting back into their alliance.

The leagues split up a couple of years ago as each tried to pursue an automatic bid independently. The SLIAC got close and was on track to get a tourney bid as early as 2010 before Blackburn and Principia dropped the sport this offseason. Huntingdon and LaGrange, which joined the league as football-only affiliates, brought the SLIAC’s total to eight, but with just six playing the sport next season, the league won’t qualify.

The UMAC has just five football-playing members, and not many opportunities to add to that total unless other schools in the league add the sport. St. Scholastica brought the total to five.

A renewal of the UMAC-SLIAC alliance would bring the total to nine teams and restart the two-year waiting period clock, with, potentially, 2009 and 2010 as waiting years and 2011 as an automatic bid. Of course, that would likely leave Huntingdon and LaGrange back out in the cold, as two teams in the Southeast with nine teams scattered from St. Louis to Duluth, Minn.

One school reportedly jumped the gun and released news on its Web site, though that release has since been pulled. The SLIAC declined comment, while UMAC commissioner Corey Borchardt would not take questions but gave the following statement to D3sports.com: “We currently only have five institutions that offer football. Certainly any time that we can look to expand the number of institutions that offer football, we would want to do that. We want to see that number increase and hope to do so for the AQ and for scheduling purposes.”

Hopefully Huntingdon and LaGrange are calling all of the SCAC schools left in the lurch by Colorado College, because if they end up with eight conference games plus a Dome Day, then that’s nine games and I doubt many will choose to play a 10th game and honor their commitment to Huntingdon and LaGrange.