The Making of South Alabama Football

Wow, what a last few months it has been! It all started with a meeting of a small group of students last September. The cause for the meeting: force the administration to hear us out and reconsider the implementation of a football program at the University of South Alabama. Come to find out, there was no forcing required (as if we could've actually "forced" the administration).

In late August 2007, a student at the U. of South Alabama organized a group going by the name of "Students Who Stand". It's premise - "To Stand Together as a Student Body and Have Our Voices Heard in Support of NCAA Football at the University of South Alabama." The original idea brought forth at that first meeting of SWS was to get a group of students to "protest" at the next Board of Trustess meeting to let the board know that the students were serious about wanting football at USA. Well, the administration got wind of this and put forth an alternative to our protest. They would reopen the football investigation (our initial reaction being, "Wow, really? Just like that?) and we had to prove that the students did indeed want football, and were willing to foot a significant portion of the bill. Based on turnout for homecoming and student government elections, it was agreed that we were to obtain at least 2,000 student signatures by November 10th, the date of the first preseason basketball game which would also become the petition presentation for the implementation of football at USA. After two weeks of preparation, we began our journey.

Oct. 19 marked the first day of our petition drive. We were pretty sure that we had the support to realize our goal, but that small group of us on that first day didn't know what quite to expect. After all, when you see a complete stranger on campus, on the street, downtown, or wherever you may be, and they stop you to ask for your signature on a petition, what's your initial reaction? Exactly. Thankfully though, our support expectations were more than fulfilled. On that first day, we stood outside of Humanities for the 4 hours worth of early morning classes catching every class change as students walked into and out of the building. In those 4 hours, we obtained over 400 signatures and by the end of the second day we were up to 700. By the end of the month, we reached our goal of 2,000 and ended up with a total of 2,600+.

The Nov. 10th petition presentation went fantastically terrific, which lead to the next obstacle, the Board of Trustees meeting on Dec. 6. Turns out, the BOT meeting was no obstacle at all (man we were nervous leading up to it though). The board voted unanimously on December 6, 2007 to approve the implementation of a football program at the University of South Alabama, and history was made.

Stay tuned as we keep you up to date with the development of the South Alabama football program!