The Beast Who Slumbers must have been in hibernation when the News-Journal’s Martin Frank wrote this interesting speculative story on May 12.
But, it appears that the University of Delaware, currently a big fish in the small pond of whatever they’re now calling Division 1-AA football, harbors visions (delusions?) of gridiron grandeur. And that, in part, entered into UD’s choice of a new athletic director:
Why else would UD hire (Bernard) Muir as athletic director Monday, knowing that it needs to undertake a massive fundraising effort to build new facilities, improve the current ones, all while keeping athletics competitive?
“Our aspirations are pretty clear,” Delaware president Patrick Harker said. “We want to be viewed as one of the very impactful public institutions in America. And athletics is a part of that. We want to attract the best in everything we do, including athletics.”
That doesn’t happen without I-A football, which drives every successful athletic program.
The big question, of course, is how will the University of Delaware pay for this when they’re having such a hard time raising funds for refurbishment of the facilities and, unlike state schools, can’t really count on the State to underwrite this, especially when the State’s in a fiscal crisis?
Having asked those questions, the move would make sense from a couple of perspectives. First, they’re gonna have to find a way to upgrade the facilities anyway. In for a dime, in for a dollar.
Second, there could be a logical conference buy-in. The Big East essentially vacated the Philadelphia market for football (Villanova, of course, is a BE hoops school and a great anchor for the BE) when they jettisoned perennially non-competitive Temple. Unless ‘Nova decides to go big-time, Delaware is the best bet the Big East has to return to the Philly market.
So, what do you think? It worked for UConn (even though the state paid lots of the freight there), why couldn’t it happen here?