One college's retreat from big-time sports
Birmingham-Southern College moved from Division I athletics to Division III to put more emphasis on academics.
from the July 12, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Two years later, in 2006, Pollick was thrust into the spotlight when two Birmingham-Southern students confessed to torching nine Baptist churches. "I was dumbfounded," he says. "It was so out of the box. I didn't know how to do this."
Yet it took him less than 20 minutes to make a decision: BSC would help rebuild the churches. Returning from a fundraising trip to New York, he wrote press releases and scheduled press conferences. By the time he walked on campus, he was ready to act.
Adelia Patrick Thompson, vice president for institutional advancement at BSC, says Pollick changed that day. "He stood there in front of the entire campus and moved from being the new president to being the leader everyone looked to and trusted," she says.
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So far, Pollick's approach seems to be paying dividends. Freshman applications are up 50 percent since 2004, and African-American enrollment jumped from 6 to 14 percent last year. With the savings from the scholarship redistribution, the school will be able to field its first football team since 1939, along with four new sports. Alumni contributions have increased significantly, though officials are unsure if it's due to the athletic decision.
But the abdication of Division I still reverberates through school locker rooms. Duane Reboul stepped down as basketball coach, but has stayed on to teach. "We'd just finished recruiting and signing players to come in under the pretense of playing Division I," he says. "It's a monumental task, having to rebuild the entire program without any players."
Still, the decision seems to have garnered broad approval off the court. "I was for it," says Nan Wingo, whose granddaughter received an academic scholarship. "There was too much money being poured into athletics here."
Pollick saw the move as necessary for the school's fiscal, as well as moral, well-being. He believes students now play sports for the love of the game instead of scholarship money. Plans are under way to begin a global studies center to promote concepts like human dignity – a pet Pollick cause. "By being clear about who you are and what you believe in, you lose some and you gather up others," he tells alums. "You just have to decide where you're going to plant your flag."
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