‘Year 1’ for St. Thomas to start Saturday. Here’s why it believes football will work

One of the first things that St. Thomas University president David A. Armstrong did after getting hired last year was to announce that the university would be starting an NAIA football program.

Board members at St. Thomas had talked about “possibly starting football by 2022 or beyond,” Armstrong said. “But when I took the job, I said, ‘We’re going to start football in Year 1.’”

Year 1 starts Saturday at noon as the Bobcats will host to Thomas More University (Crestview Hills, Kentucky). The game will be held at Monsignor Pace high school.

St. Thomas, which for more than two decades was the practice home of the Miami Dolphins, finally has its own football program.

Armstrong, who hired Bill Rychel as St. Thomas’ first coach, was told by board members that football would be too expensive to start right away.

But Armstrong had a different approach.

“Anytime you come to a struggling institution, you are operating on deficits, and money is an issue,” Armstrong said. “But I explained to them that if you do it correctly, you don’t need money. The money will come through the operation of the team and from all the students who are paying tuition who otherwise wouldn’t be here.

“People think you have to have money to build stadiums and all that. No, you don’t. You can play at a high school. You just have to bring in people. So I built a budget to bring in three coaches [Rychel and two assistants] by Dec. 1. They had to bring in 20 new students by mid-term that would pay for their salaries.”

Rychel and his staff exceeded expectations, bringing in 29 student-athletes.

For this season, a budget was drawn up to make the program viable with 100 athletes. Rychel and his staff brought in 201 players before Armstrong capped it right there.

When Armstrong arrived at St. Thomas, there were only 900 full-time undergrad students, a number he envisions will eventually grow to 2,000 or even 3,000, with 1,000 to 1,500 living on campus. Plans are under consideration to build a big residence hall. There were only 360 beds on campus when Armstrong arrived, so there is certainly work to be done.

As for football, traveling out of state — which St. Thomas will do twice this year, to Kentucky and then South Carolina — can be expensive, which is why Armstrong is pleased Florida Memorial will re-launch its football program next year.

“We can build a great rivalry [with FMU],” Armstrong said. “It will be the battle of Miami Gardens.”

Armstrong, a former offensive guard at Mercyhurst University, an NCAA Division II school in Erie, Pennsylvania, believes in football’s ability to build character in student-athletes.

“The skill sets I use as a university president I learned from my parents and from football — hard work, discipline, positive attitude, color-blindness; teamwork; toughness and the ability to overcome adversity,” he said.

But as much as Armstrong values football, he sees the sport as something that can help St. Thomas’ bottom line, which, in turn, will drive its mission.

Every great American city has at least one great Catholic university, Armstrong said, pointing to New York’s St. John’s and Fordham and Chicago’s DePaul and Loyola as examples.

“We have two great Catholic colleges in Miami in St. Thomas and Barry University,” he said.

“We want to become that great Catholic university for South Florida.

“We have a wonderful mission here. We educate leaders for life, ethical leaders for the global community. But we can’t do that mission if we can’t afford that mission … no margin, no mission.”

That’s where football comes in, and Year One begins on Saturday.