SBU parlays football into brand-building

Stony Brook has been a very good school for a very long time, but for most of that time, something was missing. Scott Middleton found it one day this autumn.

"I pulled into the parking lot a couple of hours before the pregame stuff started and it was a sea of tents, people tailgating, and I have to tell you, my eyes welled up with tears,'' he said. "This is what I've been waiting for since 1984.''

That was the year Middleton graduated, during an era when major college sports at Stony Brook were nonexistent and many of Long Island's best and brightest left the area in search of more spirited schools.

Now the Bohemia attorney is president of Stony Brook's alumni association, and that September day on which the Seawolves hosted Lafayette and drew a LaValle Stadium-record 8,278 was a revelation.

"This was a great place to go to school academically, but there wasn't a heck of a lot to fill you with pride when you walked around the campus,'' he said. "The alumni have always looked for that one element, that one missing factor that unifies the alumni base, the campus, the students. And football at this time of year is just off the charts.''

Stony Brook had its biggest off-the-charts moment to date when it beat Liberty last weekend to earn the Big South title and advance to its first FCS playoff game. It hosts Albany tomorrow in only the third FCS (formerly Division I-AA) playoff game held on Long Island; Hofstra hosted two in 1999.

Feel free to lament sports' outsized impact if you wish, because it has led to unseemly behavior at colleges for more than a century. But the reality is that sports success helps schools burnish their brands and engage their alumni like nothing else.

That explains the economic justification for a seemingly uneconomical entity such as Stony Brook football, which like most FCS programs runs in excess of $1 million a year in the red.

"You don't embark on I-AA scholarship football to make money,'' said Jim Fiore, the Seawolves' indefatigable athletic director, referring to the former name for FCS schools.

By that he meant making money directly. But indirectly . . .

"Fundraising has gone up, revenue has gone up, alumni support has quadrupled, pride in the university, all that stuff you can't quantify,'' he said. "That is the payoff. You can't put a dollar sign next to it.''

Fiore pointed to wealthy alums who have been motivated to give. Last year Glenn Dubin, Class of '78, committed $4.3 million for a strength and conditioning center, the largest private donation to a SUNY athletic department.

Fiore said the sorts of business people he speaks to "don't invest in losers.'' This was Tuesday, while he was in a car en route to Manhattan "to ask somebody for a million dollars.''

Beyond generous alums, sponsorships are up, as is attendance, with two of the three biggest crowds in LaValle history coming this season. Fiore said this year also has produced the three biggest days of merchandise sales in the program's history.

Also helping to pay the bills are the big checks that come from visits to FBS schools such as South Florida in 2010 and Army, Boston College and Cincinnati in the future. (SBU has longer-term FBS aspirations, but that is a story for another day.)

The bottom line remains this: "We don't do this for financial reasons,'' Fiore said. "I'm doing this to market and brand the university.''

Football is only part of SBU's athletic rise. A two-point loss last March cost the men's basketball team an NCAA berth, which would have provided a bigger dose of national notice.

For now, football will do. The added intrigue is that Saturday's game is against a fellow SUNY school, one that also has many alumni on Long Island. But Stony Brook might struggle to sell out on a holiday weekend, even at the modest, NCAA-mandated price of $12 a ticket.

"Anything less than a sellout is not acceptable,'' Fiore said. "If we don't keep high expectations, we won't attain greatness.''

Fiore stressed the obvious, that the school's primary mission remains academics. Its reputation in that area never has been stronger. But now there is more, creating an environment barely recognizable to students from earlier eras.

"This is not the Stony Brook your mamas and papas knew,'' Fiore said. "People are getting that message . . . It's really snowballing, and it is not stopping.''