Years ago, there were a number of junior college football programs in Illinois.
Joliet Junior College, College of DuPage, Moraine Valley, Rock Valley, Illinois Valley, Harper and South Suburban all fielded programs.
At the beginning of the 2010 football season there were three JUCO football programs in the state — Joliet, Harper and DuPage.
Next season, there will be just two, as Joliet, the only school in the area with a football team, has decided to drop its program.
In a slumping economy and with the high costs of running a football team, JUCO football programs have fallen by the wayside.
Joliet Junior College athletic director Wayne King said Moraine Valley, Illinois Valley and South Suburban dropped theirs in the late 80s or early 90s. Rock Valley, located in Rockford, dropped its football team after the 2009 season.
At JJC, deciding to drop the program came down the the high costs associated with it.
"The main reason is probably cost. Not probably, it is cost. It's obviously an expensive sport to have," King said. "Unfortunately in this day and age, probably the way everything goes these days is related to the almighty dollar."
JJC interim president Dr. Frank Zeller says that the college spent about $500,000 per year on football.
"I know we weren't taking in much money per game," Zeller said. "Everyone who had followed the football said it was getting to be an all-time low."
Zeller blamed some of the attendance problems for JJC's home games at ATI Field at Memorial Stadium due to the fact that the school has so many players from out of district. This season, the Wolves had 20 players from out of state, while many players come from Chicago, the south suburbs and the St. Louis area.
"As you can see, people come from all over. I think one of the things is we didn't have much attention on football because we had so many people outside of the district," Zeller said. "The more local students you have playing, the more you have showing up to the game. They all want to come and watch their relatives play."
Due to the fact that there are fewer and fewer JUCO progams around — only 69 in the country — teams usually have to recruit out of district to get talent.
Football-strong states like Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin don't have a single junior college program.
"We recruit those states because it's easy picking because there's no other football for those guys to play," JJC head coach Jeremy Richardson said. "I think that's the biggest thing lost to why we go out of state. It's because those states don't have junior college football."
Less programs, more problems
Something that's a big factor in the high costs of the program is travel. With fewer and fewer schools in-state, the Wolves are forced to go to surrounding states for games. That means bigger bus rides and more hotels.
The conference JJC competes in, the Midwest Football conference, includes three schools from Iowa, one from North Dakota and another from Michigan in addition to JJC, Harper and DuPage.
It was different when there were seven JUCO football programs in the state.
"Back then it was a lot easier. You only traveled less than two hours to see some of those schools," King said. "You maybe took a long distance trip here or there. Most of them were sitting right here for us to play."
TITLE IX
Money was the main reason for JJC's decision to drop football.
However, according to Zeller, it wasn't the only one.
Part of the reason for the decision to cut football has to do with Title IX, which fights for equality among male and female athletes. That means that schools are supposed to have nearly the same amount of male and female athletes.
Zeller said that the Department of Justice, which oversees Title IX, is contacting universities throughout the country and pressuring them on the issue.
They are asking that each school has a liaison that takes care of Title IX possibilities.
Before it decided to drop football, JJC offered six different sports, according to the school's website — football, cheerleading, basketball, baseball, cross country and soccer.
At the same time, JJC offered the same amount of women's sports, yet had volleyball instead of football.
With football having rosters over 75 players, in order to comply with Title IX the college would either have to drop football, or add multiple women's sports if it wanted to reach gender equality, as football's rosters are so large. Obviously, adding more women's sports would also mean spending a lot more money.
Zeller said that was part of the reason for the decision to get rid of the football program all together.
"Title IX has been around for a long time. Nobody's really said much about it. They said try and do what you can. Now they're starting to tighten up. We can see the handwriting on the wall," Zeller said. "I don't know that we could have offered enough women's sports to make up for the 85 football players."