UWO football has far reaching impact

OSHKOSH - The 2012 season was the most successful in the 118 year history of football at UW-Oshkosh. The team went 13-1 and made the NCAA Division III semifinals, but what kind of impact can a season like that have on the university as a whole?

"Winning definitely helps everything so we'll keep it at that," joked head coach Pat Cerroni. 

Cerroni just completed his sixth year as the Titans head coach. The success of the team, and the media exposure it brought, has already begun to create a difference in the recruitment of future student-athletes. While there may be more name recognition Cerroni says it won’t change his team.

"We're not going to change. That's the biggest thing we talked about. We're just going to do it our way and get the right kids that want to make this program great," Cerroni said.

UW-Oshkosh director of athletics Darryl Sims added, "Our young people that come to visit are always bringing up the football program and the success they've had and I'm always saying to them if that's how we get them on campus that's great and then we'll woo them over and shock and awe them with everything that we have to offer as a campus."

Chancellor Richard Wells said the phones were ringing off the hook during the playoffs with students inquiring about the football program. Success in sports can have an impact on the overall application numbers as well, a phenomenon that's been dubbed the Flutie Effect.

The Flutie Effect is named for former Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1984 and led his team to an upset of top ranked Miami with a last second Hail Mary pass.

According to a study done by St. Mary's of California, Boston College experienced a 30 percent growth in applications the year following Flutie's Heisman campaign.

In 2006, the George Mason basketball team made a Cinderella run to the NCAA final four and the school reaped the benefits with a 22 percent applications increase.

When Butler first made the NCAA finals in 2010, the university saw a bump of 30 percent in student applications.

Chancellor Wells said the impact at the Division 3 level is not as great but it can be the starting point for experiencing gains.

"It's not like when you first hear someone at the Division 1 level wins a national championship and a university said we have 50 more kids and that doesn't translate into 50,000 more people on campus,” Wells said. “What you do get is more kids excited and looking at the campus but what's more valuable is when it's sustainable. You'll get more support from your alums that want to be part of the program.”

Maybe the most visible place to see the difference on campus is in the bookstore, where they sold more than 400 conference championship t-shirts and have seen a significant increase overall. So can this be attributed to football success?  Some in the administration think so.

Petra Roter, vice chancellor for student affairs at UW-Oshkosh, explained, "I think there's a certain excitement because I think that enthusiasm and that pride is contagious. I think there's been a lot of overlap of the connection with the institution and that pride."

Roter told me that the week preceding the national semifinals game against St. Thomas was finals week but the school was still able to fill four charter buses with students to attend the game, which was held in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Senior quarterback Nate Wara has had a first hand seat for the Titans rise to prominence. This year he was one of four finalists for the Gagliardi Award, given annually to the nation’s most outstanding student-athlete at the Division 3 level.

Wara said he saw the team embraced in a way unlike any year prior.

“We had the whole community, the university, teachers coming up to us and wishing us all the best. They just think it's great and how the community has helped out tremendously."

Art Rathjen, the foundation president and executive director of advancement at UWO, said the season has helped re-invigorate the alumni base as well.

"Alums are delighted to find all the sudden their school is on TV and their school is in the headlines and then offers this resurgence in pride and people start coming out of the woodworks saying I'm alum, I'm a Titan," Rathjen said.

With that increase in involvement, comes an increase in donations, and with the NCAA covering travel expenses during the playoffs, that means any extra money raised can be used for improving the university's programs.

Darryl Sims explained how that can benefit the athletics department and the university as a whole.

"It does give us a little more flexibility or wiggle room to be able to do a number of different things. We've got a number of projects that we've got plans that we've been able to utilize,” Sims said.

The increased interaction also allows administrators to further discuss their vision for the school with those alumni. 

“We've been able to have very specific conversations with alumni about things that have been sort