But great points jamlando, there is no reason to add a program that won’t make money. In the end, that’s usually what it comes down to.

It won’t happen any time soon because SEC schools with 85 football scholarships need 3-4 women’s teams to equal those 85 with just one men’s team. Makes it nearly impossible to add a men’s lacrosse team with an additional 12.5 men’s scholarships that would have to be equaled with another woman’s team.

Perhaps growing MCLA is the answer and maybe a realignment that matches SEC rivals would be a suitable answer.

I think MCLA is a great alternative for a number of players (including myself) who could play at a number of lower NCAA schools, but want to go to a school with great athletics teams while playing lax. Currently there are only 2 teams that could really be considered national football powers who also have D1 lax teams (Ohio St. and Penn St.)

That really limits options but MCLA allows a lot of top players to continue playing lacrosse at the college level while still getting the “SEC experience.”

Further Michigan is in a completely and incomparable position because they have received money from their Athletic Department without having questions asked for years. Makes things a lot different from any other MCLA team.

John Paul has spoken/written at length in various places about the culture of major college football athletic departments and what it takes to get things done there: i.e. adding a non-revenue sport. He listed the several ways a non-revenue sport might be added. As I recall, these were the avenues he noted:

1) Enough of a grass-roots build up locally to make the “demand” for the varsity sport legitimate and impossible to ignore. He noted that men’s soccer was added at UM when the coach was able to demonstrate there were many talented soccer players leaving the state to play at schools like Duke and UNC.

2) Hire an AD who is a lacrosse fan and/or former player who will go out and make it happen on his/her own.

3) The grandson of somebody on the Forbes 500 joins the club team, or is a hotshot high school laxer, and the big cheese foots the whole bill for bumping the program to varsity.

4) Enough people of influence – major donors, administrators – want it to happen. Hand-in-hand with this is these people putting checkbooks together and coming up with the money to completely endow the program so that the AD doesn’t pay a dime to operate the team. For good measure, you might want to come up with enough money to completely endow a women’s team for good measure.
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Let’s say that 2 and 3 are unlikely in any scenario, and 1, while getting closer, is still decades away yet. That leaves 4.

Let’s further assume that it costs roughly $1 million to run a fully-funded, competitive D1 team. Considering average investment return of ~ 9% (historical stock market annual return), you’ll need an endowment of no less than $12 million for a varsity lacrosse team. Throw in the women’s team you’ll need to add for Title IX purposes and you’re looking at ~$24 million for both.
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Michigan is going Division 1 because JP hustled his ass off for years, made a ton of friends in the upper administration and in the big-ticket donor circles, hit the number the athletic department gave him, AND hired a new athletic director who was receptive to the idea.

Of the major BCS schools out there without lacrosse, who possibly fits the bill for any of 1-4?
-Immediately: FSU, CSU, CU-Boulder, BYU, and ASU come to mind. All are operating at a high level and I believe that the FSU coach has mentioned that the athletic department gave him a fundraising # to work for.

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The other component to this is: why not cut other men’s sports to make room for lacrosse? While this is a decent idea in a vacuum, the reality is those other sports have a history with the university, and more importantly an alumni base. Dropping swimming or golf is a great idea until you piss off all the alums who came through those programs and promptly stop giving to the university because their sport got cut.
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In summary, I don’t think Michigan is the beginning of some sort of groundswell of BCS schools adding lacrosse. That seems at least a generation away to me. It is an isolated occurrence, the product of a ton of hard work by a few people. It means good things for the sport, but nothing more. In the short term, the growth of the game will continue to be at schools like Detroit, Jacksonville, High Point, Marquette, etc.

marquette doesn’t have a football program. they might be looking to cash in on the boom.

the michigan move is in response to essentially a division 1 program being built there without help of the university.

i do not think we’ll see another michigan in the next 15 years. someone might jump to NCAA Div 2 or 3 (lindenwood, chapman, etc.)

of the ones you mentioned, michigan is most like the SEC schools (big time athletics department, no NCAA lacrosse) and they are certainly a unique case.

Also, as for the facilities argument, if you are talking natural grass on those soccer fields you are looking at a harder battle to use them. We have field turf and our AD and soccer coaches are completely anal about us even painting lines. It was natural grass before the upgrade 5 years ago and we weren’t allowed within sniffing distance. Don’t underestimate the immature territorialness of AD’s and individual sport coaches.

But all in all I totally agree, lacrosse would fit in nicely in the South as a varsity college sport.