Texas Wesleyan football seeks first winning season since WWII. Now it needs a stadium.
What both UT San Antonio and UT El Paso are doing in football is historic, and Texas Wesleyan’s accomplishments this season beat both the Roadrunners and Miners.
What TWU is doing trumps anything any team is doing this season.
The Texas Wesleyan Rams are 5-2, and should finish with their first winning season since 1941.
Eighty years between winning seasons has to be some sort of record; it gives the Texas Rangers some breathing room.
The Rams won a conference title in 1941, but the attack on Pearl Harbor changed things. TWU didn’t play football again as a varsity sport until 2017.
When the team returned that fall, its first game earned Texas Wesleyan a mention on ESPN’s “College Game Day.”
Coach Joe Prud’homme started with nothing, and now the Rams are something. The Rams are 5-2 with three games remaining.
“It was harder than it looked,” Prud’homme said in a phone interview. “We are still driving a truck to practice. Honestly, it was incredibly hard.”
The question for Texas Wesleyan now is what does the school in east Fort Worth wants to do with its football team.
It can maintain the status quo, which will likely result in the coach leaving, or it can do what it said and build the program into something more than what it is.
When the football program launched in 2017, the plan was to be a fully funded NAIA team with an on-campus practice facility and on campus football stadium.
It’s 2021, and the team practices at Clark Stadium, which is five miles from TWU’s campus.
It’s 2021, and the team plays its home games at Farrington Field, which is 6.5 miles away from TWU’s campus.
TWU was fortunate to restart a football team without having to build a new stadium.
With the fate of Farrington Field uncertain — the Fort Worth Independent School District wants to sell the complex — Texas Wesleyan might soon not have a choice.
Every single college administrator will tell you if use sports to market to prospective students, the games must be on campus.
TWU still plans to build an on-campus stadium.
That would be a facility of about 3,000 to 5,000 seats with a track circling the field. TWU owns the piece of nearby land to build the stadium, which overlooks downtown Fort Worth.
“We plan to do this and the fundraising is in full swing,” TWU president Frederick G. Slabach said in a phone interview. “We want to do it in phases. The first phase would be to build a practice field, and then a track around it, and then the stadium.”
Slabach estimates the project will cost about $16.5 million. By doing the project in phases he can start building, and using it, while raising money to complete the rest.
The plan is to use the facility for track and field, and soccer as well as football.
Slabach did not want to set dates any on of this yet. Take that however you want.
He said having football back has done everything the school intended; the most recent enrollment for TWU freshmen was its highest in 24 years.
“The next step is getting the student life piece it, and that part is hard,” Prud’homme said. “I do think if we were on campus I think you’d see a buzzing, live atmosphere at all times.”
According to FootballScoop, Texas Wesleyan’s football program ranked 16th in revenue among NAIA teams in 2018, $1.69 million. The figures are self-reported to the Department of Education.
That figure for TWU has only increased, against what have been similar expenses.
The team essentially has the NAIA maximum allotment of 22 scholarships to offer students for football.
The next phases of this process always include upgrading facilities, which means spending more money.
For a school so new to football, and the cost, there are bound to be disagreements among administrators, board members, etc., on how best to spend money.
There are some who don’t want to spend a dime. There are some who want to spend the bare minimum. There are some who want to spend millions.
In the middle of this is always the head coach who will survey it all, and decide whether the school is moving beyond the “planning phases.”
When they dig dirt and pour concrete, that’s an answer.
If they don’t, that’s an answer.
When the school doesn’t dig and pour, that coach leaves.
What TWU has done in bringing back football in 2017, and posting its first winning season in 80 years five seasons later, is a story. It’s an accomplishment.
It’s not the finale.
When Texas Wesleyan decided to play football it did so with the plan of doing all of it on campus.
TWU built a winner without having to build facilities.
Now it’s time to dig and pour.
