For 115 seasons, the Whittier College Poets fielded a football team, but that all changed in 2022 when the school's leadership decided to cut the program as a cost cutting measure.
Now under new leadership, with new faces on the board as as the school's president, they're exploring the possibility of bringing football back, according to law firm / sports agency Younger & Associates.
There's a catch though. There always is.
The school needs to raise about $250k in order to bring football back to campus.
That sound familiar?
Back in 2014, after their best season in about a decade that ended in a 6-6 record, UAB president Ray Watts announced plans to shut down the football program. Despite the momentum that Bill Clark and his staff had built, Clark believed they could save about $10 million a year over five seasons without football on their ledger.
A campaign to save the football program soon followed, with alumni and local businesses leading the charge before the city council committed a half-million dollars annually to the cause.
Six months later after being left for dead, the united community of Birmingham learned that the Blazers would return to the field in 2017 after over $17 million was raised.
The years that followed were special, as that first full-year back they went 8-4 and in 2018 they won Conference USA. In 2019 they broke ground on a new downtown stadium, and opened it in 2021. In 2022, after battling back issues, Clark decided to step away (but hasn't closed the door on a possible comeback).
UAB is clearly a unique case in terms of a groundswell of support coming through to bring back a program, but the fact that it happened should be encouraging for programs facing similar circumstances like Whittier.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.