With tonight’s opening basketball game, Binghamton University’s main athletic season is upon us. As SUNY’s flagship university, it may seem unusual that we don’t have a football program like every other ‘Big State U.’ But like many of our quirks, among them a student-run bus service and a president who invites students to join him on his morning run, this is an area we’re happy to be different in.
If nothing else, Binghamton’s men’s basketball program has opened our eyes to the risk involved in investing too much in a university’s athletics program, allowing it to get to the point that it practically surpasses the institution’s focus on academics. Division I college football is like Division I college basketball on steroids. And it’s not who we are as a University.
At the same time, a football team would divert limited resources away from other athletic programs — and our academic programs — that probably don’t receive enough attention as it is. Our wrestling program was one of the best in the nation last year. Our soccer teams, both men’s and women’s, have been getting better and better. And our baseball team recently produced its first Major Leaguer.
Despite their largely under-the-radar status, we take pride in these programs, and others like them. We would be afraid of losing them in the name of a football team, and cutting smaller programs for bigger revenue-earning ones is far from unheard of in the world of college sports. When Rutgers University faced budget cuts in 2006, they were forced to sacrifice some of their other athletic programs in order to maintain the football program. Even worse, Rutgers kept their football team while laying off faculty and shuttering academic programs. This is a loss of perspective that we simply cannot afford.
Already we’ve witnessed state funding cuts, and in spite of SUNY2020 and ‘rational tuition increases,’ reductions to academic programs followed. But at least we know that learning and athletics don’t have to duke it out to stay afloat.
We are a young school. A school still trying to define itself. Let’s just focus on our academics and research and keep a low, but respectable, athletic profile. After all, when was the last time any non-athlete decided to go to Harvard because of its football team? And who could argue with “Undefeated since 1946?”