Louisiana Monroe Is Living Beyond Its Means

Update: Students voted against the proposal.

There are 120 teams in Division I-A college football, but some are on the list by name only. They truly don't belong on the same field as the big boys.

Louisiana Monroe is one such team. The Warhawks have yet to play in a bowl game since the program was elevated to I-A in 1994 and the program remains woefully underfunded. According to the Monroe News-Star, Louisiana Monroe has the lowest annual athletic budget — $8.5 million — in I-A. Of that total, $2.98 million went to football in 2009, according to the Equity in Athletics Database.

Now the school holding out a tin cup in hopes the 6,007-member student body can help.

This week, students will vote on a referendum to dramatically increase aid to the athletic department. Students currently pay $22 a semester toward athletics, but the fee will increase to $10 a semester hour up to 12 credit hours, meaning the majority of students will pay $120 a semester.

Coach Todd Berry has been lobbying students to approve the measure.

"It has to do with wanting to be identified and feeling prideful about being able to name the school that they're at, and a lot of that has to do with the general feeling that I think athletics can generate," he said. "We're not wasteful in terms of what we do with our finances.

"This is already kind of at the bottom of Division I-A, and there's things that need to happen that are going to help us have success."

Commenters on Warhawk Nation back Berry, but judging by comments on the News-Star site, the coach is losing the argument and likely, Wednesday's election. A sampling:

• "Are these people nuts? ...  I pay enough for tuition and books, the last thing I need is another $120 added to my bill for something that I could care less about."
• "So ULM athletics — which hasn’t had a winning football season in Malone Stadium since 1993 — wants students to pay a fine — oops, I mean, fee, to continue funding the losing tradition? Sure, football isn't the only athletic endeavor on campus but it's by far the most costly in addition to being the worst performer."
• "The problem I see here is the the folks in athletics aren't doing their job. These fools need to go out and do some serious fundraising, securing sponsorships, etc."
• "If they want to fill the stadium, let's see them schedule games between West Monroe High School and ULM, just prepare for ULM to lose."
• "Before making each ULM student pony up nearly $250 a year just to reinforce failure, perhaps the university should first honestly explore the option of moving its football team to the FCS.

Couldn't agree more. Louisiana Monroe — like many I-A teams — is simply out of its league.

Comments

[Matt Sarzyniak]

Heard that ULM was rushed into the Sun Belt. La. Tech left SBC under less-than-ideal terms (long story) and ULM was called up a few years early. Also why they left their other sports in Southland for a few years before having hand forced to move all sports to SBC.

[arkansasguy]

Most of the people who comment on The News Star website ridicule anything positive that tries to be done anywhere (ULM or otherwise). These people are either Louisiana Tech fans, or LSU fans who never went to college and need something successful to latch on to without actually having to contribute anything to make it happen.

They are the same people who demand improved roads but refuse to pay a .001 percent infrastructure tax.

As far as students go, I can almost guarantee this referendum will pass tomorrow. It just doesn't appear that way because the ones who don't want to pay an extra $98 per semester (or, rather, not get a TOPS refund of that $98 of free money) are much louder whiners.

[NLU_Indian82]

The ULM Administration is touting this as an Arts Reform and Campus Beautification to sell this to the students. Let's see - $20,000 for campus improvements + $75,000 art grants + $1,850,000 Athletic Tax = Load of Crap!! If they really want to reform the arts and beautify that school they would drop all sports and use the money to fund the academic programs they just dropped...this would immediately clean up the schools image because the students wouldn't have to look at the steaming pile every weekend that they call a football team!!!