UdeM has support for football, but there are obstacles
University studies whether it can attract enough players

By Dwayne Tingley
Published in the Times-Transcript on Thursday January 13,2011
Appeared on Page B1

L'Université de Moncton is encouraged by the support it has been given as it studies the feasibility of operating a varsity team in the Atlantic University Sport football conference.

Current students, alumni, other universities, the AUS and Canadian Interuniversity Sport as well as football supporters at all levels have all said they would like to see UdeM field a team, which would play its home games at the sparkling new Stade Moncton 2010 Stadium.

Linda Schofield, UdeM's executive-director of university relations, and athletic director Marc Boudreau have submitted a preliminary report to university president Yvon Fontaine.

Schofield and Boudreau attended last year's Vanier Cup national championship game as well as games at Université Laval in Quebec and the University of Ottawa in order to get a better understanding of what it takes to operate a high-profile football program.

They also interviewed as many other people involved in university football as possible. In total, they had more than 70 submissions to review for their report given to the university president.

They concluded a UdeM football team would gain wide support and financing it would not be a major concern. The team would have an annual operating budget in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but fund-raising will not be the team's largest obstacle to overcome, Schofield said yesterday.

She said there are resources from fund-raising activities as well from the private sector and university alumni that could keep the team on sound financial footing.

All of those, however, don't mean UdeM is ready to commit to establishing a football program.

The next piece of the puzzle is securing enough players. Schofield said the university would need as many as 90 players, which includes a practice roster, to start a team.

"That is our greatest challenge," Schofield said. "In New Brunswick, there are only two French-speaking high schools that have football teams (Mathieu-Martin and l'Odyssée, both in Metro Moncton).

"With no other francophone schools playing football, we would have to recruit players from outside the region and rely on English-speaking players who come to our university to study immersion."

Schofield and Boudreau have begun studying player availability.

Schofield is not sure how long it will take to write that report, but she said the findings will likely determine whether UdeM can sustain a team.

"In keeping with our practices, we don't have to have a team just to say we have a team," she said. "We want a team like all of our other teams. It must be competitive in our conference."

AUS current has four teams in its football conference - the Mount Allison Mounties, Saint Mary's Huskies, Acadia Axemen and St. Francis Xavier X-Men. In recent years, there have been some efforts to bring football back to the University of Prince Edward Island, Dalhousie University and the University of New Brunswick.