ILLUSTRATION BRYAN MOATS
OPINION
Football for UA-LR
A
ndrew Rogerson, the new chancellor at UA Little Rock, has decided to study the cost of starting a major college football team on campus (plus a marching band). Technically, it would be a revival of football, dropped more than 60 years ago when the school was a junior college. Rogerson says he’s a scientist and he wants to see some numbers. No NASA engineers will be required to tell him the numbers will take some massaging to look good. They will have to be influenced by hard-to-quantify claims that football means an increased enrollment, greater college-directed philanthropy, community economic benefits and general enthusiasm for a popular sport. The Arkansas experience provides contrary evidence. Only the Arkansas Razorbacks have a self-supporting athletic department, thanks to huge revenue from a football TV contract. Premium seat sales and big donors help. Elsewhere in Arkansas, big-time
UA Little Rock is already tapping students for $3.8 million and general funds for $3.9 million to support the existing sports, with basketball the marquee sport in a department currently spending $11.4 million. UA Pine Bluff plays Division I sports. It hasn’t been a ticket to community resurgence, such as Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola seems to believe is a byproduct. Its $7 million Athletic Department is almost wholly funded by students ($1 million) and university money ($5 million). Up in Conway, the University of Central Arkansas has invested in stadium and coaches to go big-time. Its athletic department took in $12.7 million last year, $4.9 million from student fees and $4.5 million from school funds. It realized not even a half-million dollars in ticket sales. Little Rock doesn’t have much room to grow revenue from students, though grow it must to finance football, the most expensive of all sports. The school’s state money is already tapped to the maximum. It can pick up a couple of million by selling itself as a cupcake matchup to one of the handful of big-time schools that make money on athletics. But a tightening cable TV market plus evidence of
football burnout doesn’t offer much hope for TV revenue to make up shortages. Is there a major philanthropist ready to pony up a huge gift to start football at a campus still striving to establish a residential identity to go with its long mission as a commuter school catering to a large number of so-called nontraditional students? Maybe Rogerson could pay a call on the Walton family. They owe UA Little Rock big time for giving them a piece of the campus for a Little Rock School District-damaging charter school. Maybe they’d offer a gratuity for a football team. Little Rock won’t have to build a stadium. The state Parks and Tourism Department, which now controls War Memorial Stadium, is helping to pay for the football study in hopes Little Rock will produce a paying customer. The Razorbacks are down to a game a year there and it’s probably gone in a year. Taxing college students with new fees to pay the rent on a football stadium will be a mathematical equation that Chancellor Rogerson might have a hard time selling — even to a remedial math class.
grew up without my father in my household. My mother passed away when I was 13. I have incarcerated family members and implies that vioI have lost siblings to gun violence. I lived lent crimes are in four different households all over Little not a “city tragedy” Rock and North Little Rock. Additionally, I know that my education was not much when they happen different than those so-called, stereotypion Baseline Road, cal gang members: I attended nine differColonel Glenn ANTWAN ent schools before graduating from John Road or Asher AvePHILLIPS nue. Unfortunately, L. McClellan High School. Now, when I’m these are not just words, but a sentiment not at work at Wright, Lindsey and Jenthat has guided how dollars are spent and nings, I’m sure that to some people I look policies are drafted. I understand that the just like those problem gang members. I’m Power Ultra Lounge mass shooting made not different, but my opportunities were. national news, but if we needed a story in My story — from McClellan to a topThe Washington Post to make us care about five-ranked liberal arts college to law all parts and all people of our city, then we school to partner at a prestigious law firm need to do some major re-evaluating. — should not be a novel exception of some In another column, the Democrat- young black dude “making it.” Arkansas Gazette’s Nelson wrote, “Little Rock has Commitment, a leadership development a major gang problem, just as was the case program for academically talented black in the early 1990s. Most gang members are students, provided an opportunity for me young black males.” You do not have to dig to be exposed to a world that was mostly too deep to extrapolate from that assertion unknown to me. I was able to intern at local that black guys are the problem in Little businesses and build relationships that Rock. To be clear, I know Nelson, and I are lasting to this day. These experiences know that is not what he meant. Unfortu- were invaluable and have been critical in nately, I also know that some people saw my professional development. Arkansas the column as a means to reinforce the Commitment is an amazing program, but notion that “we need to get these black our community needs more programs like males under control.” it to provide opportunities and exposure I disagree with painting with such a to an even greater number of people who broad stroke because I’m not much differ- otherwise would not have it. ent than those “problem gang members.” I I’m sure my life would be different if
those opportunities were not afforded to me. People invested time and resources into programs and events that allowed me to become who I am today. We need more of that. We need to invest in opportunities for all people in Little Rock, especially the perceived gang members or those from neighborhoods that have not received adequate capital investment. We need to be painstakingly deliberate about investing in mission-driven organizations to provide positive opportunities for middle and high school students, especially during the summer months, who do not have resources to take summer vacations or attend costly summer camps. We need to engage in intracity tourism to ensure that all citizens of Little Rock are invested in neighborhoods other than the neighborhoods where they live. We need to demand capital investment in the South End, on Asher Avenue and Geyer Springs Road; I’m sure investors can make a positive return on investment for projects in those neighborhoods. Problems such as the lack of civic, educational and social opportunities for people who live south of Interstate 630, in addition to the belief that Little Rock is becoming increasingly divided, have been at crisis stage long before July 1.
sports are costly and don’t produce attendance or private contributions to match. Arkansas State MAX University in BRANTLEY Jonesboro keeps maxbrantley@arktimes.com adding to its stadium and raising coaches’ pay, running up $43 million in expenses last year according to a 2015-16 NCAA report. To cover the costs, it required $5 million in student fees and $8 million in school funds. Athletic spending has risen sharply the last five years on the ASU campus, according to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, to more than $84,000 per athlete while academic spending on campus has held essentially flat over five years at $7,983 per student. The athletic department managed only $1.7 million in ticket sales for sporting events, enough to cover about 4 percent of athletic costs. Other Division I schools struggle more.
Pay attention
“E
verything changed at about 2:30 a.m. July 1,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Rex Nelson wrote recently about the Power Ultra Lounge mass shooting. “Everything. Nobody at Little Rock City Hall seems to understand that. The city sustained a body blow as a new month dawned.” If anyone reading Nelson’s article thinks that a crisis began 2:30 a.m. July 1, 2017, then he hasn’t been paying attention to Little Rock. That’s not to diminish the severity and seriousness of the incident that occurred at Power Ultra Lounge. But our city has been experiencing challenging circumstances for a long time. It has been obvious to me and those who look like me, grew up where I grew up, or grew up in my economic environment that the city has sustained multiple body blows over recent years. After the mass shooting, I recall a woman saying that she overheard someone say, “This was not supposed to happen [in] downtown [Little Rock].” In response to hearing this statement, she said, “Well … where was it supposed to happen?” I also heard another Democrat-Gazette columnist, John Brummett, say recently that the shooting is “a city tragedy because it happened downtown.” Again, this sentiment, whether unintentional or not,
Antwan Phillips is a lawyer with the Wright Lindsey Jennings firm.
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arktimes.com JULY 20, 2017
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