Pima's football program will play its last season in 2018 after chancellor Lee Lambert approved a $1.9 million budget that cuts several sports.
Pima College approved the addition of a football program on June 15, 2000; 18 years later, almost to the day, chancellor Lee Lambert killed it.
Oh, how times changed.
On that day in 2000, a representative of the Jim Click Automotive group promised $50,000 for start-up funds, Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood wrote a letter of support, and Tucson Sidewinders general manager Mike Feder pledged that his organization would help in a goal of raising $125,000.
Now? Fewer than 30 people attended the meeting to dissolve PCC football last week. No one pledged a dime to save Jim Monaco’s program.
It was inevitable.
No matter what else is said — the cost of insurance, the nightmare of football-related concussions, declining enrollment — the Aztecs had no one to play.
There are now two JC football programs in Arizona, one in Yuma and one in Thatcher, and as soon as PCC dropped football last week Eastern Arizona College AD Jim Bagnall, a former Arizona and Salpointe Catholic baseball standout, said EAC’s football program is now entering a period in which it will “determine if a schedule is viable.”
It isn’t.
Pima College chancellor Lee Lambert, right, with AD Edgar Soto, announced Aztecs football would end after the 2018 season. It could be the first in a series of programs to die in Tucson.
There’s a reason there will be just two surviving JC football programs in Arizona, none in Nevada and only one each in Colorado and Utah.
It costs too much.
Texas is a huge, football-loving state, but it only has seven JC football programs.
And there’s this: Pima has 16 sports. That’s probably too many. EAC and Arizona Western only have eight sports. Cochise College has five. Snow College, which is part of the soon-to-be-dismantled Western States Football League, has just eight sports programs — and one of them is rodeo.
The downsizing in athletics at PCC is predictable. It has no real fundraising arm. In fact, the school’s total fundraising platform is unimpressive.
There is almost no community outreach by PCC, which is appalling. Do you ever see a TV commercial, or hear a radio spot, touting PCC and attempting to get students in the door? By 21st century standards, PCC’s website is prehistoric.
Pima College should be a gem in this city, but it is almost invisible.
My sad prediction: The demise of football at Pima will be the first in a series of football programs to die in Tucson. Ultimately, high school football programs in Southern Arizona will fall away, one by one. It might take 10 or 20 years to start, but the future of non-NCAA football programs and the numbers and money required to sustain them will become a common theme.
