For Hofstra, adding the Islanders is about lessening the subtraction of football

The Islanders' partnership with WRHU is a MUCH better idea than this logo.

Another one of those “only at Hofstra” moments took place last Friday, when Hofstra and the New York Islanders announced WRHU has become the flagship radio station of the Islanders. So now the biggest piece of bait the Hofstra school of communications can offer potential broadcasters is the chance to cover a sport that the school does not play.

Incongruity aside, this is a great, great coup for Hofstra and WRHU, which will air half the Islanders’ games on 88.7 (the other half will air on the Islanders’ website). WRHU will provide a better signal than the Islanders’ last two radio homes, the AM station WBBR and the FM station WMJC, as well as a more natural fit for sports programming than WMJC, which is better known as Long Island’s ‘80s station.

In addition, not only will WRHU provide the audio and technical support, its broadcasters will also serve as color commentators along side Islanders play-by-play vet Chris King as well as sideline reporters and intermission hosts.

It is, to borrow a cliché from another sport because I’m only mostly sure that the objective in hockey is to put the puck in the net, a slam dunk for Hofstra. And yet as much as this is a matter of the Islanders avoiding the embarrassment of opening the season without a radio home, I wonder if this is also a face-saving measure for Hofstra as it continues to make amends for the short-sighted decision to kill football.

Sound crazy? Well, my fellow students found this hard to believe in the mid-1990s, so I can only imagine what today’s students will think if they read this, but one of the biggest reasons I went to Hofstra was for the football team. And I know I wasn’t alone, then or now.

For budding sportswriters and broadcasters who are optimistic/crazy enough to want to pursue a career in the field, there are two major, resume-boosting beats to cover as collegians: Division I football and Division I men’s basketball. A student doesn’t have to cover football or basketball to learn and develop the narrative of the beat writer, how to build contacts and relationships and how to establish himself as the source for news and information about the team.

But football and basketball are the glamour beats—the ones that jump out at potential employers as well as the ones with the biggest audiences, the biggest personalities and the biggest challenges. I regret not writing this sooner, but I can tell you my experience covering Joe Gardi in 1994-95 prepared me for the task of covering professional athletes and coaches—impatient, suspicious men from whom trust was difficult to earn and who searched obsessively for any slight, real or imagined, that they could use for motivational purposes.

My favorite Gardi story is the time he told me during an interview that nobody at Hofstra wanted the program to succeed because the football offices weren’t in the PFC complex with the rest of the teams and administrators. I was too shocked to say the obvious: That the football team was housed in Margiotta Hall precisely BECAUSE the school’s decision-makers wanted to bolster it and turn it into a champion.

But Gardi couldn’t shut off the “us against the world” mechanism that turned his program into a national power—a nice preparation for listening to the Boston Red Sox declare that everyone was waiting for them to fail in 2007, a season in which the Sox spent the final 166 days of the regular season in first place before winning the World Series.

So while communications students past and present didn’t take nearly the hit that current and former football players took when football was executed, it was still quite a blow. The Class of 2010 alone has three former football play-by-play men who landed jobs in sports broadcasting (Mike Leslie, Jonathan Lauder and Stephen Florival). This is not a fluke: Dozens of former football play-by-play men from WRHU are employed in sports broadcasting, including Defiantly Dutch Era broadcaster John Discepolo, who is now a sports anchor in Seattle after working at Fox 5 and WCBS2.

The lack of football isn’t going to guarantee unemployment for future School of Communication graduates. But it diminishes the scope and quality of their education outside of the classroom.

According to this link, there are 95 colleges offering a school of communication. Seventy-eight of them play football, and all but three of those schools field Division I or I-AA programs. Among the schools that offer both a communications school and a Division I football team are Syracuse, Missouri, Northwestern and Columbia—the very best communications schools America has to offer and the types of universities with whom Hofstra wants to be mentioned in the same breath.

For a school preaching that football was sacrificed so that Hofstra could “…invest in academic initiatives,” the truth is the decision harmed a sizable segment of the student body. So what better way to bandage that wound than by teaming up with the Islanders and turning Hofstra into the only school in the country offering its broadcasters-in-training the opportunity to cover a professional sports team? It’s a nice move, and the least the school can do for the communications students who didn’t get any return from the investment of last Dec. 3.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

Joe Gardi on Hofstra ending football

Just spoke to ex-Hofstra coach Joe Gardi, who oversaw the Flying Dutchmen football program’s emergence from Division III power to Division I-AA playoff contender. Here are his comments on today’s decision by Hofstra to drop football.

(On if he was surprised by this)

Nope. I’ve been expecting it for years.

(On why he expected it)

No comment.

Well, the phone’s been ringing off the hook. Had a player who I coached [who played for] the Buffalo Bills, Herve Damas. Herve called me from Europe, he’s in medical school and he was devastated. I think it’s a sad day in the Gardi household. I feel, personally, that my legacy is gone. And I thought it was a pretty good one. My daughter started crying. My wife started crying. It’s a sad day. But I’m not surprised.

(On if he has spoken to former President James Shuart)

I called him. I don’t think he was surprised. Jim was one of the first guys I called. I wanted to share my thoughts with him.

My biggest concern is Dave Cohen and his family and the coaches and their families and all the hard work and effort that we put into building Hofstra’s program. Somebody once told me, high up in the administration right now, that we put Hofstra on the map because we won before Jay Wright did. And I’d go to airports and meet an alumnus. In restaurants—one guy in a restaurant in Garden City thanked me for doubling the value of his education, his Hofstra degree, which was nice.

But I think about all the old players that we worked so hard. My old coaches, most of whom are doing extremely well now, they’re in the pros or somewhere. But we put a lot of hard work and effort into this and it’s a sad day.

I think all of Long Island should be concerned. It’s a sad day for Long Island. The days of Jimmy Brown and Long Island producing great football players might be gone.

(On if he thinks this is the beginning of a trend nationwide):

Well, I saw Dave Monday and I told him I was worried about that domino effect. Because they like to follow suit.

A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into building a strong quality football program. I feel bad, as I said, for Dave and his family and the football staff, the players, the alums and the supporters for the program. Our former players and coaches should hold their heads high. It shouldn’t take away from their accomplishments and it shouldn’t take away from the fact we were responsible for putting Hofstra on the map first.

It’s hard to figure out which might have been our best year at Hofstra. But certainly, that ’90 team, we were Division III, had to be one of the most exciting, And then I think we had Gio Carmazzi for one year, we went 10-1. A lot of great times. When I retired, I was concerned that this would eventually happen. And I wonder if Northeastern hadn’t dropped football, whether Hofstra would have.

My thoughts today were for Cohen and his family and Joe Margiotta, who was one of my biggest backers and probably the biggest fan of Hofstra football. And you know Joe passed away. We gave so many young men an opportunity to have a great education and play football at a very high level. The fact that we were springboard for a lot of young men to go on and play pro ball makes me proud. I think we probably sent more kids from a I-AA team to pro ball. You know, for a lot of years, we sent more kids to the pros than a program like Rutgers. And we would have loved to have played those teams.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

RIP Joe Margiotta

Joe Margiotta, the Long Island political legend who was one of the most pivotal figures in Hofstra history, died Friday at the age of 81 following a brief hospitalization. Newsday has done a nice job this weekend of summarizing Margiotta’s life and the legacy he left on the Nassau County Republican Party, which was among the most powerful in the nation during Margiotta's tenure as its chairperson.

I certainly hope the lack of a similar retrospective at the official Hofstra site (as of the time of this posting) about his impact on the school is a matter of Hofstra being closed for the long Thanksgiving weekend and not something more sinister or careless. To not acknowledge Margiotta would confirm, in far colder teams than I could have envisioned, that those now running Hofstra have no real attachment to the University or its traditions.

It’s one thing to ignore the days of Division III football and East Coast Conference hoops. Say what you want about Margiotta’s colorful past—I wasn’t at Hofstra when Margiotta Hall was built, but I remember reading plenty of clips in The Chronicle critical of the University’s continued support of Margiotta following his imprisonment—but it’d be something else entirely to ignore a man who was one of Hofstra’s most prideful grads.

Margiotta, who enrolled at Hofstra in 1946 after serving in the Navy during World War II and played for the Flying Dutchmen football team with James Shuart, often referred to his relationship with Hofstra as a five-decade love affair. And unlike the rest of us, he spoke as much with his wallet as his lungs.

According to his biography in the 2007 football media guide (page 69), he helped land state approval for the law school at Hofstra as well as the original Unispan. Margiotta served the University in a variety of capacities and was among the founders of the Pride Club as well as its predecessor, the Fifty for Hofstra Club.

In his biography, Margiotta was described as “…an ardent and faithful fan, whose attendance at Hofstra athletic events would be hard to match.” He was most passionate, though, about football. Margiotta was the most vocal advocate of upgrading the program and facilities and hand-picked Joe Gardi to become the head coach in 1990, a decision that led to previously unimaginable prosperity for the Flying Dutchmen.

And Margiotta Hall wasn’t named after him because he was the highest bidder after the fact. The first time I met Margiotta was when he sat in on my season preview interview with Gardi in August 1994. It was a little different than any interview I’d ever done, but I was smart enough to figure out that if Joe Margiotta wanted to sit in on an interview conducted inside a building that he built, well, he could do that.

Margiotta continued to dream big about Hofstra football, which he hoped would someday make the leap to Division I-A, but the current powers that be did not share his enthusiasm for a sport that loses the school money by the buckets. And it was impossible not to notice that Margiotta seemed to become another long-time Hofstra athletic figure whose impact was marginalized under the new regime: His biography was not included in this year’s football media guide for the first time since I began following the team in 1994.

Such an absence is inexcusable. So, too, would a continued lack of acknowledgment about Margiotta’s life and legacy by Hofstra.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Hofstra vs. Bucknell: Like clockwork, every 14 years

"Hey Nat I know you said you'd tell my dad if I ever bet again, but this guy wants to bet me Hofstra won't play Bucknell again for another 14 years!"

Seeing Bucknell on the football schedule brings back a lot of fond memories. The first football game I ever covered at Hofstra—and the first road game I ever covered in any sport—was at Bucknell on Sept. 10, 1994. It involved getting up at 5:30 am—amazingly, I did not sleep through the alarm—and taking the spirit support/band bus to Lewisburg, PA.

I remember packing a Walkman (click the link, kiddies) and a lot of tapes I’d recorded off CD, including this criminally underrated gem by Cheap Trick which I now have loaded on my iPod. (No idea why I can remember stuff like that, yet forget to do the laundry)

I remember Bucknell handing out “Hammer Hofstra” buttons as fans walked in. I should have grabbed one of those, especially since Hofstra hammered Bucknell 45-21. It’d be a cool memento—not as cool as a basketball signed by VBK and three other guys, but pretty neat nonetheless.

You probably could have made a lot of money if you bet me that night that Hofstra would not play Bucknell again for another 14 years—if only I could have found somebody willing to bet on the future schedules for Hofstra football. Hey, I bet this guy would have chased that action! (Watching a Very Special Episode of Beverly Hills 90210 as I write has its advantages)

At the time, the Flying Dutchmen were in their second season as a full-fledged Division I-AA independent and just beginning to stir as The Little Team That Could. The administration recognized it couldn’t remain an independent forever and was hopeful that playing multiple games per season against Patriot League foes would lead to an offer to join a conference that, like Hofstra, was filled with schools whose football teams had just moved from Division III to I-AA and did not award scholarships in football.

Hofstra also believed it was a good academic fit with the Patriot League, which is one tier below the Ivy League (I’ll pause long enough for you to choke your laughter). The Patriot League—filled with institutions at least a century older than Hofstra—did not think likewise and ignored Hofstra’s pleading eyes.

The Flying Dutchmen’s brilliant ’94 season changed the University’s expectations for the football program. In January ’95, Hofstra gave up on the Patriot League—whose existence appeared endangered with Fordham and Holy Cross reportedly seeking new homes—and began offering scholarships as it turned its gaze towards the Yankee Conference.

“The reason we held back on football scholarships is that we wanted to maintain our relationship with the Patriot League,” President James Shuart told Newsday in 1995.

That relationship came to a screeching halt once Hofstra began offering scholarships. The Flying Dutchmen played four Patriot League teams in 1993 and three apiece in 1994 and 1995, but since then, the program has played more playoff games against Patriot League foes (two) than regular season games (one).

“We’re not playing with the same type of kids they’re playing with,” Fordham coach Nick Quartaro told Newsday after Hofstra beat the Rams, 36-15, in 1995. It was the last game between the two schools, who met 22 times in the previous 23 years.

While feelings were no doubt bruised on both sides, Hofstra and the Patriot League thrived independent of each other. Hofstra eventually landed in the conference formerly known as the Yankee and currently known as the CAA and made the playoffs as an independent in 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2000 before winning the A-10 in the program’s debut season in 2001. A CAA school has reached the I-AA title game four times in the last five years and four of the top 10 teams in this week’s I-AA Top 25 poll are from the CAA, including top-ranked James Madison.

The Patriot League survived, but with just six football schools, it accepted Towson as a football-only member in 1997. Joe Gardi, who was offended by the Patriot’s snub, always took great delight in pointing out how the conference had to stoop to accepting a state school in order to remain viable. (Towson left for the CAA after the 2003 season)

Despite its non-scholarship status, the Patriot League receives an automatic bid to the I-AA tournament—Lehigh lost to Hofstra in 1999 but beat the Flying Dutchmen in 2001—and Gardi had to like what he saw in 2003, when Colgate proved non-scholarship opponents could run with the big dogs by reaching the Division I-AA championship game, where it fell to Delaware 40-0.

The funny thing is I’d bet today’s Powers That Be would be perfectly content if Hofstra had landed in the Patriot League and if Bucknell was an annual foe instead of a once-every-three-Olympiads-and-then-some non-conference opponent. It’s no secret that the football team is a blight on the bottom line—as one unidentified member of the athletic department described the program to Newsday’s Steve Marcus in 2004: “Dig a hole, put five million in it and throw dirt over it”— nor that President Rabinowitz isn’t a huge fan of athletics in general.

But Hofstra’s too invested in the CAA to turn back now. The bright side to remaining in the top I-AA conference in the land is the opportunity to make back some of the football investment via $250,000 games against I-A schools such as UConn, Boston College and Army.

There’s no money to be had in visiting Bucknell for the first time in 14 years, just a chance for the Flying Dutchmen to erase the sting of last weekend’s record-setting thrashing at the hands of James Madison. Conventional wisdom says Hofstra should beat the non-scholarship Bison, who were picked to finish sixth in the seven-team Patriot League, but, well, that didn’t work so well against Albany. And Bucknell—which is 3-1 and no stranger to nail-biters; its four games have been decided by a total of 14 points—is surely not lacking for motivation in its only game of the season against a program with the full allotment of scholarships.

I’ll guess two things: That Dave Cohen and his staff pray Cory Christopher can continue to take every single snap…and that special teams will be the difference in another game decided by less than seven points. Which, you know, makes me nervous.

(To the surprise of no one, I wrote much more than I expected, so the mailbag and links will have to wait until next week)

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.