— Editor’s note: The following column from the Best of West collection was originally published in the Dec. 15, 1989 Port Arthur News.

 

Sometimes it gets lonely at the top.  I suspect Lamar University president Dr. Billy Franklin is going to find that out in the aftermath of his courageous decision to recommend pulling the plug on Lamar University’s football program.

Deep down this was a decision he didn’t want to make.  Billy Franklin likes football, and sincerely wanted a successful program at Lamar.  Professionally,  being the president who sacked football is not something that will look particularly good on his resume.

”It was a gut-wrenching decision.” Franklin would say later.  “In my heart, I wanted to see the program maintained.  But it was my responsibility to recommend what I felt was in the best interest of the total program.  That’s what I did.”

Franklin’s decision in itself was the correct one, given the financial circumstances, red-ink projections of continuing football and overall apathy toward the program.  Unfortunately, the correctness of that decision will be lost somewhat in the backlash of a last-gasp fundraiser.

Charlie Gibbs and Frank Messina, in response to a challenge thrown down by LU chancellor Dr. George McLaughlin, sold 4,018 tickets in little more than three weeks.  They wound up more that 1,000 tickets over their goal, and fueled hopes the program would be saved.  When it wasn’t, there was a feeling of betrayal, of “we’ve been had.”

From a credibility standpoint, Lamar would have been much better off to announce the program was being dropped immediately after the season ended.  Many of the same people so upset about Thursday’s announcement would still have been upset had it been done that way, but there wouldn’t be the accompanying feelings of having been misled.

Actually, there is some evidence to indicate the master plan didn’t call for a fundraiser. Franklin, prior to the season finale against McNeese State, had been briefing regents on the financial realities of the situation.  He’d done it in a way perceived as meaning he was headed toward a recommendation to drop the program.

One regent, Wayne Reaud, didn’t embrace the idea football had to be dropped.  Reaud, some insiders suspect, was so upset with the program that he leaked the plan to a newspaper.

With the newspaper then pressing for details, McLaughlin’s plea for the community to raise $400,000 followed.  That proclamation of Nov. 11 led to a two-pronged fundraiser.  While Gibbs-Messina were to raise $125,000 by selling 3,000 season tickets, Lamar would try to come up with $170,000 to wipe out this season’s deficit.

In a worst-case scenario to support an announcement to drop the program, Gibbs-Messina surpassed their requirement by 25 percent.  Lamar, meanwhile, barely got a third of the way to $170,000.  And, in the meantime, radio and TV hype made it look like the battle to save the program had been won.

Imagine, then, the surprise and bitterness that greeted Franklin’s recommendation. Gibbs, Messina and most of those who showed up Thursday went in thinking they’d won, that Franklin would make a recommendation to continue.  When he surprised them, the result was public relations disaster.

Franklin, whose presentation was smooth, well organized and convincing, did not look like a happy camper at the end.  Asked if there wasn’t a better way, if Lamar made a mistake by allowing the excitement created by the fund raiser,  he sighed and said: “As you know, we did not elect to play it out the way it got played out.”

It is indeed unfortunate for Lamar that things were allowed to play out the way they did.  In the emotion of the moment, it’s convenient to forget the statement made when the Cardinals finale against McNeese drew a season low attendance of 3,200.

Despite all the media hype that a strong show of support was needed, despite the fact Lamar was in position to have its first non-losing season of the 1980’s , 3200 people turned out.  At stand-up-and-be-counted time, Lamar drew its smallest crowd of the season.

More than anything that’s happened over the past decade, I think the crowd for the McNeese game was symbolic of what Lamar football means to the Golden Triangle.  Basically, people can take it or leave it, and most of them choose to leave it.

It’s easy to point fingers, to make excuses to say Lamar didn’t market its product.  But the bottom line, over an extended period of time, was it finally became impossible to justify large sums of money for a program playing to empty seats.

Ultimately, the villains in this plot extend far beyond Lamar and its control.  The big fish are swallowing the little fish in college athletics.  Division 1-AA is almost like a death sentence, except for those with extraordinary deep pockets or creative funding.

Lamar wasn’t the first 1-AA program to fold and it won’t be the last.  Sooner or later, other schools in the same boat are going to have to bail out.  It wasn’t an easy decision to make, as Billy Franklin will attest, but it was the responsible one.

Sports editor Bob West can be e-mailed at rdwest@usa.net