DAVID KOB
Staff Writer
Face it — everyone is miserable because we do not have a football team. I see it in their faces. They know the weekend is coming and campus will be dead. They dream of waking up early on Saturday, getting their Pepperdine gear on, and spending the day tailgating and celebrating another Waves victory.
But instead they just go home. It is that serious, folks. A football team is the only way to instill that irreplaceable excitement of collegiate camaraderie.
You are probably wondering why this article is not in the Sports section. It is because collegiate football is not just a sport. It is a matchless dynamic that is as universally university as education. The footprints of prideful collegiate history are always linked to academia and athletics, and no tradition is more spiritually shared than football.
“There’s nothing like your first home game,” said David Roberts, a senior at Penn State University. “It’s so loud you can hardly fathom the capacity of school pride resonating around the stadium.” Our basketball games come close, but realistically, nothing compares to football.
When people explain Pepperdine to outsiders, they usually rattle off the same list: beautiful campus, small classes, Malibu beaches, Cindy from the Café etc. But what brings Pepperdine together as a whole? The only thing I can think of is Step-Forward Day. Most (larger) universities are localized in a college town. Off-campus locations are usually barely off-campus and most students spend their college days on-campus.
This is when football transcends to a higher importance than purely sport.
“I literally cry when we lose, not just because we lost, but because that’s how we express our pride in going to this university, through our football,” said Kevin Seeling, senior at Pittsburgh University.
When is the last time you felt that strongly about Pepperdine? It s not that we don’t adore our university — it’s that we have no way to express our love.
A 10,000 person football stadium only costs $50 million. Since tuition is $42,000 and there are 3,000 undergrads, that brings total tuition revenue to $126 million leaving $76 million (plus donations) to allocate to other projects. This might be a big sacrifice, but if we get rid of the mailroom, the Humanities Division, Dorm 12 and club lacrosse, then we’ll be able to budget it next semester.
The park across Pacific Coast Highway next to the baseball fields could be a possible location. Revenue would come fast because every station would want to air our games despite how bad our team might be They would just switch to the overhead shot overlooking the ocean of the stadium from the Goodyear blimp. The announcer would say, “Well, Pepperdine loses again, but just look at that beautiful stadium.” Advertisers are already standing by.
Come on people — let’s put the Pep back in Pepperdine. How cool would it be for the Waves to do the wave in a football stadium overlooking the waves? The publicity would be overwhelming with all the local celebrities who would attend. It would be the best thing to hit Pepperdine since Zoey 101. Tell your professors, your friends and your friends’ friends that we need football. What’s that, you don’t have any friends? That’s because we don’t have a football team.
09-21-2006