Golden Bears and Pandas Athletics
Terry Jones
Edmonton Sun
The news release came out back in January.
The Edmonton Eskimos announced a commitment of a quarter of a million dollars in scholarship funds to support the University of Alberta Golden Bears football program – $50,000 in athletic scholarships per year for five years.
The thing that makes the Golden Bears donation unique is that the Eskimos $250,000 commitment will equate to $375,000 in scholarship dollars as a result of the U of A Athletic Scholarship Enhancement Fund where all donations matching the criteria are matched one dollar for every two donated.
“Over the past two seasons, in large part due to the overwhelming support of the Edmonton Eskimos, Golden Bears football has been resurrected from the ashes to become an up and coming program in the CIS,” said Golden Bears Head Coach Chris Morris, the Eskimos Wall of Fame offensive lineman.
“This year Kerry Mummery, Dean of the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, put in the initiative where the University will match 50% of any commitment made over five years. “In order to give out full scholarships to be competitive with Calgary and Saskatchewan, it’s about $270,000 a year just in scholarships. Before we had this money coming in, it was all alumni and corporate.
“If you look at Saskatchewan, they have a billionaire who gives them all their scholarship money. UBC has a new donor who funds their program extensively. Laval gets it all right out of Quebec City from their corporate community.
“That was one thing the U of A was really behind in. We really didn’t have anyone to partner with us to help in raising the money for the scholarships,” said Morris.
The Eskimos began donating to Golden Bears football in 2012 through the 50/50 program after automating the ticket purchase system. Donations were for $70,000, $35,000, and $50,000 in the previous three years.
Eskimos fans have made the 50/50 a phenomenon in all of sports with massive payouts including the North American record $348,534 won by 20-year-old Connor Croken of Edmonton. Last season more than $1.1 million was paid out to fans in 50/50 prize money at Eskimos home games.
The 50/50 program also supports the Edmonton Wildcats and Edmonton Huskies junior football programs, Football Alberta and the Eskimo Alumni Association’s amateur football initiatives.
But the biggest impact may be with the Golden Bears.
“When I first got here, the U of A was only giving out seven scholarships total so it was a bit of a disaster in a lot of ways,” said the third year coach.
Morris is now in a position to make Alberta a leader.
“We’re now at the cap on scholarship money. It’s tough to explain this, but the better our kids do academically the more scholarships I open up.
“I have a cap of 32½ scholarships. But for every kid I get to be an academic All-Canadian, that’s a kid who plays for me and has a 3.2 GPA, that scholarship money doesn’t count against the cap.
“I have 15 players that are qualifying to be academic All-Canadians. We use some of our alumni and corporate money for academic support so we’re getting a way higher rate of academic All-Canadians than most programs in the country.
“We could be in a position where we could offer more scholarships than anybody else in the country because we’re so much better in the classroom than anybody else in the country.”
College football season is about to kickoff with the Bears in Regina September 4. The home schedule features visits by the U of Saskatchewan Huskies September 11, U of Manitoba Bisons September 26, UBC Thunderbirds October 3 and U of Calgary Dinos October 31.
And Morris hopes Eskimos fans that buy the 50/50 tickets will start to see the payoff. He’s expecting to coach a competitive team this year.
“This is my third year and we have a nice core of third year players, all academic kids. I didn’t build it to be successful in year one or two. As we go through this thing we’re going to have a continuous supply of very good athletes who have been in our program for a while.
“We’re young still. We’ll still be one of the younger teams in Canada West. Last year we had 11 first-year starters on defence. I feel real confident taking the field with this group this year. We’re not going to be out-classed by anybody. We’re physically ready to compete with anybody in our conference. We’re a playoff team. If we don’t make the playoffs, we’ve under-achieved this year.”
