College Football Season Underway, Except at City College

Why don’t we have a team?College football season is underway around the country, and many new City College students wonder why our college doesn’t have a team. Neighboring schools like Columbia, Fordham and Mount Saint Vincent have football teams, so why not CCNY?On the CCNY Secrets Facebook page , a poster recently complained: This place is sooooooo boring. We need a football team!” About 100 people “liked” that post.While the athletic department’s mission statement states they “address the recreational and athletic needs of the CCNY community,” the top college sport has been absent for over 60 years.College assistant Katelynn Kozak said the school used to have a soccer and football field where the NAC is currently located.“Having a football team now would’ve been fun school spirit,” she mentioned.Practice space is tight around Harlem and college funding for sports remains very limited. An athletic official at CCNY, who asked that his name be withheld, said, “Liability insurance would be a budget issue, even if we did have the money for equipment, uniforms, and travel.”In fact, the school once operated as a Division I school, but was dropped to Division III following a basketball point shaving scandal in 1951.The anonymous athletic department official said the school would benefit from a football team “because of the direct correlation of successful sports teams with positive student enrollment.Don’t hold your breath for Beaver football. In fact, maybe it’s better to have no team than a losing team like the Columbia Lions who lost every game last season.In the meantime, other fall teams have started their seasons—men and women’s soccer, tennis, cross country and women's volleyball seasons are all underway.