Football: Changes on the hill

Chad Klassen, Associate Staff Contributor
The SFU Clan football program has experienced several changes this off-season — starting with the hiring of new head coach Dave Johnson — in the search to become more competitive.
The most significant change has been the renewed alliance between the football alumni and athletic administration, who have been quite disengaged over the years.
The program has been on the downfall for the past decade or so, culminating in an 18-game losing streak dating back to ’04 and 17 losing seasons since ’87.
This frustration prompted former Athletic Director Lorne Davies to send out a letter to the alumni in October with three weeks remaining in the ’06 season, expressing his overwhelming concerning for the future direction of the program.
As such, the football alumni has started to become more involved, including the recent coaching selection process and has held meetings during the off-season in order to discuss possible solutions.
“I want to encourage the alumni to get together,” said Davies. “They have to stand up and be heard.” According to Communication Director Jamie Clayton, the response has been overwhelming, with more than 240 alumni having been added onto the contact list since last summer.
When one looks at a program with as glorious a past as SFU, a good relationship between the alumni and administration is the best plan to improve the situation.
The alumni is willing to help provide the necessary financial assistance that could make a difference in terms of attracting the best athletes to SFU, but not without a shared plan with the athletic administration and input into the overall direction of the program.
With this renewed alliance, the alumni have entered into a matching program with SFU for funding towards the program, noted Clayton.
“Once we put some money into the endowment we’ve chosen, then the university matches it right away,” he said.
“Right now, our thing is to look and have some long-term funding for the program, which would be making the contributions to endowment funds.”
This kind of financial support has gone far in terms of establishing the alumni’s long-term commitment to the program.
With the alumni’s support, it seems as if Wedmann has also stepped up to the plate and expressed his commitment to football.
“Football was a cornerstone varsity program of this university at its inception and it continues to have that prominent position,” noted Wedmann.
The alumni are starting to see that the university has refocused its direction for the program and have jumped onboard as a result, noted Clayton.
“The support we’re getting from the administration of the university and from the athletics department is making guys realise that we’re getting more of a foothold and being more successful in what we’re doing,” he said.
“The big thing that we’ve done now is we’ve been able to secure and make our program competitive in terms of salaries for coaches, in terms of an operating budget for the team — competitive with all other teams in the Canada West. That’s going to make a big difference.”
Moreover, there also becomes a need to build up the fund so that when the CIS increases the maximum allowance for scholarships, the university is prepared to offer all of its athletes with financial incentives.
According to Clayton, the CIS has regulations in place that limit Canadian schools to 28 “full” scholarships. This includes tuition fees — not room and board — and amounts to around $2,500 per semester at SFU.
“We’re trying to get that raised to 40 so that every guy that’s on your travel roster can potentially get his fees and tuition paid for,” he said. “We need to be in a position when it does go to 40 that we have the funds available to be competitive.”
Consider the losing culture that has come to define the campus regarding varsity football.
It’s remarkable to then reflect back to the birth of the SFU football program and look at the ambitious goals it set out to achieve, including participation in the Rose Bowl of all things.
Indeed, former Chancellor Dr. Gordon Shrum, whose legacy is enshrined in the tradition of the Shrum Bowl, had the vision of SFU participating in the Rose Bowl as part the Pac-10 conference in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
According to Davies, the financial commitment was there and he was given the full support, which is the recipe to building a winning program.
“Without [Shrum], the program wouldn’t have got out of the starting block,” he said.
Although Shrum’s dream never came true, this winning attitude paved the way for a competitive program that sported some of the best football players from across Canada throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
The program was thriving during this period in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletes (NAIA), competing against the best Division-Two football schools in the U.S.
The key for athletes is that they will rise up to the challenge of better competition, said Davies. “The NAIA competition was such that it gave our kids confidence,” he said.
When SFU transferred to the CIS, the program started to suffer.
“It’s detrimental on the basis that. . . if I was recruiting an athlete, I could tell them that we’re playing in Washington, Montana, Oregon, and even California. That’s appealing,” he said. There is also the issue of high costs involved in travelling across Canada during the season with the current Canada West football schedule.
Davies admits that it’s much cheaper to travel from Vancouver to Washington as opposed to Vancouver to Winnipeg.
“You can go down to Washington for a tenth of the cost and with better competition,” he said.
Nevertheless, Davies feels that reverting back to what made the program successful in the 1970s and 1980s is a good starting point, which starts with success off the football field.
As the Clan head coach from ’65-’72, Davies required his players to attend counseling sessions once a week, give an update on their progress at school, and offered help where need to make sure that players remain in school. He believes it’s important to re-implement that support for the players to make sure that they are keeping up their grades.
In the end, while it’s a major challenge to bring the SFU football program back to where it was in the 1970s and 1980s, the recent alliance forged between the football alumni and athletic administration — coupled with the hiring of Johnson — should provide SFU football with more financial assistance, and help the Clan recruit better athletes and become more respectable in the university football ranks.