Football is a priority for Olive

By JED LOCKETT Bluefield Daily Telegraph

POCAHONTAS, Va. — On Friday at the former Pocahontas High School, Bluefield College announced the return of football as an intercollegiate sport to the institution.

They will begin club play in 2011 and full intercollegiate play in 2012. They will practice and house the program at the announcement site and they anticipate playing home games at Mitchell Stadium.

But even with these basic details announced, there were and still are a number of questions that begged for answers. Before the announcement, Bluefield College President Dr. David Olive spoke with media members to address some of these questions.

The merits of football at Bluefield College have been debated for years, as Olive found out when he ascended to the presidency in 2007.

“I’ve got trustees who are on the board, one in particular who went off the board and is now back on the board who said this was being talked about when he was on the board the first time ...,” Olive said.

“But most recently, right before my arrival, Dr. Charles Warren was the interim president and he’s the one that instigated the feasibility study. So with that, that started a year-long process that was mainly by the campus community and a few community members brought in to be a part of that study team.”

On the day Olive was elected, the board of trustees adopted that study as an action plan to take Bluefield College back to the gridiron. That plan immediately became a priority for Olive. The study called for an investment of $2 million just to get the program off the ground.

It also called for improvements in various facilities on and around the Bluefield College campus. But apart from a new dormitory erected in the summer of 2009, those facilities were lacking.

Then the Tazewell County Industrial Development Authority came calling with the former Pocahontas High School to use as a practice facility.

“... Oftentimes when you’re working in the environment of a small, private college, it is like working a jigsaw puzzle and you’re looking for pieces and trying to get those pieces to fit,” Olive said.

“And this piece right here at Pocahontas High School is a huge piece because if we had to replicate a practice field, a fieldhouse, with all of the things that go with it, you’re easily talking over 1 million dollars.”

Even with the use of the building in Pocahontas, it leaves around $500,000 that Olive will need to raise before the Rams can play a varsity game in 2012.

“If you were to combine the first two years, this year that we’re about to get a head coach on board and then take into consideration that first year when the players will meet here and being organized as a team, I’d say, yes, that’s a very good number to peg on those first two years of operational support that’ll take,” Olive said.

Bluefield College has a place to practice, but they have yet to find a coach. The school posted an advertisement looking for a football coach on their web site over a month before Friday’s announcement. But they are still in the early stages of finding that coach.

“Last week, we had our first round of phone interviews and we’ve put a priority list together after narrowing the field down. We’ve had about 40 applications thus far,” Olive said.

“So we’ve got, we feel like a very good pool from which to search from, had some great conversations last week and now we’re in that process to getting it narrowed down to that one individual that will be here to lead our program.”

The time frame for identifying and hiring that individual is a brief one.

“We would like to have this person on the ground no later than August 1,” Olive said. “It really becomes critical when you stop and think about it. All of the individuals we’re talking to are active coaches. So if we wait beyond August 1, they’re already going to be involved in the programs where they currently are stationed now and are serving.”

Whoever the coach is, he or she will not have a lot of scholarship money to work with. The football program will offer partial scholarships, like the other athletic programs at Bluefield College.

“So the cost ratio and the revenue side of it we will net on this, it will pay for itself and if it doesn’t, then we’ve got to back up and reevaluate the whole process,” Olive said.

“But if it’s done right — and again, every college that has started up football in the last 10 years, there’s not a one of them — again, our size school — there’s not a one of them that says they regret it and that it’s been a revenue loss.”

Olive admitted that the addition of 50-75 more students on campus will necessitate the addition of new dormitory space either on or off campus.

“We have some capacity right now and probably for the number of student-athletes we anticipate next fall and in the fall of 2011 we have the capacity to handle that group,” he said.

“It’s the years after that that it really begins to tighten up where either we’re starting to allow students back off campus or we provide additional space there on campus.”

He also admitted that the addition of those students will eventually require some new facilities. Currently, Bluefield College athletes train either in the Dome Gymnasium or at the Bluefield Community Center. But Olive still envisions a new training facility in the open field below the Dome.

“We’re continuing to work on that process of that replacement facility for the Dome, one that would give us more recreational and athletic space with two gymnasiums where currently we have the one gym floor right now, also enlarged training facilities and weight facilities as well as fitness and all the health-related things that a growing college such as Bluefield College needs,” Olive said.

The Rams will need some teams to play against. Their other athletic programs play in the Appalachian Athletic Conference, a league that does not have a football schedule. Olive stated that he has looked into starting a new football-only conference with other area teams in similar situations. But he also stated what may be a more likely alternative.

“We also know that a football conference that is very close to us that we feel like there is a seat at the table for us, so-to-speak, for football is the Mid-South Conference,” Olive said. “So we’ve already initiated some conversation with the commissioner with the Mid-South about our football program.”

Olive joked about winning a national championship in 2012. But he realizes that bringing a new team to competitiveness is a long process.

“It’s almost like building a team so that you have to bring it in each year a little bit at a time and by that fourth or fifth year then you’re starting to get the sense that you’ve got the key players where you want them,” Olive said.

— Contact Jed Lockett

at jlockett@bdtonline.com

Text Only