Bye bye Shrum Bowl and SFU football

[Toppy Vann]

Petition to keep SFU football.

No harm and no cost to signing it.

Farhan is all over this SFU debacle. Helps to have his credibility.

Injunction being sought this upcoming week.

SFU has a big PR nightmare to contend with.

This is not playing well at all including apparently with a few big donors to SFU.

Theresa "Hanson (Director) is aware of a petition being circulated online to save SFU football but made it clear that, in her opinion, it’s irrelevant how many signatures it receives as the decision is final. She also made it clear that SFU’s decision had nothing to do with finances or performance — it was strictly about not having a conference in which to play."

Well they could have played this year.

PETITION & VIDEO OF TEAM MEETING ATHLETIC DIRECTOR AND VP:

This is the Athletic Director of SFU, Theresa Hansen attempting to explain why SFU football no longer has a season for 2023. Little bit of a long watch but I promise it’s good content.. As well, please sign this petition to keep the football program around for at least another year. A lot of players, coaches, students, families, alumni and staff put in an immense amount of work to get us ready for this upcoming season and it would be a shame to see that go to waste. I appreciate all of you and thank you for the support IAY
Also, skip to 25:15 to see the big question get asked
Credit to Jacob Pohl for the video too




Petition Link:
https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx...

[Sir Purrcival]

As an SFU Alum, I can't really say I am much surprised by some of this. During my time there, there was little hyping of the program or even the games. Most of the time, most of the student body weren't even aware that there was a team or ever saw a game while they were students. The Liam Donnelly harassment episode didn't do much to inspire my confidence in the administration. It looked like amatuer hour from people who you would have thought were more intelligent. Moving the football team to NCAA Div. II. kind of gave the same impression. It felt like a repudiation of the Cnd. game and although there were many reasons, I suppose, for the change in the minds of those in charge, the impressions that it gave off were underwhelming to be charitable. Again, making one wonder if any of the supposed bright lights up on the hill gave the optics of that move any kind of rational consideration. A lone Cnd. school, coming from a very different kind of football tradition, playing a game that wasn't Cnd. in the slightest. Any hope of generating a meaningful rivalry disappeared when they made that move. Maybe the program would have died anyway but to have it go out in this fashion, not by choice, just makes it seem like those making the decisions really had little idea of what they were doing.

[Clash Dance]

Hearing that Theresa Hanson, while at UBC, also tried to cancel the football program there. Not sure why I don't recall this. Anyone have any details on this? What was her "reasoning" in that situation?

[Hambone]

I took a look yesterday at where old SFU NAIA schools in football were.

Whenever I spoke with Lorne Davies the first HC and and AD, his point was how there were some 200 colleges and universities in driveable distances and these were south of the border. Other than UVIC and UBC the rest was flights.

SFU is a Division 2 school within the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) but not many play football any more.

Closest rival back in the 'old' days was Western Washington - no football as it got too expensive.

Also the NAIA schools closest are Southern and Eastern Oregon!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N ... otball.png

The SFU footall board position to support the injunction being sought next week is several:

> players had all signed commitments to SFU which were binding.
> coaches hired, spring training held including a player injured with a broken leg
> university had committed to this year
> Alum have been in ongoing contact. They have an outstanding chair of alum football who is with others on top of this.

While SFU said it was not about money, it is about money!

Unless the big hitters who've spoken out and spoke to the university can bring in some serious operational funding from various sources outside SFU I doubt football can survive.

SIGN the PETITION might do some good.

It's somewhat all over the map for those conferences. GNAC is primarily Washington State with 2 schools in AK and 1 each in OR, ID and MT. For all SFU's sports teams most of their road trips would be into Washington with a few into the other regions. UBC is an associate member of NAIA's Cascade Conference where only 3 of 12 member schools are in WA and Walla Walla U is on their very southeastern border with Oregon. 7 of the remaining 9 are in Oregon with 2 of them being along the California border. The last 2 are over in Idaho.

Overall in terms of travel costs for UBC and SFU being part of the NCAA's GNAC would be least cost alternative followed by NAIA's Cascade Conf and USports Canada West. What sucks is SFU's football program has been so negatively impacted mostly because the GNAC has gotten out of the football business. It's hard to justify supporting football for only 3 teams. All the rest of SFU's sports programs will continue to play out of the GNAC with obvious cost and travel benefits vs what they would have to endure in Canada West play. It's business as usual for them to stay in GNAC but the same couldn't be said for programs that might be forced to follow football into Canada West.

I think where pressure really needs to be placed is on USports and Canada West for their reluctance (so far) to take on a single sport program from bodies outside their realm. Looking at wiki info on NCAA's GNAC and NAIA's Cascade Conf both appear to have affiliate schools from other conferences participating only in one sport. Maybe those schools are all part of the same governing bodies.

[Hambone]

Hearing that Theresa Hanson, while at UBC, also tried to cancel the football program there. Not sure why I don't recall this. Anyone have any details on this? What was her "reasoning" in that situation?

I think it was just before UBC was able to pry Blake Nill out of Calgary. He came to UBC after the 2014 season. Might have been around the time they were put on probation for 2 years after being stripped of their 2011 wins for using an ineligible player all season.

[Toppy Vann]

Farhan's on fire on Twitter today.

Next chapter will be Wednesday in court with Glen Orris, KC fighting for an injunction.

The story is not behind a paywall.

https://torontosun.com/sports/football/ ... courthouse


Glen Orris foreshadows the future and I believe it would have to be more outside funding that the average alum members aren't themselves likely to be able to bring in despite their efforts in recent years. Any funds for football to be raised conflict with the big priorities SFU in academics etc.

“So I am pissed off and a lot of people share my feelings in that regard. But at the end of the day, if we manage to get this program back together, which I honestly believe we will, we’re going to have to work with the university to make it work."

My understanding on Saturday when I was invited by a former SFU player and football board member to speak to the football alum heading this up, that consistently the university says it's not about the money. Just the schedule and doing it now versus playing out the 2023 season is best. However, the university had started asking about operational support versus endowments.

The timing and how the decision was made while the alum members thought they were speaking to the university in good faith is part of the outrage.

I'm confident that the Alumni leadership from football are bright, articulate, calm, cool, collected, and are sharp enough with the facts on their side to avoid making this personal like many want it to be. Prior to that call on the weekend, I wondered how close they were in contact with the President and A&Rec Director - and it's been ongoing for some time including an upcoming meeting set for next week with the President unless these legal proceedings upset that (my thoughts, not theirs).

This is a textbook case in how not to handle an issue that has potential for these repercussions.

All other SFU threats to football came with a timeline and a way forward. This was just it's over NOW.

[Toppy Vann]

I knew Farhan was speaking with the football alumns and players but I thought it was as a TSN sports guy. It sounds from his Tweets that's he into this more deeply.

The alums filed for the injunction in court today.

https://3downnation.com/2023/04/13/simo ... -contract/

Like Farhan, I too am proud of how the football alum leaders and the players are rallying.

In other threats to football Lorne Davies had his VP onside and they worked with stakeholders to solve those issues.

This decision is shocking for how they didn't give adequate notice and now that it's too late for kids to find other places to study and play as they were contracted to SFU, they say no football.

Local community stories like a mom in the Tri-city News show how hard kids have worked to go to SFU.

When I coached SFU JV soccer, I remember Ritchie Sumner who went onto the 86ers say that he was earning as much as his scholarship in a month of weekends at Safeway so when he committed FT to SFU soccer, he travelled half of the weekends.

Farhan's video of the players gathering outside the court filing of the injunction. A proud moment in leadership by students and alumni: