Universities across the nation will say that academics drive the school and create school spirit, but let’s be honest, athletics is the real bread winner.

There is nearly nothing else that will bring such a wide-range of people together other than a major sporting event. We all love to support our team and have fun doing it. But this is not the case, yet, for St. Edward’s University.

The mission to expand school spirit goes hand in hand with sports. There is a whole team of students, faculty and administrators just dedicated to promoting games and incentivising them.

That’s fine and just where we are in the process, but St. Edward’s must think about giving the money to athletics to explore more sporting options.

While St. Edward’s is on the right track to expanding our athletics department, there is still a long road ahead.

This is the first year cross-country is an NCAA sport at St. Edward’s since it was disbanded due to funding issues in 2008. We’re one of the last schools in the Heartland Conference to add a cross-country team.

The expansion of the cross-country brought up a new problem of where to have them run. Austin is a great city for runners, but the St. Edward’s cross-country team should have the opportunity to actually use our campus.

The same problem would arise with a football team.

For years, probably decades, students have wanted to a see a St. Edward’s football team. Because of the school down the road (University of Texas at Austin) having (at least in the past) a good football team, students here have been yearning for one. But then there is the cost of a team.

UT has the largest budget for athletics in the nation. It should come as no surprise that they can draw crowds and continue to grow. It’s also not a fair to comparison to St. Edward’s.

Even if St. Edward’s took the money from other necessary parts of campus for a football team, where would we even play?

Being surrounded by neighborhoods makes difficult to ever built some sort of stadium.

And the money just to build facilities to host a team would be in the millions, not to mention hiring several coaches, trainers and recruiters.

The point is, sports at UT draw in fans from all over the area. St. Edward’s simply doesn’t have that kind of reach, or at least not yet.