Disband Football?
Although the sale of the football stadium bleachers was detrimental to the program, it was not the worst conditions that Trinity Football has had to survive. The football program was almost disbanded on multiple occasions during its history, with the first instance occurring in 1941 and the second in 1980. The first occasion had to do with the entire football conference voting on whether or not it would keep football as a sport at its participating schools; luckily the vote did not pass. This article is an excellent example of how football had not hit its prime in popularity throughout the entire country. It was not nearly as action packed and exciting as today, so people were not nearly as inclined to watch and follow teams as they are today. The fact that they even considered getting rid of their programs shows football’s lack of importance in the administrators’ eyes.
The second instance was Trinity’s own poll determining whether or not they would disband the football and baseball programs in order to create a scholarship based basketball team. This event was described in a Trinitonian article that discusses a poll run by the Trinitonian in 1980. The poll results stated that Trinity would not disband its football and baseball team, but in another testament to the lack of support for the football program, the fact this was considered for a second time is a major issue. The author highlights both the positive and negative with quotes from students on both sides of the debate. In reference to those in favor of the football team staying, he wrote, “Several responses said that it would not be fair to advance one sport over the others. One response said, ‘No! It seems that 'we' are pitting the athletes against one another. In an academic environment like this, it seems we could come up with a solution that aides all’” (Trinitonian, pg 19). He goes on to say this about the opposing side “Their reasoning was that, in the past, students support for both sports mentioned has been low. Many students are apathetic and do not care about attending Trinity football and baseball games” (Trinitonian, pg 19). This shows how disinterested and unsupportive so many students at Trinity are towards the football and baseball teams. Even though the vote to keep the teams passed, the student fan support is still extremely lacking in comparison to so many other schools around Texas.