Two-minute warning?
Football set to disappear from community colleges — but not without a fight
Gerald Wilbon won a football scholarship from Southern Utah University for 2018. But what appeared to be the fulfillment of a long-standing dream to play Division I college football turned to disappointment when the 18-year-old cornerback’s grades weren’t good enough for him to enroll.
He gets a second shot at his dream this fall with a football scholarship to Mesa Community College, where he hopes to improve in the classroom, work
on his game and eventually earn a scholarship to a four-year school.
“Without this, I don’t know what I’d be doing right now,” the Red Mountain High School graduate said at a recent team practice.
But for Wilbon and about 400 other athletes, this opportunity to play football while furthering their education likely ends with the 2018 season. The Maricopa County Community College District, the state’s largest community-college system, is pulling the plug on the sport for financial reasons.
District officials say the colleges need to prioritize their spending as enrollment has leveled off and the Arizona Legislature has eliminated state funding. A district task force also raised concerns about injuries and football’s low academic performance compared with other sports.
The announcement earlier this year sent shock waves across the district, where four colleges — Glendale, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Mesa — have fielded football teams for decades.
Football supporters in other Arizona communities fear that decision will have a domino effect.
Pima Community College officials said the MCCCD’s decision “accelerated” an already-planned financial review of athletics. They announced in June that the Tucson school would also end football after 2018 as part of a three-year plan to cut collegewide spending by $15 million.
The departure of Pima and Maricopa will leave two junior-college football teams in Arizona and three in the Western States Football League: Eastern Arizona College in Thatcher, Arizona Western College in Yuma and Snow College in central Utah.
Without Pima and the Maricopa schools, Eastern and Western will have to travel farther to compete. In June, Eastern announced plans for a “careful review” of football to see if a schedule is viable and if the sport can operate within budget beyond 2018.
The move to eliminate JUCO football in Arizona comes as the sport, in general, is under increased scrutiny as more studies show links between football and brain problems. Already, participation is down among high-school students nationally and in Arizona — partly because of concerns over injuries, athletic officials said.
Risk and cost aside, Maricopa football is not going down without a fight.
A grass-roots group is pushing to save the sport, including a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #savejcfootball. It also is pushing to shift the balance of power on the college district’s governing board, hoping to elect four candidates sympathetic to football in the Nov. 6 election.
Attorneys filed a complaint in early August with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on behalf of 22 MCCCD players, alleging cutting football violates federal law because it adversely affects African-American students, who make up 62 percent of the rosters. The department is evaluating the complaint but hasn’t said yet whether it will investigate.
Football supporters aren’t buying the argument that the sport was eliminated for financial reasons — not when cutting football is estimated to save $989,000 a year and the college district projects $682 million in general-fund revenue this year — about $11 million more than last year.
“They’re trying to turn this into a business. It’s not a business. It’s an educational institution,” said Louis Casillas, a retired dentist who played football at Mesa Community College and is advocating to save the program.
In response to questions from The Arizona Republic, the district released a one-paragraph statement saying the decision to eliminate football was an operational decision made by district administrators after consulting with college presidents. “We will support our players, coaches and staff through this final season, and we will honor the scholarships of our players through the Spring 2019 semester,” the statement said.
A district spokesman said MCCCD Chancellor Maria Harper-Marinick was busy with the start of the fall semester and unavailable for an interview. Governing board President Laurin Hendrix told The
Republic he supports the administration’s decision and has not heard any opposition from board members.
“Our mission as a community college is to educate people. It’s not to train football players,” he said. “If they play football while they are getting an education, that’s great. But our mission is to educate.”
Temperatures hovered in the triple digits at Mesa Community College on a recent Monday night as players practiced drills on a grassy field. Hip-hop music blasted from speakers. Shrill whistles pierced the air along with shouts of “Go get ’em!” and “Move!”
JUCO teams bring together a mix of backgrounds: players not big enough, fast enough, strong enough or mature enough for Division I. Some who have struggled in the classroom. And others who have attended big schools but “bounced back” to JUCO because their grades or athletic abilities need work.
JUCO football doesn’t draw the revenue, attention or prestige of Division I college football. But it’s a key pipeline for athletes who want to play football at major universities.
“It just opens so many doors for people,” said Joe Kersting, a former head football coach at Glendale Community College, who is leading the fight to save the sport.
The move to eliminate football has its roots in a strategic plan to transform the 10-college Maricopa system into a national leader in higher education.
To do that, district officials are focusing on student academic success. They want more students to complete degrees or certificates, and they want more to transfer to four-year schools after junior college.
To fund what is known as “the transformation,” district officials and governing board members are also looking for efficiencies.
In May 2017, a college-district task force that had been reviewing athletics determined football players had the lowest grade-point averages, the second-lowest retention rates and the second-highest studentloan default rates of all sports. Football had the highest operating costs, the report said, and highest insurance claims.
Eliminating football would save $770,000 a year and another $219,000 in insurance premiums, a report said.
Football advocates say the district used incomplete or misleading statistics, in some cases, to justify getting rid of the sport.
Take fall-to-fall student retention, which measures whether students who play football return to the Maricopa district the following fall. A school wants retention to be as high as possible, because students who come back are more likely to earn a degree or certificate.
Half of football players don’t return the next fall. That’s the second-lowest rate of all college sports, behind men’s soccer.
But football supporters say this statistic is misleading because it gives the impression that all those players drop out. Retention rates fail to take into consideration a key goal of JUCO — for players to get scholarships from university teams.
Consider 22-year-old Juan Giraldo. He wouldn’t count toward the fall-to-fall retention rate because he spent a semester at Mesa Community College in fall 2014 but was recruited the next semester to Eastern Michigan University, where he played football for three years as a safety.
He said his tuition was covered by athletic scholarships at Mesa and Eastern Michigan. He graduated this spring with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. Without the scholarships, he wouldn’t have attended a four-year school, he said.
Football advocates also take issue with the task force’s conclusions that eliminating the sport will save about $989,000 a year. That figure fails to take into account tuition paid by football players who aren’t on scholarships.
Nor does it account for the scholarships that players earn to four-year universities. Mesa Community College players have earned about $1.1 million a year in scholarships from other universities for each of the past three years, according to Ryan Felker, Mesa’s football coach.
The decision to eliminate football never came before the MCCCD governing board, and such a decision doesn’t require a board vote.
Hendrix, the board president, said he has not received any requests from board members to discuss football at a board meeting. “I think the administration made a good decision, and I support the decision they made. I don’t see it coming (to the board),” he said.
An email exchange between governing-board members on Oct. 20, 2017, shows at least one current board member opposed football. In the email to Hendrix, Chancellor Harper-Marinick asks for clarification on where fellow board member Jean McGrath stands on football:
“Is she in favor of keeping football or eliminating? It is not prudent to take that one on at this time, (in) my professional and political judgement,” the chancellor wrote.
Hendrix responded: “Ms. McGrath’s hot buttons at the moment are sabbaticals, travel, union memberships and most recently football. If we give her victories to give to her supporters, it will keep her on board for the bigger agenda, namely the transformation,” Hendrix wrote, referring to the district’s strategic plan.
Hendrix told The Republic he wrote the “candid” email to the chancellor as a preview of issues that were going to come up. He said he wasn’t passionately in favor of or opposed to football.
McGrath told The Republic the college district can’t afford football: “I’m not in favor of it going away, but ... it was a financial decision.” McGrath said she is especially concerned about liability if players are injured and sue.
But football advocates are hoping to save the sport by throwing their support behind four candidates running in the Nov. 6 board election who they hope will be sympathetic to reviewing the decision.
Four seats are open on the seven-member board with only two incumbents, McGrath and Augustine Bartning, running for re-election. Football supporters are backing challengers Tom Nerini, Stan Arterberry, Marie Sullivan and Roc Arnett.
Most of the country’s 1,500 community colleges don’t offer football. The sport exists in pockets with a strong, decades-long football tradition.
“They’re trying to turn this into a business. It’s not a business. It’s an educational institution.” Louis Casillas Former Mesa Community College football player who’s hoping to save the program
California has by far the most JUCO teams, with 68 belonging to the California Community College Athletic Association.
Another 66 are part of the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA), with six states fielding six or more football teams: Arizona, Texas, Minnesota, Kansas, New York and Mississippi.
NJCCA Executive Director Christopher Parker said the number of schools sponsoring football has remained relatively steady over the last decade, plus or minus five schools.
The Maricopa colleges task force called football “the most risky of the intercollegiate sports” offered by the schools. The task force’s report cited a 2007 study in the Journal of Athletic
Training that analyzed 16 years of NCAA data and found football had the highest injury rate compared with other intercollegiate sports.
At Maricopa colleges, football injuries in 2014 accounted for 51 percent of injury-related insurance claims.
College officials have taken steps to make football safer, which has resulted in fewer sports-related claims, the report said. But that comes at a cost.
One of Maricopa’s former JUCO players, former NFL running back Charlie Garner, recently went public with his health struggles.
The former Scottsdale Community College player revealed last year, at age 45, that doctors believe he is dealing with symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease found in athletes who have suffered repetitive brain trauma.
Garner played pro football for 11 years for the Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“I don’t have all my faculties anymore,” Garner told sportingnews.com. “I can’t remember things. When I go to the mall or grocery store, I have to take one of my kids with me to remember where the car is parked. I have trouble remembering conversations I had five minutes ago. Bright lights bother me. I just don’t feel right all the time.”
Amid the ongoing debate over the future of Maricopa football, players are preparing for their first games of the season. Mesa faces Phoenix College and Scottsdale takes on Glendale on Saturday night.
With football expected to go away next year, the push to land scholarships to Division I schools has never been greater.
Those who get scholarships won’t have to worry about the future.
Ivory Williams is a 19-year-old redshirt freshman safety from Tempe. He hopes to secure a scholarship to a fouryear school. He and other players are also hopeful that MCCCD officials reconsider their decision and keep the sport.
There are no guarantees on either. Unless something changes, Maricopa football scholarships end after the spring semester.
And the stadium lights will go dark.