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More schools getting in the game;Athletics enhance college experience, but cost is an issue.
Daniel Kaufman's ambition is not to use sports at Georgia Gwinnett College to spread the school's name, nor to triumph in their victories. The president of the 4-year-old institution has set his sights elsewhere.
It is "less producing spectacular varsity athletic teams than it is engaging our students in these kinds of activities, either as participants or spectators, and getting them connected with the college," he said.
Among Kaufman's colleagues around the state, motives differ, but the plan of action is similar. Several Georgia colleges and universities have either started or committed to starting intercollegiate athletics programs, some even taking the leap to add football.
Kennesaw State plans to start football in 2014. Reinhardt University and Berry College are both considering starting football programs, Reinhardt as early as 2013. Georgia Gwinnett College is proposing to start an athletic program in 2012 and the Savannah College of Art and Design's Atlanta campus began fielding men's and women's cross country, golf and tennis teams this fall.
Other schools are adding sports to their programs, particularly lacrosse. They come on the heels of the most noteworthy recent arrival, Georgia State's football team.
While Kaufman wryly acknowledged that "our timing is perfectly bad," his and other schools' sports-hungry initiatives are mirrored nationwide.
Since 2000, 28 NCAA schools have begun or resumed football, 14 in the past three years. The NCAA's membership grew from 1,261 in 2000 to 1,291 in 2009.
The NAIA has 290 members, down from 332 in 2002 but up from 277 in 2007.
The endeavors do not come cheaply. Just to begin play, Kennesaw State estimates it will need to come up with $10 million for football. Kaufman roughly calculated the initial budget for the school's athletic department to be $1.5 million.
The two schools should expect questions from the University System of Georgia's budget office if they submit student fees increases to fund the new teams. Once the budget office signs off, the fees request go before the state Board of Regents for approval.
"Obviously, anybody who's adding a program that costs any money is going to come under real scrutiny," regent Richard Tucker said. "Sometimes spending money on a program is really good in slower economic times if you're using it as an investment to a bigger return. I'm not sure that athletic programs necessarily fall in that category."
Kaufman said that Georgia Gwinnett's teams would be paid for with student fees, so long as they were approved, private contributions, loans and money from the school's foundation.
Initially, the school would contain costs by using community fields and gyms rather than building new facilities for sports such as basketball, soccer and tennis.
"My plan would be to have everything be self-sufficient over the years," said Kaufman, who formed a committee to explore teams beginning in the fall of 2012.
Georgia Gwinnett College, which has an enrollment of more than 5,500, would likely compete in NAIA. A considerable difference between NAIA and NCAA is the latter requires schools to field a minimum of 10 teams. NAIA has no minimums.
"As long as you keep it in perspective of how [athletics] contributes to the institution instead of vice versa, you're doing it the right way," Kaufman said.
SCAD Atlanta is competing in NAIA and has no immediate plans to add more teams. It has recruited and put on scholarship athletes from across the country. The tennis roster includes Daniela Vukadinovic of Serbia, who transferred from Auburn when she heard SCAD Atlanta was starting a tennis team.
The 5-year-old school, which has increased enrollment from 77 in its first year to nearly 1,800, began its teams as a response to student inquiries, school President Pharris Johnson said. The enrollment boom has helped provide the margin to pay for the teams, whose members are "student-artist-athletes."
"Sports are part of the overall college experience," Johnson said. "I think many students expect that."
In football, Reinhardt University President Thomas Isherwood sees an enrollment driver. The school has a total enrollment of 1,224, which he wants to increase to 1,500. Reinhardt aims to follow the example of Shorter University. With the help of football and other sports, the Rome school's enrollment went from 849 (57 percent female) in 2004 to more than 1,500 (50 percent female). Almost half of the students are athletes.
A team would provide a solution to students who "are interested in Reinhardt and they're interested in some academic programs and interested in our community, but they say, 'Gosh, if you only had football,'" Isherwood said.
