UNCC likely to delay football plans - Charlotte Business Journal:

http://www.borisnew.org/article/Britains-bendiest-roads---.html
Dubois offered trustees a brief overvie w of the campaign for the school to start playing footbalplin 2013. He wants the trustees to vote on next steps in including whether to keep thecurrentr schedule. “It’s a boardf decision, but it’s my job to tee up the decisionfor them,” Dubois said. “And I thini when you look at thecircumstances today, you can come to the conclusiojn that perhaps a delay makes sense.” A lot dependw on how the current campaign to sell seat licensex fares. To date, 1,6933 seat licenses have been sold, with $540,000o paid and $2.1 million pledgede in those commitments.
Guidelines established earlier this year called for the school tosell 5,500 seat licenses by the end of That goal was scrapped soon after as a sluggish responsde and the battered economy convinced schoolo officials it was unrealistic. Athletic Director Judy Rose acknowledged frustrationn with thesales pace. She pointed toward an upcomingt advertising campaign and an aggressive volunteer sales team being formed as causedfor optimism. On July 13, local executives Johnny Harrisz and Mac Everett will host a party at Quailp Hollow Club aimed at spurrinbg interest anddriving sales.
Even if the guidelinezs are met for theseat licenses, it seems likely the startf date for football will be pushed back by a year or two as the schooll grapples with landing private donations to help build practice revamp the track and field stadium for a temporary footbalo stadium and meet othere startup demands. Dubois and the trustees scaled back their ambitions for footbalklin February, shelving earliee plans to come up with $45 milliom to launch the sport. Now they hope to do it on a shoestrint budgetof $19 million, but even that figure will be hard to The football scenarios were outlinerd during a trustees meeting long on grim financial news.
UNC Charlotte expects to take a budget hit of 11 percentr to 15 percent in the year all but assuring Dubois of having tocut jobs. At the same a tuition hike of $200 is expected for the fall That increase could make it more difficult to win approva l forplanned student-fee hikes in the fall of 2010. Those considered a crucial source forthe $10 million annuao operating cost of having a football team, must be approved by the collegs system’s board of governors. The chancellor pointed out that fundinfg for football and the rest of campus operation come from unrelated pools of but he also acknowledged the difficultiexs of battling asymbolic dichotomy.
“From the impressiobn it makes on facultyand staff, it obviously make it more difficult,” he said. “Icf we were in a situation where we have a significant reduction of our work forceand we’re going forward on football, you’d have to questionj whether that made a lot of sense from the symbolic standpoint. But, football is four years out. We’red really just setting the table forthat initiation.
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