St. Johns Football

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 http://www.rumbleinthegarden.com/2012/3/9/2855776/conference-realignment-big-east-temple

from this article it states that:
"The Big East has also offered financial assistance to Villanova to cover the program's exploratory costs as they consider a move from FCS football to FBS football, where the Big East Conference competes."

Is there ever a possibility that St. John's is able to bring a Football team back. The one thing missing from my college career was the college football experience.

If the Big East conference invests into its own schools to develop a Big East Football program. Could it happen?
 
no. i don't understand why students are always asking this. when football was at st. john's it  was never big. however if football ever comes back to st. john's the problem would be a stadium. where on earth would they play? citi field? 
 
well it used to be a D1 AA program in a commuter school where even to this day most commuters are still apathetic about their school.

Now you would be talking about a school that is moving towards a very large cross country student base, where year to year the student base has more pride that in seasons past.
 
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We can't even sell out the Garden on our own merits. And students won't give a crap about a football team that would get waxed 56-0 every game for its first three seasons of existence.

Plus, Villanova already has a program. Cheaper for the Big East to invest in something that already exists.
 
no. i don't understand why students are always this. when football was at st. john's it  was never big. however if football ever comes back to st. john's the problem would be a stadium. where on earth would they play? citi field?
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I would rather us become best basketball team in the country Yr in and yr out . Up our revenue and . be able to Financially support . a football. team and stadium and what ever goes with it without increasing students tuition making it necessary for them to increase their debt and having to repay it over 20 yr s after graduation Otherwise football is nice and I am a fan.but unless . it can be worked out with out putting it on the back of future students Id pass
 
it could happen. that's if the new york state legislature follows their connecticut counterparts and gives st john's 90 million dollars to get the ball rolling.

anything short of that...forget it.
 
 From what i hear, St. John's has such a large endowment it receives no aid from the state as opposed to other private schools, which allows the university to operate in such a manner that they can do pretty much whatever they want.

ie. if Harrington wakes up tomorrow morning and does not like a certain club or team... goodbye no questions asked.

Does anyone know if this is actually true, that the St. John's endowment is so large?
 
Red Johnnies, we have a nice endowment ask he (JSJ) is the resident expert on here about that.

But we are not a Notre Dame or an Ivy with almost unlimited resources. Villanova is 2 years away from being NCAA D-1AA champs, they are in a far better position to jump than SJU was in the 1990's when we had football.  

SJU football is dead and will never return.
 
In a perfect world we would have a football program but the reality is very few small/private schools can sustain a major college football program. Think of the major players in football, almost all are big state schools. Yes there are exceptions but once you get past Notre Dame, BYU, BC, Miami & Syracuse you really don't have many private schools left that can compete with the big boys. Can anyone really argue that Duke, Wake Forest, SMU & Northwestern are big time college football prorgams? I know some of these schools have had flashes in the past but they will never been confused with a USC, Ohio St, Michigan, Texas, Penn St, etc. There is a reason why schools like Gonzaga, Seton Hall, Providence, DePaul. Marquette, Xavier & yes St. John's don't have football programs. Some will say Title 9 but in the end it also comes down to the money & support needed to sustain & we just don't have that unfortunately.  
 
We should stick to what we do best: In Men's sport's: Soccer, Hoops, and Baseball

Can also add Women's basketball and fencing to the list.

Football, IMO, is a non-starter.

As of 2010 our endowment is a touch over $300 million as per U.S. News. 

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/st.-john's-university,-new-york-2823 

Can compare this with those who have huge endowments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
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Considering the number of SJU grads, our endowment stinks. It is pretty much the same as Villanova, who have about 7000 undergrads. We have about 20,000. When FH arrived, about 3% of alumni were contributors. I think the number now is between 15-20%, still anemic. And, no, buying season tickets is not being a contributor, although many season tiucket holders think that way.
 
well it used to be a D-1AA program in a commuter school where even to this day most commuters are still apathetic about their school.

Now you would be talking about a school that is moving towards a very large cross country student base, where year to year the student base has more pride that in seasons past.
Click to expand...
 

Yep.... I played football for St. John's from 93-95 when it was still a commuter school and when it was transitioning from a D-III program to a D-1AA prrogram (93-94 were D-III, 95 was the first year St. John's was D-1AA). We never really got much support from our fellow students for home games and Football has a tremendous budget. Travel, hotels, food, insurance, equipment etc for approx 50-60 football players was hard to maintain with so little support. Easily the most expensive sport to maintain on campus. Once we hit 1AA the need for a bigger field/better facilities would soon be apparent. Hofstra which lost its football program about a year ago went through a similar situation. They went from DIII to D 1AA, built a brand new, bigger field, weight room etc and had good success for years. The program utimately failed because they averaged barely 3000 fans in a 15,000 seat stadium.
Support from the students and alumni is key.... St. Johns also needs more room for a bigger stadium and new facilities which you can forget about on the Queens campus. I always thought if the program were to come back, maybe we can just raize the Staten Island campus and build a nice field there as the base of football operations ;o). I would love for us to bring football back but we will need alooot of help.

Deac 
 
We should stick to what we do best: In Men's sport's: Soccer, Hoops, and Baseball

Can also add Women's basketball and fencing to the list.

Football, IMO, is a non-starter.

As of 2010 our endowment is a touch over $300 million as per U.S. News. 

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/st.-john's-university,-new-york-2823 

Can compare this with those who have huge endowments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
Click to expand...
 

Considering the number of SJU grads, our endowment stinks. It is pretty much the same as Villanova, who have about 7000 undergrads. We have about 20,000. When FH arrived, about 3% of alumni were contributors. I think the number now is between 15-20%, still anemic. And, no, buying season tickets is not being a contributor, although many season tiucket holders think that way.
Click to expand...
 

Our endowment is a function of at least a few of the following factors:

1) Up until Fr. Harrington we didn't have a Development Office. Thus we were behind the proverbial curve.

2) Most students , at least historically, who enrolled at St. John's were the first members of their families to attend college. Some entered professions , such as teaching, which does not pay a great deal or issue stock to their employees. Equity builds wealth, a weekly salary doesn't.

In addition, many (although some do) of those colleges that have big endowments do not have a School of Education.

3) It is not unusual to find a fair amount of St. John's grads entering civil service careers which do not pay a great deal of money. It's the rare grad who becomes a fireman or policeman at G'Town, ND, or BC.

4) St. John's is not a "finishing school" and that's OK. That said, we are not very high on the list of corporate recruiters on a relative basis.
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Arguably, our grads, on a relative basis, may and typically do, have more hurdles to leap in order to land a job at a Fortune 500 than say someone at Duke, Northwestern, "fill in the blank" college or any Ivy since it is assumed that a self-selection exercise has already taken place since those kids were already admitted to some of the best school's in the nation. Thus, someone who went to these types of schools generally have a head start in terms of salary and what I would call as a higher level of "marketable" experience.

5) St. John's does not have a School of Engineering, which may produce grads who may earn more than some other fields of study.

6) At some of the higher endowed schools, grads contribute because they want their sons and daughters to attend and thus write a check of some size every year. Legacy counts for a lot when it comes to contributions at these schools.

7) Prior to the building of dorms, arguably many students didn't form a strong bond to St. John's because they didn't spend a great deal of time there once they finished their classes for the day.

All that said, I think the university does a great job to reach out to grads to get them to embrace St. John's and its mission.

The university is certainly doing their part, it's up for our alumni to do theirs.

Is it too much to ask each grad to kick in $100 a year ? Maybe for some the answer is yes. And if it is, it is not the fault of St. John's by any stretch, IMO.
 
JSJ, one other factor, our academics and selectivity are not up there with some of these other schools, thus, our graduates are less marketable to graduate schools. Undergrads getting postgrad degrees tend to be wealthier and more likely to give back to the school. Plus our graduate programs themselves are below others academically, therfore our graduate program grads don't make the big bucks like their counterparts from the more selective schools (no Med School either).

For example, Holy Cross, a tiny but selective school, places way more grads in Med Schools, good law schools and quality professional programs than much larger SJU. HC has maintained a good D 1 AA football program but runs into the debate, every few years, about dropping football because it is so very costly.

SJU has many postgrads who could care less about the University as a whole and the sports programs even less so. I went to the Law School and found total apathy for our school and sports teams from my classmates, a bunch of whom went to ND and other very good "sleep-away" schools; the ND undergrads were more likely to follow ND and give money to ND than SJU/SJU Law. My wife graduated with a PsyD from our Psychology dept., and there was no interest in our school or its sports teams there at all. These kids want the piece of paper and that's all. Not even fond of where they went (in many cases); not likely to contribute much. Not even loyal in the sense of hiring grads of SJU, when they are out in the workforce and employing people. Sad but true.

For some reason, I have found the older University graduates, especially of the Bklyn campus and early Hillcrest grads, and Pharmacy grads, all tend to look on SJU much more fondly and thus contributors at higher levels.    
 
Look at the success Hofstra had with their program, and look where it is now.

Obviously, it takes BIG bucks and the right population/demographics to be successful.

I would love if we had a big time football program, but I just don't ever see that happening.

Go to a few soccer games and call it futbol. 
 
For the majority of schools, football is a black hole into which they dump money. Very few schools make a profit on football. I sat next to a Cuse fan at the BE Tournament last night and he said the Syracuse Athletic Department has lost money the last five years because of football related expenses and not enough football generated income. Why would St. John's want to get involved in college football? 
 
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