- June 11th, 2006, 6:31 pm
#17880
This could potentially be a blockbuster for the Big South if CCU doesn't bolt to the SoCon. If ETSU were to bring back football they could join the Big South and get us auto bid eligible in half the time it will take for PC to help us any.
Task force rejuvenates ETSU football supportershttp://www.johnsoncitypress.com/Detail. ... S&ID=57064
By Trey Williams
Press Sports Writer
twilliams@johnsoncitypress.com
June 11, 2006
UNICOI – News that East Tennessee State President Paul Stanton has agreed to work with the Buccaneer Football & Friends Foundation in an attempt to bring back football generated most every reaction from shock to jubilation Saturday at the foundation’s third annual cookout.
The Farmhouse Gallery & Gardens barbecue appeared to taste even better to fans who were starved for good news at the same venue the past two Junes.
Willie Bush, an All-Ohio Valley Conference defensive end who played on John Robert Bell’s 1969 Grantland Rice Bowl team, appeared more relieved than elated.
“I think it was definitely a positive move to form a task force,” Bush said. “Actually, I was surprised. It’s a big step in the right direction toward bringing it back.”
Obviously, many are still skeptical. But Stanton’s tone, both in a Friday meeting where he told the foundation board members he’d start the task force and an interview afterward, zapped a lot skepticism.
“I think all of us that attended the meeting came away very pleased,” said foundation board member Ken Simonds. “It’s a long way from the wish to the accomplishment, but I feel very good about it happening right now.”
There is talk of an outdoor football stadium, perhaps near the Appalachian Fair grounds in Gray.
“A venue is something that has to be considered, and I am 100 percent convinced that it has to be outside,” Stanton said. “Any of those things would be open to consideration.”
He also indicated that football’s return will hinge on being done the right way.
“I think we will have a better business plan and market better,” Stanton said.
Many believe ETSU’s move to the Atlantic Sun Conference, triggered by its dropping football, has all but ensured, even expedited, football’s return. The Atlantic Sun has lost Central Florida, Troy University, Florida Atlantic and Georgia State in the last couple of years while adding North Florida, Kennesaw State, USC Upstate and Florida Gulf Coast (all schools previously at the Divsion II level).
ETSU finding any other conference – be it one that’s more sexy or geographically friendly – appears like a longshot without football. Stanton said football, funded properly, would help ETSU be all it can be.
“I just really think we’ll all be better off,” Stanton said.
It goes much further than the game for former ETSU linebacker Derek Fudge. A Panama City, Fla., native who played on the 1996 team that reached the Division I-AA playoff quarterfinals in Missoula, Mont., Fudge has stayed in the area.
He’s programs coordinator for the Johnson City Housing Authority. He points to other area residents which Johnson City has transplanted. Craig Charles (Boston) owns a barber shop: Craig’s Crown Cuts. Chuck Sutton (Jacksonville, Fla.) married a great Johnson City girl (Barbara) and works as a probation officer.
Brandon Roller (Alpharetta, Ga.) and Andrew Simmons (Goose Creek, S.C.), who displayed the purest passion while playing at varying degrees of undersized when they initially moved into the defensive line’s interior, have stayed in the area.
Roller works in Bristol. Simmons owns a clothing store, Urbanology, on West Market Street.
James Russell (St. Augustine, Fla,), the blur off the edge at the snap of the ball in the mid-90s, works in Bluff City.
“I probably wouldn’t have ever heard of Johnson City if not (for ETSU football),” Fudge said.
Of course that’s all irrelevant if no one’s picking up the tab. Now a businessman himself, Charles once said he could better see both sides of it.
Oddly enough, there are those who believe, in the grand scheme of things, these dismal days could’ve been the best thing for ETSU football. Except for a brief period during the Keener Fry-Cavan run of the mid-1990s, Bucs football has been funded like a necessary evil since at least the Mike Ayers era of the 1980s.
It’s had a poor venue, a worse budget and hit-and-miss marketing at best. Anything Ayers, Cavan and Paul Hamilton accomplished – and they all had their moments – came against the odds.
As one ardent football supporter said this week, “Who knows, if football comes back stronger and this has shown us how to do it the right way, maybe what happened was the best thing that could happen.”
This conference stuff is crazy. Things can go great for Liberty in terms of conference affiliation with the CAA getting 1A football or things can go terribly wrong by getting stuck in a lame duck Big South Conference (if everyone leaves that is). I guess only time will tell what happens.
- By olldflame