When word began to spread across campus this fall that the Northeastern football team was likely to share the fate of the Boston University team that once played on Commonwealth Avenue, student reaction was surprisingly silent. There was only one Facebook group rallying to support the team, with just 46 members, and no real buzz or outcry was present around campus after it was announced that the football team would likely be cut.
Perhaps it’s because football isn’t the dominant sport on campus. The men’s basketball and hockey teams regularly play to large student crowds at Matthews Arena, while the Husky gridiron is all the way out in Brookline at Parsons Field. To get there, students have to ride school buses that leave from Forsyth Street before home games, or navigate the D-line of the T to Longwood, then walk to the field. Only a few games a year, like Homecoming, see big crowds flock to the stadium.
By the end of last semester, all looked bleak and it appeared certain that future Northeastern students would be wearing “Undefeated Since 2008” T-shirts. But last-minute help arrived in the form of a late Hail Mary play from a group of dedicated alumni called the “Friends of Northeastern Athletics.”
On Dec. 5, it looked like the Huskies wouldn’t get another chance to keep playing, with some insiders saying a decision to cut the team had already been made. That night, a group of about 100 alumni met in Matthews Arena to discuss the fate of the team. The crowd overflowed the folding chairs set up to accommodate them in the building’s lobby, so many stood for the full extent of the three and a half hour meeting. The group, ranging from recent graduates to former Huskies in their 70s, grilled Vice President and University Counsel Vincent Lembo about why alumni weren’t tapped sooner to help meet the $3.5 million fund shortfall in the Athletics Department.
While neither Athletics Director Peter Roby nor Vice President of Marketing and Communications Brian Kenny confirmed the verdict last week, Roby reportedly told the Friends of Northeastern Athletics at a Dec. 20 meeting there was, “no reason not to believe they will not be playing Northeastern football four years from now.”
The student body is usually quick to adopt an issue-of-the-moment, whether it’s reforming the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution or eliminating the never-ending NU Shuffle. But in this case, there was no organized effort to save the team, and by extension, no advocacy for the future of the students who receive scholarships to play football.
It was alumni acting on their own, without the prodding of any formal organization, who seem to have saved the team. It was the former Huskies who took real action. To date, alumni have verbally committed to about $100,000 out of the $3.5 million needed (just under 3 percent) to help fund the athletics department fully. More action is needed, from both the student body and alumni, to guarantee Northeastern football continues.
The current student body, if it lies in agreement, should match the enthusiasm of the alumni and show to the administration that we want the football team to survive. An individual student may not have the ability to speak loudly enough to be heard, but the wild, raucous cheers of Husky fans will surely be heard by Roby, President Joseph Aoun and the board of trustees, with whom this major decision ultimately lies.
