By Austin Turner — Executive Editor
It’s no secret that San Jose State athletics has been in hot water to start the summer. After the Spartan Daily revealed alleged money mismanagement and a letter of grievances from various SJSU athletes, the department has been in desperate need of positive PR.
It’s important to give credit where it’s due. Wednesday’s groundbreaking ceremony of the new football operations center and renovations to CEFCU Stadium was a huge first step in repairing public perception for Marie Tuite and company.
Is a lot of the flak that Tuite has received deserved? Of course.
SJSU’s softball program, one of the winningest at the school this decade, was without a field until the final series of the 2018 season. The demolition of Bud Winter Field is a brutal erasure of the university’s proudest achievements in and outside of sports.
Non-revenue sports, particularly women’s sports, have been neglected, much to the dismay of the athletes affected. But we need to realize what can be achieved on the field as a result of these renovations.
In my year at San Jose State and with The Spear, I have read countless pieces by journalists around the Mountain West calling for the conference to oust our beloved Spartans. Chris Murray of the Reno Gazette Journal wrote a column last year that got much of the college football community talking about SJSU’s presence in the MW.
The conversation continues today. Just last week, Mountain West Wire’s Matthew Kenerly wrote about the topic, even siding with the Spartans in a thorough and fair article.
The point is, with mounting pressures to increase the competitiveness of SJSU athletics, Tuite is addressing the problem at its core. Whether athletes of non-revenue sports want to hear it or not, football is the circulatory system of nearly all Division I athletic programs.
According to the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis database, SJSU’s football program accounts for $10,921,731 of the $28,344,484 in total revenue brought in by all men’s and women’s teams at the school. That’s over a third of all revenue.
The non-revenue sports, especially the most successful programs like softball and women’s soccer, deserve to be in a conference as prestigious as the Mountain West. Those teams have shown that they are capable of competing in, and winning championships in the conference.
But the fact is that the Mountain West is known first and foremost for football. It’s the flagship sport for the most successful conference in the FBS’s group of five.
In SJSU’s six seasons in the MW, the football team is 22-52. That’s 22 wins in six years. The Spartans have 22 losses in just the last two seasons. That level of competitiveness is unacceptable for a conference as invested in football as the Mountain West. How unfair would it be for the Mountain West Champion SJSU women’s soccer team to be forced to play in a lower-tier conference only because the football program wasn’t at MW standards?
That’s why this football operations center is a huge positive for SJSU. It shows signs of commitment to the conference that all Spartans desperately want to stay in. An investment in the football team is an investment to all teams.
A new, high-tech and modern football operations can attract potential recruits that want to feel like they’re at a big time college football program. The renovations to CEFCU extend the lifespan of a stadium that has been showing its age.
The stadium has been commonly rated as the worst in the conference, and improvements will help draw fans in and show the rest of the Mountain West that The Bay does care about football after all.
That said, there is obviously a lot of work to be done still by the athletic department. Many of the allegations in the letter sent to President Mary Papazian were especially heinous and unacceptable.
The treatment of non-revenue teams, particularly women’s teams, from athletics administration is simply wrong and improper if those allegations are true. This piece is by no means a defense of those actions if they really did take place.
However, in terms of on-field product and the good of all San Jose State athletics programs, any commitments to improving the football program is an encouraging step and need to be met with positivity. What’s good for football is good for SJSU athletics as a whole.
Follow Austin on Twitter @AustinTurner_