2006: Football passion dies hard
Picture Don Quixote in a Wichita State football helmet.
Better yet, picture Don Quixote in a football helmet passionately writing a 25-page report detailing the benefits of football to WSU and Wichita.
He argues the university and community desperately need football, homecoming and a marching band again - like every other Board of Regents university in Kansas. He blasts almost everyone who is not in agreement and labels them part of a University of Kansas-led conspiracy to keep WSU down.
He catalogs and stews over slights, mistakes and contrary opinions from opponents such as university president Don Beggs (standing on the wrong side of history with his head buried in the administrative sand of his desk drawer), The Eagle (KU drive-by scribblers, with scribbler deadlines to meet and no time for substantive analysis), university officials and politicians (intellectually dishonest), and others who don’t see the Saturday night light.
Don Quixote has a lot of work to do, fighting the uphill battle for Shocker football.
Meet Fred Marrs, the most passionate and outspoken member of a passionate group loosely known as the Shocker Black and Golds. Marrs, 64, holds two degrees from WSU and a law degree from KU. He devotes countless hours to researching and arguing his points in favor of Shocker football.
Sometimes his points hit home. Sometimes his points are lost in a diatribe against the forces he views as anti-football, anti-WSU and anti-logic. Always, however, there are more points to be made and they demand the return of Shocker football.
“He’ll never give up on this,” Don Anderson said. “You need the Fred Marrs of the world to get things done from time to time.”
Football’s allure
Many Shocker fans like the idea of spending a fall day at Cessna Stadium watching football, as they did before the university dumped the program in 1986.
“I’d like to see it come back,” said Leon Lungwitz, a former president of the Shocker Athletic Scholarship Organization. “But I also don’t think it’s feasible without possibly damaging the other sports. Wishing and doing are two different things.”
WSU Student Government Association president Thanh Huynh said there is casual interest in football, but not an outcry. Some students favor a revival; many are wary of the cost.
“The only time football comes up is from certain folks who are alumni who want football and want to bring it back,” said Huynh, 30. “We probably get more complaints about parking than football.”
If that’s the middle ground, the Shocker Black and Golds represent those who see football’s return as a critical and emotional issue. No football, they argue, means WSU is seen as a nontraditional campus and enrollment suffers.
“I feel like there’s been a hole in the soul of Wichita State for 20 years now,” Lloyd Phelps said. “Why should we deserve to be second rate?”
The Black and Golds first came together in 1995, when a group called Save our Stadium led the fight to stop the partial dismantling of Cessna Stadium. They are Shocker fans who support many sports and remain loyal and active through good and bad times.
Anderson grew up blocks from the university and remembers watching Shocker great Linwood Sexton play in the 1940s. Phelps remembers the Delta Upsilon fraternity and football gamedays. Gene Brown says he met with former Kansas athletic director Bob Marcum to help start a three-game series between the schools in the early 1980s.
“I’ve talked to students,” Brown said. “No football. No homecoming. The traditional students want to go where they can have football on the weekends and the parties we don’t have.”
The Black and Golds say they want football - preferably Division I-A, the highest level - because they love their university and city and they think football matters. They feel betrayed by the university that dropped the program after the 1986 season and neither forgive nor forget.
They want to be heard, because they think their plans can work. More than that, they think football must work for WSU to prosper. Without the sport, Marrs and others said, WSU is not what it could be. They see programs, some even quite successful, at schools such as Boise State, Troy, South Florida and Toledo and think WSU deserves as much.
“There’s no reason on God’s green earth why we shouldn’t have football,” said Frank Chappell, past chairman of the Wichita Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Logic is not being discussed. I’m involved in this community. I love this community. I don’t roll over and play dead.”
A plan to revive football
The issue is dead in many eyes.
WSU’s administration has no plan to add football (or any sport), and additions are not possible if they detract from other sports, according to Beggs. Fans love the idea of touchdowns and cheerleaders, but most of those fans failed to support the program most seasons - the Shockers averaged 14,505 fans at 30,000-seat Cessna Stadium from 1969-1986. The university flushed the debt-ridden program after a 3-8 season, its 18th losing season in 20.
Losing. Apathy. A money pit (football lost $839,000 its final season).
Supporters of football are not deterred by the reality of Shocker football ‘s final days. They think the future could be different.
Wichita mayor Carlos Mayans championed the group’s plan to use property tax dollars received by the university to pay for scholarships for football and women’s sports (such as soccer) that would be added to comply with federal law requiring equivalent scholarship opportunities for male and female athletes. The plan also included selling 17,000 season tickets and raising $10 million for facilities.
Beyond the details, projections and guesses, the group is united by a belief that it’s the right thing to do for the university and the city.
“There’s no reason why the city of Wichita and Wichita State University can’t provide a football program,” Anderson said. “How many schools in the United States that don’t have football have you ever heard of?”
The alumni group makes its points in detail on its Web site, www.alumnishockerblackandgolds.com. Pages of facts and figures state their case for football’s return. It’s also home for the theories that peg KU as one of the villains in the Shocker football saga, a grudge dating to WSU’s entry into the state university system in 1964. Beggs, according to the group, is the latest WSU president controlled by KU through the Board of Regents.
“I think the world of Don Beggs,” Chappell said. “He’s probably the best thing to happen to WSU since Harry Corbin (university president from 1949-64). He and I are in disagreement about this. I don’t think the Board of Regents should have any influence on whether Wichita State should have football or not.”
The Board or Regents, nine people who oversee higher education in Kansas, don’t have that control, according to Beggs and Kip Peterson, director of government relations and communications for the board.
“Absolutely not,” Beggs said. “I don’t have to discuss athletic expenses with the Board of Regents, because I don’t use state money for that. I don’t have to have their approval.”
WSU not interested
To Beggs, it’s simple. The university won’t add sports - or any kind of program - if it robs resources from existing ones. That is why he declined the plan to use property tax dollars advanced this summer by Mayans.
“I don’t want to spend tax-payer dollars on additional sports,” Beggs said.
City councilman Jim Skelton and Beggs said many of their constituents voiced displeasure this summer at the prospect of using tax money for athletic s. That leaves Beggs at the starting line: Where does the money come from?
“I’ve met with Marrs many times and said, ‘Where are the dollars?’ ” Beggs said. “They come up with the same names - someone else’s. We are talking about an enormous amount of money.”
Regardless of the investment - or where the money comes from - the Black and Golds say it’s necessary to help enrollment. WSU’s fall enrollment in 1986 stood at 16,843. It is at 14,298 this fall. The Black and Golds blame football’s demise for the drop.
Correlating football and enrollment is not an exact science, however. WSU’s enrollment rose to 17,052 in 1987 and hit a record 17,419 in 1989 - all without football. The following drop in enrollment, Beggs said, cannot be pegged to one factor. Tuition costs, among many variables, must be considered.
“When our enrollment went down is when community college enrollment went up,” he said.
Rob Baird, associate vice president for Denver-based education consultants Noel-Levitz, said he’s not aware of studies that indicate football equals enrollment growth. Sports, particularly winning sports, can help in some circumstances, he said. It’s not an automatic for all schools.
“I don’t see a strong correlation between the non-athlete enrollment behavior being influenced by a football team,” Baird said.
The work continues
Those opinions are unlikely to deter Marrs and the Black and Golds. Their faith in football as vital to WSU is unshakable, and many are optimistic it will happen when Beggs retires.
Marrs will talk for hours about football off the record. He said his suspicions about The Eagle’s intentions force him to limit his public comments to four sentences:
“Our group is not the issue,” he said. “I’m not the issue. Buying students with mill levy money is not a solution to the WSU 20-year-old loss-of-students problem. We do not think The Eagle will print a factually supported article beneficial to solving WSU’s loss-of-student problem, reinstating football, or favorable to our point of view.”
Marrs said his group voted not to appear in a photo at Cessna Stadium due to that mistrust. That combative attitude drives and hinders Marrs, his friends say.
“That’s part of the problem, no question about it,” Anderson said. “It’s like he’s inserting venom into all of the arguments. I don’t think we want to be known as the firebrands on this.”
Anderson said it’s perhaps time for Marrs and himself to step back from the issue and let others lead. Friends concede the point, while praising Marrs’ dedication.
“I’ve had to fight it out with him several times,” Brown said. “But we always get back together. Without him, this would be a dead issue.”
Inside Marrs’ home are boxes filled with reports, papers and files. Contained in them, he believes, is the proof WSU can and should revive football. More proof, in the form of open-records requests, position papers and answers to critics, is always in the pipeline. Marrs remains a passionate advocate for a program unloved by many.
“Fred’s not the smoothest guy in the world,” Chappell said. “He’s a bulldog. He champions the underdog, and right now we’re the underdog.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2015 at 12:41 PM with the headline "2006: Football passion dies hard."