(09-21-2020 08:01 PM)Cyniclone Wrote: (09-21-2020 06:40 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote: (09-21-2020 11:17 AM)whittx Wrote: So all 11 students are playing football?
Whoa. So this is what Knoxville looks like today. It went from playing D1 football teams in the 90s to 11 students in 2015 before closing down. (This was the first time I’d seen a team in the score scroller I’d never heard of.)
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/loca...593204002/
Quote: Knoxville College, a historically black college founded in 1875, lost its national accreditation in 1997 and state accreditation in 2015, when 11 students were enrolled.
The closed its campus in February 2017, after the two remaining buildings in use were deemed unsafe. The Alumni Library had cracks in exterior load-bearing walls and the McMillan Chapel had a leaking roof that led to damaged walls and floors. Additionally, the electrical and plumbing systems in McMillan Chapel were not up to code.
Apparently they're back: https://knoxvillecollege.edu/
No sports though.
Meanwhile, if you can't get enough 1992 Knoxville College football, here's 6+ minutes of a game against Kentucky State. The Thorobreds!
They are one those failing colleges that doesn’t quite die when they close. Morris Brown, Barber-Scotia, Selma University and Shorter Jr College (Arkansas, not Georgia) are some others.
What happens is, they still have a small administrative staff and an active board and sometimes go without any real college students for a number of years before trying to reboot again later. Typically the schools close after losing accreditation, therefor access to federal financial aid. But they aren’t bankrupt, probably don’t have much if any debt, usually have a somewhat active and dedicated alumni group and are able to at least keep a small staff to fund raise and maintain the campus as best they can. It’s fun to watch them develop over the years.
One school in Missouri, (where Marco Rubio played football for a year, incidentally) called Tarkio College closed and went bankrupt in 1991. Because a non profit alumni type group owned most of the campus, it could not be sold off in the bankruptcy.
They leased it to a youth home for boys for about a decade or so and made at least 4-5 serious attempts either reopen it themselves or sell the campus to a group who wanted to open it. So this alumni group with a campus in a town of 1,500 in rural Missouri actually pulled it off and reopened the college as a technical college, at least at first that is offering trade programs in areas that are needed locally.
The fact that the alumni of that closed college actually managed to reopen (albeit in a new format) 30 years after it closed is just an amazing show of loyalty and dedication to the original Tarkio College. Whether it succeeds long term is yet to be seen, but what an inspiring story. And many of these other colleges have fiercely loyal alums who also just refuse to let their college go down like so many others have.
Ok, I’ve written a book and I’m probably way off topic, but hey...