On the Sidelines: Faculty Concerns About Football
Faculty voices emerged as a key counterweight to student enthusiasm for football at George Mason University (GMU). Rather than seeing a football team purely as a boost to student life or school spirit, many faculty judged it against the university’s academic mission, financial health, and long-term sustainability. The items in the archive reveal serious institutional hesitation rooted in concerns about resources, priorities, and compliance.
One archival record, Football Opposed, documents internal faculty or administrative commentary questioning whether a varsity football program was compatible with GMU’s academic goals. In that document, the faculty suggested that diverting funds toward football, including expenses for facilities, scholarships, and maintenance, threatened to undercut investments in teaching, research, and student services. For them, launching a big-ticket athletic program risked shifting the university’s identity away from its core educational mission.
The second item, Football Web Survey, provides more direct evidence of faculty sentiment: a web-based survey distributed to faculty and staff to measure support for a Division I football program. The results show a clear lack of enthusiasm across campus employees, with many respondents expressing doubt about the necessity, feasibility, or value of adding football. For faculty and staff, the issue was not simply cost, but also whether football contributed meaningfully to GMU’s academic mission or improved the educational experience. The survey results emphasize that internal support among faculty was low, reinforcing the idea that football was not broadly seen as a priority among those working most closely with students and academics.
Together, these records reveal that faculty hesitancy was grounded in a thoughtful assessment of institutional values. While students rallied around the idea of football as a cultural and social asset, faculty viewed it as a high-cost, low-benefit endeavor with the potential to undermine academic goals. Their skepticism and their unified expression of it through internal documents and survey data played a more significant role in shaping the environment in which the Board of Visitors ultimately made its decision.