At 11:05 p.m. on Nov. 10, the lights turned off at John D. Riggs Stadium on the campus of Mesa Community College like they usually do, but this may have  marked the last time they ever turn off after a junior college football game.

In February, the Maricopa County Community College District board made the decision to cut all junior college football programs, citing financial reasons.

Coaches and fans say they weren’t consulted on the decision and question the reasons offered by MCCCD officials for shuttering programs at MCC, Scottsdale Community College, Glendale Community College and Phoenix College.

“The Monday before signing day… we were told that football was dropped,” Phoenix College head football coach Mark Mejia said. “That we were able to play the 2018 season and after that there would be no more football.”

Coaches and players say that they hope the new Maricopa County Community College District Board elected in November, which includes three new members — Marie Sullivan, Tom Nerini and Kathleen Ann Winn – will consider overturning the decision. According to Sullivan, it was one of the most prevalent issues that they were asked about while campaigning.

MCCCD Chief Operating Officer Elliott Hibbs said that high insurance costs related to football and capital expenses for things such as stadium upkeep were big reasons for the change. He also said that there was a shift in mindset regarding how the organization could allocate their limited budget to benefit the largest amount of people, which they have referenced as “The Transformation.”

“We’ve had to look at doing our budget in a little bit different way than what had been done in the past,” Hibbs said. “We’ve gone away from simply just allocating money and instead now we’re looking at how we actually [spend] money every year and budgeting on expenditures not just allocating funds out to colleges.”

According to Hibbs, each college allocates the funding it receives from the district independently. The district does not have oversight into how much money is allocated for athletics at each school. “We basically give the colleges a lump sum budget that they allocate after that,” Hibbs said.

Phoenix College, for example, allocates approximately $1.4 million to athletics out of its nearly $60 million budget overall. Of that amount, nearly $200,000 goes towards football expenses such as coaches salaries, equipment and travel costs.

Former Glendale Community College head coach Joe Kersting, who won three national championships while coaching the Gauchos, said it would cost less than $1 million in athletic budget costs and insurance costs to keep all four Maricopa County schools’ programs running. According to Kersting, this includes coaches salaries.

A Lost Opportunity

Coaches around Maricopa County disagree with the college district’s decision. They said cutting football will really hurt athletes coming out of Valley high schools.

“It’s not these boys that I’m concerned about,” Mesa Community College head coach Ryan Felker said, about his current players who at least had one year of college on scholarship. “It’s the ones in our communities and neighborhoods over the next however many years that don’t have an opportunity or vehicle like this to get an education or access to it.”

PC linebacker coach Marques Hawkins said he knows firsthand the benefits of junior college football. He was a talented running back coming out of high school in Tempe, but didn’t have the grades to go directly into a Division I program. He went to both MCC and PC, played football, gained maturity and got his associate’s degree before getting a scholarship to play at Illinois State.

Hawkins said that once football is gone in Maricopa County there will be a diminished athletic culture because “kids are going to go wherever the opportunities lie.”

Players who don’t have the grades to make it into a four-year out of high school will have to go to California or Texas or other states with JUCO football programs if they want to continue their careers, he said.

That exodus of talent is something that Hawkins feels will hurt Phoenix sports in the long run because, “we’re cutting out a lot of people that over time have really contributed to the makeup of our schools and the growth of our student body.”

One of those players that exemplifies the term “student-athlete” is a PC defensive lineman Davyon Duhart.

Duhart went to Tolleson High School, a small school in the southwest part of the Valley. Due to a shoulder injury in high school, PC was his only chance to continue playing football.

Duhart knew this would be the last season of JUCO football in Maricopa County before he joined the team, but saw the situation as a motivating factor. It forced him to focus and work harder on and off the field this season.

Duhart is on track to end the year with a 4.0 GPA, and he plans to transfer out to a four year university and, if possible, to continue his football career.

“I’m probably going to come back and grind in the off-season,” Duhart said. “That’s what I do. I just grind, give it my all. And if there’s not [JUCO football next year], I’ve got good grades. I plan to just walk on, try to get an academic scholarship and try to still play football.”

How Far Can a Dollar Go?

One of the biggest concerns from the district was about insurance costs. And although Hibbs was not involved in the decision to end football, he noted that the insurance cost for the district was high relative to the number of people it served and that football has resulted in the largest number of claims due to the the injuries that players sustain.

The district provides insurance for all of its nearly 200,000 students with a premium of about $900,000 a year. There were about 400 junior college football players in Maricopa County during the 2018 season – approximately 2 percent of the entire student body –  but, according to Hibbs and Matt Hasson, MCCCD director of communication and public relations, football accounted for what the district says is about 30 percent of the annual insurance costs.

Insurance savings were not the only reason that district officials gave as to why football was cut, though. They said it was also part of an effort by the district to increase focus on workforce readiness at their campuses.

Hibbs said that the goal of community college is to “give [students] an education in an area where they can go get a quality job when they leave,” and their funding models are changing to reflect that.

Their mindset has become that if there are only a limited number of dollars to spend, then the money should be spent in areas that will benefit the most people.

Impact Goes Beyond Four Community Colleges

The four Maricopa County schools — PC, MCC, GCC and Scottsdale Community college — comprise half of the Arizona Community College Athletic Conference. Because of this, Pima Community College in Tucson announced that it will end its football program after this season as well.

Despite the fact that Pima’s budget for football is over twice the size of any school in Maricopa County, it made the decision to cut its football program in a large part because of the added travel costs of having to play teams outside of Arizona.

Now, according to Mejia of Phoenix College, even after an ACCAC title and a 9-2 record this past season, Eastern Arizona College in Thatcher is evaluating its program’s situation to see if they will be able to continue to afford playing football.

If EAC does decide discontinue its football program, the only JUCO  program that will remain in Arizona is Arizona Western College in Yuma.

However, Hasson said there is also talk of AWC ending their program after this season as well, but others say that isn’t true.

Ultimately, if those seven schools end up cutting their programs, there will not be many options remaining for young men who want to continue their education and football careers in Arizona.

Outside of the junior colleges, there are two National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) schools in Arizona, no division II or division III schools and only three division I schools with football programs.

Editors Note:

With the season now over, all of the players and coaches have some decisions to make. For more on how this situation impacted the individual schools in the area, please visit each individual page. There are stories, photos and videos for each.