Rutgers University English professor William Dowling doesn’t like Division I athletics.

He thinks they’re too commercialized – major athletic apparel companies have their logos visible on uniforms when college teams play on national television in championship games named after huge corporations. It’s evolved into something oppressive, universities with major athletic programs focusing too much on drawing in sports money and not focusing enough on academics. He believes athletic scholarships shouldn’t exist and power conferences like the Big East shouldn’t either.

So when Rutgers joined the Big East in 1991, Dowling decided he wasn’t just going to sit there and watch it happen.

In January 1993, with the support of Rutgers alumni, faculty and students, Dowling founded the Rutgers 1000 – named for its 1,000 members. Dowling and the Rutgers 1000 fought for RU’s removal from the Big East until its disbanding in 2002, when Richard McCormick was named the new school president. The group was confident McCormick would take RU out of the Big East and place it in a more academic conference.

But the Scarlet Knights are still in the Big East and Dowling still fights RU’s involvement with the conference. Rutgers will play Syracuse on Saturday at noon at the Carrier Dome.

He is currently writing a book titled ‘Confessions of a Spoilsport’ about his experiences and, despite the disbanding of the Rutgers 1000, is confident the group will rise again and lead Rutgers out of the Big East.

‘Right now we’re kind of regrouping,’ Dowling said. ‘I think eventually the internalized pressure from this campaign will force Rutgers out of the Big East. It’ll just be a delayed victory.’

The Rutgers 1000 argued Rutgers and most universities drifted away from the intent of having athletics at universities. Athletics were meant as a supplement to education; students should work their bodies as much as their minds to be a well-rounded person.

Dowling suggested Rutgers move to the Patriot League, where football scholarships and redshirting are not allowed. The Patriot League echoes the Rutgers 1000’s sentiments on athletics, believing sports are only a small piece of the overall educational experience. Athletics are not emphasized heavily nor entirely ignored.

Athletes in the Patriot League must be representative of the other students in their schools. Each university reports all of its athletes’ academic information to the conference before the athletes are allowed to compete.

‘We view athletics as an important part of education,’ Patriot League executive director Carolyn Schile Femovich said. ‘In no way will we compromise academic integrity for athletics.’

Rutgers would hardly fit in the Patriot League, though. All of the league’s members are small and, with the exception of the U.S. Naval and U.S. Military academies, private universities. Rutgers is the public state university of New Jersey. It has an enrollment of more than 26,000 at its main campus. The school is so large it’s broken up into four smaller campuses across New Brunswick and Piscataway, N.J.

Femovich said no one from Rutgers has ever talked to her about joining the Patriot League, and it’s doubtful RU would gain admission if it applied.

‘How athletics is integrated at institutions like Rutgers would be different,’ Femovich said. ‘The recruiting base is significantly different for a large public school like Rutgers. Our general rule is our member interest would be in schools with similar size and academic quality. Stranger things have happened, though.’

While Rutgers is a strong academic school – it ranked 60th in the nation in U.S. News and World Report’s 2006 college rankings – the Rutgers 1000 believed the emphasis at RU was not on education. Instead, it was on athletics and making money off television deals and ticket sales.

Like many Division I athletic departments, Rutgers does not earn a profit from its sports teams, Rutgers Associate Athletic Director Kevin MacConnell said.

‘It was a bottomless pit of financial strain,’ Rutgers 1000 member and ecology professor Joan Ehrenfeld said. ‘Either we were a sports institution or an excellent academic institution. The probability we would make the big bucks to sustain the program seemed very small and that seems to be the case (now). I don’t see a huge amount of funding in my area and to see a lot of money going to athletics makes you wonder.’

While Dowling and the rest of the Rutgers 1000 argue RU’s entry into the Big East threw the university into a burden it could not sustain, the athletic department believes the improvements and investments gave New Jersey a high-profile athletic program. The university rebuilt Rutgers Stadium and built brand new soccer and lacrosse fields adjacent to the football stadium in 1994 to form an athletic complex in Piscataway.

The investments have begun to pay off athletically. Rutgers football is finally considered a contender in the weakened Big East. Student attendance at football games is at an all-time high this season and all of the Scarlet Knights’ games are on television. The university receives money from every Big East game aired on national television, and Rutgers’ athletic budget is less than one percent of the university’s yearly budget, MacConnell said.

‘The Big East has been great for Rutgers,’ MacConnell said. ‘Hopefully, Rutgers has been great for the Big East. (Football) is the anchor of the athletic department as it is at most schools. It provides for great entertainment.’

Still, Dowling believes universities shouldn’t earn money from television contracts and this season Rutgers proved his point about the commercialization of college athletics.

Dowling pointed to the Scarlet Knights’ 1961 football season, arguably its most successful, as an example of what he believes should be the model for Rutgers. RU went undefeated, was nationally ranked and had consensus All-American Alex Kroll while facing mostly current Ivy League and Patriot League schools.

As Dowling continues to regroup his efforts and form a new Rutgers 1000, many of the former members continue to believe RU should forsake the lure of television contracts and national exposure and return to the model that worked so well for the university in 1961.

‘I’m not opposed to sports,’ Ehrenfeld said. ‘It just shouldn’t be a commercialized, semi-pro league. I don’t want to see Rutgers as a big-time party football school. I think it would be better if instead we did really well in a lesser conference. I believe in this pretty strongly.’

Published on October 12, 2005 at 12:00 pm