Hawaii AD: "Very real" possibility the football program shuts down.

I don't know if it's an extra home game necessarily, but teams do still get an extra game for playing there.

 

I live in London so I'm biased. The big obstacle is that if the NFL wants a team over there, the British or London government is not going to pony up for a brand-new spanking stadium. As much as the English love American culture, the sport is a marginal one.

That being said, it wouldn't take much to sell out 12,500-capacity Wembley Stadium. You have resident Americans, a hardcore British fanbase and failing all else, tourists. And with the tens of millions flowing into every NFL club from the TV money, any franchise would be in the black just by starting.

Even with the hurdles of transatlantic traveling, it could be made to work. It wouldn't be great. It would be like the Big Macs you get over here. A little smaller, a little less tastier and a lot more expensive. But it wouldn't be the Hindenberg.

 

There are around 20 D1 colleges who make money on Athletics. The rest are subsidized by the state or student fees, etc.

You're going to end college athletics in general, other than intramural?

 

Britwrit, I wonder if the novelty factor of American football would wear off for a London franchise, particularly an expansion one starting with a bunch of 3-13 seasons.

 

Moreover, how are you going to recruit a team built on a premise of getting its brains beaten in all the time? There's no evidence that Hawaii can consistently recruit a top-level team, even with the geographic advantages it does possess.

 

Yeah. That's a good point. I'm probably wrong.

One season, towards the end of NFL Europe, I went to the five or so home games of the London Monarchs. Tickets cost about the same for a movie ticket. But alas, the stands at Stamford Bridge were on average - maybe - a quarter full. Sure, it was the spring but nobody was in the mood for mediocre football.

 

While the weather and beaches, etc., might be wonderful, being 2,500 miles from the mainland is a decided geographic disadvantage in recruiting.

 

No university in the continental 48 has any particular interest in seeing D-I football, or basketball, or hockey, succeed in Alaska or Hawaii.

Therefore any universities in those states which feel it is vital to their interests should bear every single nickel or dime of expense (especially travel) necessary for it to happen.

The hotel/tourism/casino industry in Hawaii and the oil industry in Alaska should kick in enough bucks to make the programs competitive.

It would be about 10 minutes oil revenues for Alaska -- or Hawaii -- to build a 45,000-seat Miller Park-Safeco Field retractable-domed stadium.

(Just think of a Final Four in Honolulu.)


The billionaires have the bucks. Take it out of their asses.

 

I am sure if Hawaii drops football leaving the MWC with 11 football members (its other programs are in the Big West), either NM State or Idaho, football independents who have other conference affiliations for their other sports, would love to fill that hole.

NMSU fill that bill better because they could join in all sports and leave the WAC, but that would create an unbalanced, 11-team MWC. Idaho should just rejoin the Big Sky for football and become an across-the-board member instead of an every-sport-but-football member.

 

Why in the world would the NFL want to put a team in a 12,500-seat stadium?

 

You aren't taking into account the exchange rate. Or something.

 

Both major University of Alaska campuses, in Fairbanks and Anchorage, are D2, except in hockey.