Are you or your friends in this photo of the 1956 Hatter Football team? Send us names by posting a comment at the bottom of the page.
Are you or your friends in this photo of the 1956 Hatter Football team? Send us names by posting a comment at the bottom of the page.
And Women’s Lacrosse is joining the field, too
Get ready for the return of Hatter Football!
Stetson University is starting the process to join the prestigious Pioneer Football League with the first game in fall 2013. Long ago considered a pigskin powerhouse in Florida, Stetson has not had a football team since the 1956 season. A new NCAA Division I program in Women’s Lacrosse – which has become wildly popular since it started a year ago as a club sport at Stetson – will also be added at the same time.
At a press conference March 14 at DeLand City Hall, SU President Wendy B. Libby announces the return of Stetson Football.
The university currently has 15 intercollegiate sports, with most of those played in the Atlantic Sun Conference.
Following approval by the Stetson University Board of Trustees last month, the next formal step toward a new football program was to establish a partnership with the City of DeLand for shared use of Spec Martin Football Stadium at Earl Brown Park.
The DeLand City Commission approved that partnership in a special meeting March 14. The agreement calls for the city to finance capital improvement needs for the stadium in return for an annual rental fee from Stetson and an agreement to share revenue from sponsorships and advertising, as well as a commission on concessions and parking. Stetson has a similar agreement with the city for use of Melching Field at Conrad Park for baseball.
“We are thrilled to work together with the city on the prospect of re-introducing Hatter Football,” said Stetson President Wendy B. Libby. “The city and Stetson have been bound together since the late 1800s, and our health and vitality go hand-in-hand.”
Read an expanded version of this story on the webpage dedicated to Stetson Football.
For alumni and friends who are excited about what the addition of Hatter Football and Women’s Lacrosse will mean to Stetson, please help support this initiative financially. Every gift to help make this happen is a show of support. You may mail your gift to the Stetson University Office of Development, 421 N. Woodland Blvd., Unit 8286, DeLand, FL 32723, or make a credit card gift online at www.stetson.edu/give (under Gift Options, select Athletics, then Football) or by calling the Office of Development at 386-822-7455.
I think it’s a great idea as a non-scholarship sport. I’m also a William and Mary graduate that has a top five FCS program and is one America’s top academic institutions. There is no conflict between football at this level and academics.
The students, faculty, and alumni will hopefully embrace the team and more importantly the student athletes playing for the University and the love of the game.
Go Hatters! Beat ? (I don’t know who we can establish a football rivalry against).
It will be great to have football back again!!! I remember great fun, great games, great guys in 51-55.
You probably have these names but I think # 42 is Stan Marks; #84 Ted Matson and 71 Walter McLin.
I agree with Brandon Knox. Football at Stetson will be a disaster. Stetson is a privately funded university. It gets no, that I know of, state or federal funds to support an athletic program. To fund and support a football program (that will be competitive) takes a huge amount of money. To compare Stetson to Harvard or Yale, who have a large alumni base of “Old Money”, is dumb. Stetson does not have this wealthy alumni base. Who is Stetson going to compete with? Florida State, the U of F, the University of Central Florida? All State supported athletic programs. Where is the money going to come from? Tuition increases? Money that could be going to further Stetson’s reputation as a provider of quality education. I don’t know where Gary ’01 is getting his information, but he is horribly mis-informed. To think that a football program will bring in additional revenue to the university is stupid, unless it is a winning program, which I seriously doubt Stetson can mount. Nobody will come to a football game to see their team lose, and Stetson just does not have the student body, or the alumni support neccessary to promote this type of sports program.
250 Alums turned out several weeks to meet the President and Head football coach of Stetson at Jacksonville, Florida. This was held at Everbank field. Everyone was very excited about the return of football.
These players do not get a free ride. Each player pays $20,000. Mulitply by 50 players. Wake Forest is a small school that has football. Grade point average for these players is 3.5. At last count we had 106 players..
When the last team played, have the team flunked out. It wasn’t consistent.
Have you ever thought why Stetson wants football? To draw students. Also to keep it from becoming a commuter school.
It might be fun! Give it a chance.
Creation of a football is a terrible idea. It will divert funds from education and will do nothing to enhance the quality of education at Stetson. If people want to have a football program as part of their undergraduate experience, there is not shortage of colleges in Florida with them already.
-Brandon Knox,
Class of 1999
Actually, from what I hear, it is being projected to be a self sustaining program that will bring in surplus revenue for the University. Revenue which then gets added into the funds for education and scholarships. Not sure how that would be a bad thing.
Also, why would anyone rule out a school because of a single sport it has? If so, you really limit your options. I mean even Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have football teams. Last I checked it hasn’t hurt them academically.
Gary ’01
Brandon has it right. A search of national information on finances for Div. III schools indicates that football is on average not self-sustaining. It is highly doubtful if football can come to Stetson without taking away from other needs since substantial dollars will be needed to start it up and to maintain it. References by supporters of the return of football point to the academic quality of Yale, etc.; but this misses the point that Yale, etc. have strong academic programs and literally billions of dollars in endowments [compared to Stetson's little over 100 million dollar endowment] that help recruit good students and also retain good students at much higher rates than found at Stetson. Yale, etc. do not depend on football to build academic programs. Stetson’s argument that football will help academic strength has no real support in looking at the present academic/athletic world. This is simply a gamble by the Trustees and the President to raise money by attracting enough warm bodies to finance the University at its present level of quality, at best. Many of Stetson’s faculty who are in the classrooms are not convinced that academic quality enhancement of the student body will come from this endeavor, but that the reverse will probably happen.