Cecil Buffington

In follow up to my last blog post, I decided to specify my research to the history of the Santa Clara football team. My main research question would be: Why was the Santa Clara football team eliminated? What could have been done to keep the program alive and why were these efforts not made? As an athlete at Santa Clara, I do have some bias on this topic and think it would be awesome if we still had a football team however, I do understand logistics and that some things just have to happen.

But did the ending of the football program really have to happen? The picture above is an advertisement for the 1938 Sugar Bowl between nationally ranked #9 Santa Clara University and #8 LSU. For those who aren’t familiar with football, this is one of the major college bowl games that occur every year. SCU won this game 6-0, the Sugar Bowl the previous year 21-14, and the 1950 Orange Bowl 21-13. This leaves me wondering how Santa Clara went from a nationally ranked, successful football team to a program that struggled to compete against Division II schools. From my research, funding was discovered to be the main issue but if the school didn’t want to put more money into the football program then maybe this shows why they weren’t successful. The school did not view them as a priority and while they had the money to keep the program in existence, they chose to redistribute it elsewhere.