Athletics puts UB in national spotlight: Townsend sees new surge of school pride

As if scanning the pages of a photo album, he recalls vividly the homecoming parade on Main Street.

The director of the UB Division of Athletics is focusing on the participants: Buffalo's mayor and six councilmen, Erie County's chief executive and four legislators, two members of the state Assembly, a state Senator. There were three marching bands and a group of Shriners. Also marching were representatives of every UB athletic team, a group of Korean UB students in native costume, playing native instruments and an African-American student step group.

"All people who until now would not have been near a UB homecoming parade," Townsend stresses.

Intercollegiate athletics, he explains, is "a bandwagon business." As a program grows and prospers, outside interest increases. "People join only when it becomes a positive thing."

Townsend fast forwards to the homecoming football game in which the UB Bulls took on the Big Red of Cornell University, whose statutory colleges are funded in part by state tax dollars.

The sun was shining, the game was televised live across New York State and UB's football players defeated their opponents in a game that Townsend calls "a battle for bragging rights within the SUNY system. And we won the battle."

The 41-24 tally gave the team its fifth win in an 8-3 season that made it UB's most successful football team in more than a decade, with the most wins against Division I opponents since the 1959 squad. And, according to Townsend, it provided the university and all of those who are or have been associated with it something more important: watercooler bragging rights.

When it comes to talking about a university ­ whether it be where you go to school, where you work or your alma mater ­ Townsend says the right to brag about its football team is an important perk.

"Everyone is talking about Michigan, Notre Dame and they are talking about football. They don't come into the room asking how your math department and chemistry department are doing."

Unfortunately, UB's students, staff and alma mater "have no modern history of being proud in this arena," says Townsend. "No watercooler bragging rights belong to us."

But he says that changed with UB's defeat of Cornell on Oct. 5.

Townsend describes it as a landmark day for the university on which things happened that "we could not have planned on happening or cause to happen on purpose."

He adds: "Now it's OK to wave the pom-pom," he notes. "It's OK to say 'I'm from UB.' I can point with pride and say, 'That's my football team.' I can say, 'That's where I got my degree.'"

It's especially important to UB alumni-several of whom living out of state called Townsend's office in the days after the game to ask whether the UB mentioned as downing Cornell on ESPN was "my UB?"

"They've always loved their alma mater," says Townsend. "Now it's OK to admit it. The guy has always carried a pom-pom under his coat. Now he can wave it. He's always bled blue and white. Now he can admit it."

Townsend says that what a Division I athletics program ­ and football in particular ­ can do for a university was underscored by this year's homecoming game. Those celebrating the football team's victory, he stresses, were celebrating the university.

"Football is not a great financial boost, but it can be a great spiritual boost," Townsend explains. "And as it goes, other things will follow. It's not just all about intercollegiate athletics per se. It's about the university. We have some wonderful opportunities for the university."

Townsend notes that some have questioned the university's decision to upgrade from NCAA Division III to Division I athletic play, to award scholarships to athletes in general, and football players in particular. In 1998, UB will join the Mid-American Conference, one of 10 Division I-A athletic conferences in the U.S., the highest level of intercollegiate athletic competition.

"Homecoming this year for me showed that the entire enterprise, the entire effort has been rewarded," he adds. "This university has been rewarded for its efforts in this arena and it is the threshold from which greater things can happen."

He says it is important to pause to celebrate the accomplishments of UB's athletes, and stresses that these are the achievements of "student athletes," not those of the division's program or staff.

But the celebration has to be brief, because "now the hard work starts."

Townsend refers to all of the work that preceded this academic year ­ designated by the division as its first five-year planning cycle ­ as laying a foundation for a nationally recognized intercollegiate athletics program, one that is greater than football, one involving 17 men's and women's intercollegiate athletics teams competing at the Division I level.

"We built the foundation here in our confines where nobody cared," he notes. "But now the house is coming up" and it will be constructed in a national spotlight. "We now must decide how we present this product to the nation."

Among the greatest challenges, he adds, will be sustaining the effort, particularly with declining state financial support of the university.

"We must now more closely scrutinize our planning...positioning ourselves for the future, but doing it realistically, finding economies of scale within which to operate."

There also is a need to develop support for the intercollegiate athletic program both on campus and off.

"We must make our needs known to every constituent group, as well as our expectations for support from every constituent group. It will require every member of every constituent group to be a partner in this development."

And just as student athletes are the backbone of the university's sports program, UB students, particularly its undergraduates, are the mainstay of its supporters.

One way in which students support the university's intercollegiate athletics program is through an annual fee, which is being increased from $100 to $200 beginning in January for full-time undergraduate students. Part-time undergraduate students will pay a pro-rated fee based on total credit hours.

The increase, Townsend says, will be used exclusively to support "non-revenue" sports, those seven men's teams and eight women's teams that have not been able to identify external support and lack "gate appeal." The fee increase will not be used to support football or men's basketball. It will, however, be used to fund the addition of three new women's sports teams ­ crew beginning in 1997, softball in 1998 and lacrosse in 1999 ­ to increase the division's and university's commitment to women's programs.

Townsend stresses that student support through attendance at games and meets involving UB's sports teams is equally as important.

"We want them to participate," he adds. "At the heart of why we exist is to make student life more appealing on campus."

To help build school spirit and address an identity problem that's confronted UB's athletic teams and their boosters, the Division of Athletics last week unveiled a new logo.

Townsend notes that to date, the teams and their supporters have been identified collectively as "UB."

But that has raised some questions: What's a UB? Who's a UB? "Our teams and players are not a UB," he continues. "They are athletes representing the institution."

The new logo ­ featuring a smoke-breathing blue bull and the words "University at Buffalo Bulls" ­ will be displayed on a gamut of merchandise, including clothing items now available at local J.C. Penney and Dick's stores.