Nov 6, 2014 3 min read

California University of Pennsylvania’s interim president, Geraldine M. Jones, has ordered a “top-down review” of the school’s football program in response to the arrest of six players for the brutal beating of a 30-year-old man on Oct. 30. The players have been suspended from the university and last week’s home football game against Gannon University was canceled, although the team will play at Mercyhurst on Saturday.

The attack on Lewis Campbell III was just the latest in a long series of violent incidents in California Borough involving Cal U. students: shootings, stabbings and brawls. The arrest of the six has brought the number of Cal U. football players with scrapes with the law to 27 in the last two years. The majority of those were cited for disorderly conduct and underage drinking, and not all of the troublemakers have been Cal U. students, but all of these incidents have damaged the university’s reputation and can be blamed for declines in enrollment in recent years. It can’t be denied some parents have been reluctant to send their sons and daughters to Cal U. and into harm’s way.

Jones said Tuesday that, “the actions of a few have affected this entire university,” but six students behind bars stretches the definition of “few.”

It is high time California University do something to change its culture, and dropping its football program would be a good start.

The administration should consider the purpose of the university: Is it to educate students, or is it to entertain them and alumni? How many students would choose not to attend Cal U. if it did not have a football team? And are those the students the school wishes to attract? Wouldn’t Cal U. be serving us better by putting as many resources into, say, a geology department, as it does its football program, being that this region is the epicenter of the Marcellus gas industry? It’s probably unlikely that budding rock scientists would be roaming the streets of the borough looking for a fight.

Steven Saltzberg, in an article for Forbes magazine, wrote, “The culture of football in American universities is completely out of control. It is undermining our education system and hurting our competitiveness in technology, science, and engineering. If we keep it up, the U.S. will eventually be little more than the big, dumb jock on the world stage – good for entertainment on the weekend, but not taken seriously otherwise. …

“I’ve watched over the years as football has taken an ever-more prominent role in our high schools and colleges, as football coaches have been paid ever-higher salaries, and as football staffs and stadiums have been super-sized. All of this effort goes to the care and feeding of a very small number of (exclusively) male students, most of whom get a poor education and almost none of whom succeed as professional players. Our universities are providing a free training ground for the super-wealthy owners of professional football teams, while getting little in return.”

California, in NCAA Division II, which permits athletic scholarships, would hardly be the first university to drop football. Nearly 60 NCAA Division I schools that once had football programs no longer do. They include ones as prestigious as American University and Boston University and as large as Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton, with about 37,000 students each.

In football-crazy Western Pennsylvania, dropping football might create a fire storm at Cal U., but it would also go a long way toward changing its culture and ensuring its survival.