Me on the Twitter: New schools getting into this football business. Does it make sense?

Earlier this week, I was involved in a conversation about the economic value of football to colleges, and UNC-Charlotte’s decision to field a football team. After CBS/SI guy Seth Davis mocked Joe Nocera’s latest NCAA column for being disappointed that more schools aren’t dropping football, someone cited UNC-Charlotte as an example of an ambitious school looking to add football to its menu of attractions.

Andy Schwarz, a California sports economist, was in this fray, too. I’ve tweet-versed with Andy a few times—he and I broadly agree on the need for the NCAA to operate like a normal (and legal) business. Here’s a typical post from his blog, Sportsgeekonomics.

More pertinently, here’s his Dec. 8 piece for VICE Sports about the decision by the University of Alabama at Birmingham to cease its football operations. Some of the disagreement I had with him over that piece spilled into this Twitter-stream about UNC-Charlotte and the economics of college football.

Here’s the Twitter conversation, which started after this Davis tweet:

Here’s Schwarz a little later:

Then two other people led the conversation to UNC-Charlotte:

Here’s me:

Then Jay Smith, a UNC history professor known for his criticisms of big-time sports on campus (and who is writing a book with whistle-blower Mary Willingham), jumped in:

Whatever may be terrible about Twitter, it’s a great space for a few obsessives to find each other.

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