Skyline College does not need a football program.  At a time when community colleges are short changed and programs are being cut or downscaled, I cannot believe you had the audacity to even suggest spending additional funding into the Skyline sports program.  A successful program that has the tradition you mentioned, along with many accolades and awards.
     Just because it wasn’t from football does not mean these achievements are any less satisfying.  Skyline, CSM, and Cañada does an excellent job providing students with various options and opportunities, by complimenting each other.  Allowing access to almost needs and wants, just not all in the same campus. You need to get out of this “us too” mentality and think of the community college district, as a whole.
                    Samantha Lewis

     While I applaud your scrutiny into our athletic program offerings (“What sport is Skyline missing?” Volume XII – Issue 2), the suggestion to add a football program goes beyond funding, hiring, recruiting and scheduling. First and foremost on our radar is compliance with Title IX (the gender equity in athletics act). Under the guidelines of Title IX, one of the prongs states that the athletic enrollment should reflect the ratio of male to female full-time student body. On average, our student body is made up of 50% female to 50% male full-time students. By adding football, we would then need to offer additional sports for women so that compliance could be achieved. The department would have to recruit approximately 125 female students to compete here, in addition to funding each program, and hiring coaches, and with only softball, basketball, track & field, and cross country to choose from, meeting the compliance standard would be virtually impossible. The other option to obtain gender equity would be to eliminate men’s sports, which our department is completely opposed to. All of the men’s programs have a storied tradition, so making the decision to eliminate one of them would be political suicide. If you are seeking rivalries in sports, check out Skyline vs. CSM in baseball, which draws approximately 300 spectators, or Skyline vs. Canada or CCSF in soccer, or Skyline vs. anybody in basketball, or our women’s volleyball or soccer teams, which consistently put on a good showing. We are very proud of the winning tradition that all of our teams have achieved over the years, and are proud of the high matriculation rate that our student/athletes achieve with full or partial scholarships to four-year institutions. Although football is indeed a high profile sport, come check out your classmates competing on the courts, fields, or mats to continue the proud tradition of the Skyline College Athletics Program. I’m sure you will then see why we have no intention of offering football anytime soon.                    Andreas R. Wolf
                    Division Dean/Athletic Director