Official sanctioned sports team wanted for students

For a long time the thought of Austin Community College having an official sports team was an outrageous idea. Unthinkable. What seemed impossible a few years ago is now more plausible than ever, especially when you look at the big questions facing this issue.

Is ACC big enough for an official sports team? Well, at first glance one would think "no, we are a community college, we are much too small for that."

Not so fast, my friend. The truth is, ACC is more than big enough to house its own sports team.

We have an undergraduate population of more than 45,000 students. Compare that to Texas State's entire student population at 32,572. We more than double their undergraduate population alone. With plans to open ACC campuses in Elgin and Kyle in the near future, I'd say that answers the size question.

Another big question facing this issue is where we would go. Do other community colleges even field teams?

The National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) is comprised of junior colleges and community colleges where ACC would compete with other schools on its level.

There are plenty of stadiums such as The Palace in Round Rock that ACC could rent out to play football games to settle the issue of location.

The biggest problem facing ACC though is not whether we could or couldn't - although we very easily could - the problem is money.

To run a successful athletic program, especially one at such an early stage in its life would be a major time and monetary commitment.

In these hard economic times, sometimes even successful sports teams do not bring in enough money to pay off the investment, or bring in revenue. Despite the monetary issues ACC would face, I think that it's high time to give the students a real sports program.

Student athletes looking to transfer to big name school's would not have to take a year away from their favorite sports, and if the program were successful in football, the unofficial sport of Texas, it would raise the profile of ACC greatly.

Just look at Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton, for example. He transferred to Blinn College in 2009 and won them a national title in football. You can bet they made a good sum of money off of ticket sales and merchandise sales.

The point is that ACC could benefit from this just as Blinn did, as well as give a student athletes at ACC the chance to move on to the NFL following in the footsteps of Newton. Who's to say he wouldn't be as successful as Newton is now if he had to have taken that one year off?

Although I think ACC should and is ready to field a real sports team, I don't see it happening in the near future. ACC's main focus is currently set on expansion and getting those new campuses up and running. In the mean time, ACC students will have to continue the long wait for athletic success.