April 18, 2024
With the hype from the basketball season over, High Point University seems to be on a cool down from sports. Our spring sports are just beginning and are full of extremely talented athletes, but it seems that we are lacking a certain sport that brings everyone together.
​
HPU is missing out on one sport that would allow for excitement around sports to be year-round: football.
​
Many students question why HPU doesn’t have a football team, especially since all they can think about is how much publicity and excitement it would bring to the students and staff. However, snapping your fingers and having a football team is not as easy as you may think. I sat down with Athletic Director Dan Hauser and received answers from President Nido Qubein on why HPU is not quite ready for a football team.
​
Funding seems to be one of the biggest factors contributing to why HPU does not have a football team.
​
President Qubein commented on what would need to be done financially to give the university a team.“We would need $100 million in funding to build a stadium,” he said. HPU would also need funding for parking and operations.
​
“It is also the most taxing and expensive sport in regard to staffing because it’s 100 to 120 athletes that are added to your student population, and so you would have to add a tremendous increase in support staff from the trainers, communications staff, academic support. Lots of different units would have a lot of staff,” said Hauser.
​
Hauser introduced another challenge that many students don’t think about when questioning the issue. This challenge would be the presence of Title IX, which states that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
​
“There’s Title IX law that requires HPU to provide opportunities that are equal to the student population admission based upon gender and those opportunities need to match from a percentage standpoint the percentage of enrollment that's on campus,” said Hauser. “We have a campus that has four times the amount of females than males, so our sport offerings need to match the percentage breakdown of males and females on our campus.”
​
Women’s rowing and women’s field hockey will be added as offered sports in the next couple of years to make the percentage more equivalent between athlete percentage and population percentage.
​
Adding football would further complicate the Title IX situation at HPU and result in even more funds being dedicated to finding and funding other women’s sports to keep up with the overwhelming percentage of male athletes that football would add to the school. If a team was added and HPU could not include enough women’s teams, HPU could risk getting sued due to being out of compliance with Federal Title IX laws.
​
Qubein mentioned that anything is possible and that it is hard to tell what the future will hold for HPU. Unfortunately with the obstacles of funding and Title IX, it will definitely take time for HPU to wrap its head around football.
​
Even without football, HPU does not struggle to bring students into the university. “We have a full freshman class of 1500 year after year,” said Qubein.
​
Hauser proposed one way to get people to choose HPU over other big football schools. “If we could get some of our premiere sports, like a sport like basketball to be successful, there’s plenty of examples of schools that have extreme national brands out there, like Creighton University, Xavier University, Marquette University,” he said. “Multiple schools that play basketball in the Big East Conference that do not have football that have extreme national brands and have tons of students interested and excited to come to their campuses for sports without football.”
​
Creating the Qubein Center and investing heavily in basketball is one way that HPU is trying to keep excitement around the university and compete with other football schools for students.
​
HPU is in its growing stage as the university continues to buy numerous properties and expand the number of academic buildings that it can offer students. Therefore, adding a football team doesn’t seem fitting for the university currently.
​
Once HPU settles down, there is always a chance that the university could recruit enough individuals to play here on scholarship and find enough walk-ons to participate. Yet, Hauser brought up another good point about the university’s morals, especially because it takes some time for a football program to consistently win lots of games.
​
“We have a motto here of choose to be extraordinary and in anything we do we want to win and be successful in it,” said Hauser.
​
HPU keeps the football atmosphere by including tailgating and social interactions at other sporting events, and the athletic department is eager to speak to students about how they can make sports even more exciting.
​
Don’t count HPU out of the running for a football team but understand that it will take some time for the Panthers to settle down and decide whether or not football would enhance the university.