Central faces challenges
Reprinted with permission from the Dayton Daily News
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
The return of football to Central State University marks a symbolic completion of the school’s climb out of disarray and crisis. It is a time for celebration.
Central State is not quite Central State without football. Having a football program is necessary to keep the school functioning as the one that people remember. It’s also necessary to give CSU the kind of profile it needs for recruitment purposes.
CSU continues to have an intensely loyal alumni community. That’s one of the school’s assets. Alumni ties need to be nurtured. And sports is an important way of nurturing them. The connection between sports and loyal alumni is part of the American collegiate scene.
And yet putting football’s return at the end of a long list of other post-meltdown changes was appropriate, as was requiring a private fund-raising effort for the game.
Football was not sufficient before the collapse to prevent the school’s collapse. Many other important things have to be in place.
Even now, the school’s overall situation remains tough, despite enormous progress in the administrative and academic realms. Indeed, the return of football comes at a time when events have made clearer than ever that life will never be easy for CSU.
The state is giving the school all manner of trouble with its funding. Meanwhile, the nearby presence of Wright State University continues to undermine the goal of attracting white students, as some other historically black colleges have done.
Meanwhile, the efforts of larger public universities to diversify their student bodies have complicated the task of attracting qualified black students to CSU.
And, most frustrating, the effort to maintain a small niche — to, among other things, serve people who might not otherwise go to college — is complicated by the institution’s very smallness. The smallness eliminates the savings that come with size and makes the school relatively expensive to maintain on a per-student basis.
Into this treacherously difficult terrain comes the football program. It will feel under pressure to succeed on the field, a task that will apparently not be easy. (Perhaps now that the program is actually in place, rather than a dream, recruitment will improve.)
The university administration, which has done so much to bring the school back, need not be lectured about the need to keep pursuit of athletic success under control. It knows the dangers.
Indeed, the school community as a whole seems admirably focused. Amid all the problems, there’s a sense at CSU that the current teachers, students and administrators are playing a crucial role in the survival of a school and the rebuilding of its reputation. The sense that this is a historic time fuels a seriousness of purpose that the broader community — and the state government — should notice and welcome.
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