Content area
Full Text
San Jose State University is hiring an outside marketing agency to stir up lackluster fan support for Spartans football as the school fights to stay in the highest level of college athletics.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association on April 26 passed a series of new attendance and scholarship requirements for colleges to maintain Division 1-A standing for their football programs, a move that could knock San Jose State out of the sport altogether, says university President Bob Caret.
The toughest two standards for San Jose State to meet will be a mandatory minimum of five home games and an average home attendance of 15,000 per game. The new rules go into effect for the 2004 season.
A Division 1-A football rating has come to define a school since the NCAA split its Division, 1 football into three divisions in the 1970s. It provides a university with prestige and notoriety and fosters a higher level of community and alumni pride than Division 1-AA or Division 1-AAA schools, says Gayle Kludt, president of the 1,500-member Spartan Foundation, the university's booster and sports scholarship organization.
San Jose State finished 115th, last in attendance among NCAA Division 1-A football programs in 2001 with an average of 6,338 fans at its four home games.
"We know we have to get more aggressive marketing this than we were," Mr. Caret says. "Our biggest challenge will be attendance."
The marketing efforts may focus on trying to attract the roughly 90,000 San Jose State alumni now living in the Bay Area, as well as major corporations, which could buy blocks of tickets for employees and clients, Mr. Caret says. The school also would like to entice more students - who already get free...