Welcome to the Privateer Football website. This website was created in 1998 to chronicle the history of the original UNO Privateer club football team, and to advocate for the addition of NCAA Division I football at UNO.The original website provided extensive information on the costs and benefits of cost-containment football, a version of nonscholarship football played by a number of Division I schools.
In essence, nonscholarship football allows schools in Division I to compete in football, at what is essentially a Division III level of play, while maintaining all of its other athletic programs at the Division I level. It allows schools to play football without losing millions of dollars.
This website unapologetically advocated for that level of football at UNO.
It was our belief that football, even at the nonscholarship level would energize alumni and the student body like basketball and baseball never could. We felt that adding nonscholarship football was a low-risk, low-cost way to make football an official sport at UNO and thereby put UNO on the college sports map from August to November.
That idea was never fully explored by UNO officials. Several paid lip service to the notion, but a true study of it was never done. It was simply not in anyone's plan.
When the current club football team burst onto the scene in 2008, a lot of us felt vindicated. With no funding and only a grass-roots effort to get the word out and sell tickets, the club team regularly outdrew UNO's basketball and baseball teams in five home games in 2008 and 2009.
At the same time, UNO athletics was reeling from the effects of Katrina and the far more damaging effects of decades of apathy from the University administration. UNO athletics needed a spark. It needed a plan for financial viability and growth.
The financial crisis could have brought together the most talented members of the UNO community to devise a plan for success and growth of UNO athletics that would have met every need. UNO could and should have remained a Division I university. Football could and should have been added as an NCAA nonscholarship sport. The addition of football could have been the lynchpin for fresh support from the alumni community and the student body, who narrowly voted down an increased athletic fee in early 2009.
But unfortunately we'll never know if such a plan would have worked, because it was never given an opportunity. Factions that could have worked together for the betterment of UNO, found themselves supporting opposite ends of a narrowly defined directive from Chancellor Ryan. Ryan, it seems, has been convinced for some time that Division I athletics had no chance of working at UNO and gave the efforts to prove otherwise very little time or support.
Members of the club football team and its coaching staff chose to support Chancellor Ryan's proposal to drop to Division III. This choice has bitterly disappointed the fanbase of UNO athletics, who rushed to support the club effort hoping its success would indicate brighter days ahead for all of UNO athletics.
With the LSU Board's decision to allow UNO to leave the Sun Belt, the process of reclassification has begun and there is very little chance that it can be reversed now. Ironically, UNO will get what this site has long wanted: NCAA football. But it was never meant to be like this. No one associated with this website ever wanted football at the cost of Division I athletics at UNO. Football was supposed to be the savior of Division I athletics, not a key factor in its destruction.
Please support NCAA Division I Athletics, including football, at the University of New Orleans.