NO SUBSTITUTE FOR CABLE: The Boston University Football Team

With the astronomically high and ever-increasing cost of tuition at Boston University, it’s always becoming more difficult for students to feel as though they’re getting their money’s worth here. One way to take advantage of the University is to never miss classes, study hard and succeed. Many students choose to work toward a second degree, overload their schedule or take advantage of open credits to take extracurricular classes. However, why would anyone want to work hard when it’s so much easier to exploit aspects of the University? By far, the cleverest way to get one’s money’s worth out of a BU education is to take full advantage of our undergraduate student fee.

The phrase “partially-funded by your undergraduate student fee” is familiar to every BU student. We see it everywhere: on most of the fliers around campus, at university events, even written on the back of the bicycle of that crazy singing guy who has become a campus icon. The $178 that every student here pays each semester goes mostly toward student activities. That’s $356 each year. If you don’t spend it yourself, somebody else is going to spend it for you.

Since the University gives each student a print quota of 500 pages, when my computer runs out of paper, it’s time for me to pay a visit to the computer lab. There’s nothing wrong with “printing” hundreds of blank pages and then simply taking the stack of them back to my room to use for my personal computer and printer.

Another way to take advantage of the undergraduate student fee is to become involved in the Student Activities Office. There are approximately 400 student-run clubs within SAO. These groups include academic groups, a cappella groups, fraternities, sororities and the Microwave Cookery Club.

A student can start his or her own club with only five members and a faculty advisor. With ten members and a faculty advisor, a student can start a club and apply to receive funding from the University. There’s a rumor that we have a “People Watcher’s Club” that used BU’s money to take a weekend trip to Montreal. Therefore, what better way is there for me to take advantage of the undergraduate student fee than to start my own ridiculous club?

As we all know, BU doesn’t have a football team anymore. It was abandoned in 1997 because its funding was reallocated to other sports, much to the chagrin of many people. So, with that in mind, I tried to start a group last fall called “The Boston University Football Team.” I’m not sure what the objectives of our organization were actually going to be, but they didn’t have anything to do with football. If approved, the team probably would have consisted of my friends and me sitting around in my apartment watching “The Simpsons.”

Think about the repercussions of being a part of BU’s new football program. I had a list of nearly 50 potential members, none of whom had any interest in actually playing the sport. Imagine how great that would look on our resumes when we applied for jobs after graduation. Of course, I was going to be the quarterback. My friend Suchit was going to be the starting linebacker and my friend Pat was going to be our coach. Everyone on the team was going to be a captain. If we’d been able to get any University funding, the money was going to go toward ordering some bad-ass team jackets for ourselves just so everyone else on campus would be able to see BU’s comedic champions coming from a distance. We planned on getting leather jackets if we had enough money, but if there wasn’t sufficient funding, we would have settled for bedazzling sweatshirts.

Unfortunately, there were roadblocks on our path toward non-sequitur humor victory. The date upon which we were supposed to get word about the approval or rejection of our club came and went without a word from SAO. Maybe they thought we weren’t serious. Actually, I’m not even sure if we were serious, but we were expecting a verdict nonetheless. After making four or five phone calls to the office, I finally managed to speak to someone who seemed to know what she was talking about.

As it turns out, SAO wanted our “e-board” (which consisted of me and some goofy friends of mine) to come in for a discussion about the goals of our football team. We decided that we would have felt like first-class jerks trying to defend our superfluous club to the Student Activities Office, so, unfortunately, we let the ball drop. We would have been like those people who come into retail stores after the holidays to collect on price differences that total less than a dollar.

So ends the brief 21st-century saga of the Boston University Football Team. During its short existence, it provided my friends and me with plenty of good laughs. However, since we’re all so ambivalent and lazy, it may be better that our dream of the football team will never be realized. It makes for a great story though, and, technically, I can tell people that I tried out for the team and almost made it.