I’ve attended Cuesta College for about two months, and though I’m having a great time here, there is something missing. 

Something that I can feel, as the cold, lifeless air hits my face as I step on campus. 

Something that most Americans can’t live without: a sport formally known as football. 

Cuesta College’s football program ended in 1978. Meaning Cuesta College has spent a long, miserable 41 years being starved from the best sport ever created. Whether you like it or not, Cuesta College has a problem with getting the student populus to attend games. 

Why is this? It all circles back to the fact that we don’t have football. 

This article isn’t aimed to be negative towards our other sports teams. We have a pretty good tradition of winning around here, and I’m not questioning the ability of our student athletes by any means. But student attendance is a problem around Cuesta College. An article by Taylor Saugstad a couple of years ago references what looks like a pathetic show of support by lack of students at a Cuesta College basketball game. 

It’s no secret that football would bring the most money to the school out of any other sports program, along with student body support, as it does for many other schools who have football. I mean, who doesn’t like to go to a football game? Nothing more in this world unites a student body by getting behind their school’s football team. This is a luxury that Cuesta College kids deserve to have.

Coming from a college in Visalia that I attended briefly last year, College of Sequoias, I was exposed to what it was like to having proper sports offered at school. The football team had a great tradition of exposing local kids to four year colleges, and gave the kids that didn’t get looks from four year universities a chance to prove their worth and get a second chance of excelling at football. So what is in the way of us having that same option here at Cuesta College?

We are in a unique situation, because universities with as great of an academic status as Cal Poly don’t necessarily appeal to most of our local high school football players. I took a look at the Cal Poly roster for football, and it was alarming to see how many players listed were not local. Cal Poly has only a handful of local kids on the team in comparison to players listed from other cities. So where are all these local players going to play? The nearest college with a football team is Allan Hancock College, in Santa Maria, Calif. which is 40 minutes from San Luis Obispo, and about an hour from Paso Robles, Morro Bay, and Atascadero. 

What I gathered from this is, if you’re a senior at a high school in San Luis Obispo county, play football, and are attending Cuesta College next year; you are out of luck, and your dreams of becoming a college athlete become negated at the sad fact that there is no football team waiting for you at Cuesta. If you are in the same boat and are thinking of going elsewhere, you are held back by the crazy commute to what would be the nearest college who offers football, Allan Hancock College, who per their online roster contains not one player from San Luis Obispo. 

It would also offer a decent amount of non-locals like myself to attend Cuesta College all the while playing football. A counter argument towards this would be San Luis Obispo’s insane housing market. This is solved by having NJCAA scholarships on hand, which somewhat solves the problem that many California schools face when scouting: a high priced housing market.

As you’d imagine, there are probably a lot of strings to pull and things to figure out regarding bringing football back, but it is worth it. It would bring attention to local players, school spirit to Cuesta College, and entertainment to its students.