In 2008, after 34 years of football dormancy, Vermont stretched its Division I arms. Vermont High School coaching legend Mike Stone accepted the honor and responsibility of breaking the Catamounts into FCS football. Garnering state support and excitement was a prominent factor in entrusting local talent to lead the inaugural year. The start was rough and brought many stumbles. Excitement indeed was high and the crowds came in to support the new state novelty. The attendance averaged 9,500 over the season, though Vermont remained winless, even losing to perennial doormat Rhode Island. People were happy just to be back on the map.
2009 saw marked improvement of the on-field product. Vermont even won its first game. Meanwhile, Braden continued to survey the land on the NCAA moratorium, but things seemed to be almost at a still. Often the NCAA machinery worked at a pace not on par with the modern athletic department’s needs. In two short years, the freeze would officially end and they would need to be ready to make a move as long as the program met the requirements. Everything about emerging Vermont football said boom. But after just getting 1 win in 2009 and seeing a little of the fan enthusiasm wear off, the sound was more like a “pop”.
2010 was the rollercoaster ride that not even a visionary could have imagined possible. Athletic Director Robert Corran suddenly stepped down for health reasons. Lee Braden had become such an influential figure at UVM that he was asked to become interim-AD while a search could be conducted. His aggressive business approached worried a few of the more conservative Regents but all understood that modern day Athletic Directors had taken on the template of CEO. Braden was very much responsible for getting the football program running again and it made sense to have a successful entrepreneur leading the helm.
All was quiet in the transition. Then in June the conference realignment bomb went off. The Pac-10 expanded to 12 teams adding Colorado and Utah. The Big Ten added Nebraska to also get to 12 teams. Boise State jumped to the Mountain West, then lost BYU to independency shortly after. During this summer whirlwind, also starting off in June with the end of the fiscal year, a problem was brewing in Buffalo. The Athletic Department was in the red and it had exhausted its reserve funds for the previous year. The revenue that was expected to be generated just one year after having won the Mid-American Conference Championship fell well short of expectations. The 19 other varsity sports had seen a large increase in spend based up those expectations. Cuts were going to be necessary. In this crisis, Braden spotted opportunity. He offered a financial solution in the package of a 3 way trade. Buffalo would keep all 20 varsity programs in exchange for dropping its football program to FCS. Vermont would bargain for a lower MAC exit fee and cover that fine ensuring that Buffalo would actually end the fiscal year in profit. In exchange, Vermont would step into Buffalo’s conference spot fulfilling its schedule and making the transition almost smooth and flawless for the MAC for the following 2011 season. It was a blockbuster deal that probably would have landed Braden on the cover of Forbes and made him the envy of the CEO world had it been any other year. But with the major programs playing a high-stakes game of musical chairs, much of these events were just an afterthought in the headlines. Some speculation was brought up with how he was able to fast-track the NCAA to sign off on an exemption of the minimum 15,000 attendance provided the stadium be upgraded to the 30,000 minimum capacity for the 2011 season. But nothing came of it. What was even more eye-opening was how the plans for a 50k stadium were already simmering so on the back burner that it’s construction was undertaken before the start of the 2010 football season.
12-25-2012, 01:33 PM
