I wondered how long it would take the Uptown crowd to realize that momentum for football at UNCC is picking up steam and that football endangers their vision of an urban University of Charlotte anchoring both ends of a light rail line. Well, wonder no more.

Mary Schulken’s ode to football inaction proves the forces of Darkness are on the march.

See, the Uptown crowd cannot have students and alumni drive the future of what happens to UNCC as that might not comport with Uptown visions. In 2007 that vision includes plopping a med school in Charlotte for no other reason than it does not have one and continuing to yoke UNCC to a transit dependent growth plan. (There’s a reason UNCC suddenly got a $45 million building Uptown — choo-choo!)

But Schulken does not seem to understand that UNCC’s sporting status quo cannot stand. Playing A10 basketball is not going to fill the stands or entice alumni to give to the school, the holy grail of all college athletic programs. (Nevermind the way the 6-8 49ers have been playing this season.) More likely is a continued reliance on student fees to fund the athletic department, perhaps even an increase.

The Indy Star database we’ve cited before shows that for 2004-05, UNCC used $6.1 million in student fees to supply 60 percent of its $10.1 million athletic budget. Thanks to another $1 million in NCAA tourney money and another $850,000 in other institutional money, the 49er sports effort was some $474,000 in the black overall.

But here is the scary thing, the flagship revenue sport, men’s basketball, was only $293,000 in the black. That is skirting it close to the edge, especially considering that from 03-05 the Niners won 42 games and generated a ton of excitement in the program playing Conference USA rivals Cincinnati and Louisville. Yet ticket sales, contributions, sponsorships, and ad revenue still barely nicked the $1 million mark.

As a result, AD Judy Rose is now banking that the A10 can put enough teams in the NCAAs year after year to make her budget work while UNCC hosts games with the likes of St. Bonaventure and Fordham. Good plan.

Finally, I have no idea what Schulken means when she says that athletic success does not attract students and boosters. George Mason saw its applicant pool surge after its run to the Final Four last year. Why, here’s a story from the other day:

With the freshman application deadline for Fall 2007 coming up on Jan. 15, Mason is in the midst of its first post-Final Four application season.

Each year, Mason’s Admissions Office receives far more qualified applications than can be accommodated, and the application number has been surging. Mason also saw a large spike in the number of students agreeing to attend.

“This is a good problem to have,” says Andrew Flagel, dean of admissions. “There’s no doubt that being in the Final Four really accelerated that trajectory in a way that none of us could really have anticipated.”

Flagel says the size of campus tours has doubled and oftentimes tripled since last April; not to mention a noticeable increase in phone calls, e-mails and general inquiries.

“We’ve moved,” explains Flagel, “from so-to-speak ‘weeding out’ the students who were unqualified to choosing from among well-qualified students.”

And I guarantee Boise State will see similar positive fallout from its just-concluded undefeated football season. Athletics are a huge marketing arm for higher education. Perhaps they should not be and surely a sports team has little connection to the quality of education an institution might offer, but, hey, that’s marketing — loud, crass, crude, and often dumb.

But if UNCC wants to be able to market itself in 2020 as something besides a remedial destination for CMS grads, maybe a campus with a couple train stations, and med school grafted on top, school officials better start listening to alumni and students and look seriously at the football option before it is too late.