Very weak and one-sided job by the Uptown paper of record’s Peter St. Onge on the UNCC football matter. As we know, the Uptown crowd is opposed to the concept of UNCC football, but St. Onge didn’t even try to present the whole story.

First omission, allowing UNCC Chancellor Phil Dubois to plead agnostic on the question of football. Dubois has not been shy about support for things like a superfluous $45 million building Uptown or a $600 million train to run into his campus. Suddenly he cannot take a position on a $20 million football stadium and a hike in student fees to pay for football? I call shenanigans.

Second mistake, relying on the beat-down, biased 2003 NCAA “report” on the effect of adding football programs to college finances. The 2004-05 database put together by The Indianapolis Star tells us quite clearly that no blanket statements can be made about college athletic budgets — that some schools do an excellent job of making athletics, including football, work for the school, while others do not.

One-time UNCC peer UAB, for example, somehow found a way to field a football team that was slightly in the black while raising some $3.3 million a year in contributions and another $1.3 million for playing away games, according to the database. UNCC’s total? $740,000. This points to the millions UNCC could be leaving on the table without football.

In turn, we hit St. Onge’s most glaring error — assuming that UNCC’s athletic status quo is remotely sustainable. We’ve pointed this out repeatedly in the past, but here we go one more time: The A10 is a horrible place for UNCC to play basketball. UNCC cannot dominate, nor does it provide any natural rivalries to keep fan and alumni interest high. This depresses UNCC’s revenue growth each year.

Worst of all, UNCC AD Judy Rose has essentially hooked her budget to the other A10 schools’ basketball success. Rose needs the A10 to put multiple teams in the NCAA tourney each year in order for the conference payouts from tourney participation to flow back to Charlotte. This is not quite Under Pants gnome business planning, but it is close.

In fact, we may well see just how close in the next few weeks. Right now, only one A10 team is projected to make the NCAA tourney. The conference has no teams in the AP Top 25 — none with even one vote — and only one team in the top 50 in RPI rankings. It is not a stretch to say that were it not for the A10’s automatic bid, zero teams would make the field on merit. So much for the prestigious basketball affiliation Rose and Dubois cite as a reason to stick with the basketball-only A10.

UNCC’s leadership, in sum, seems intent on following the model of Richmond’s VCU, as another large, state-supported institution in a major metro area that does not play football. One of the few, in fact. Instead, VCU relies on a whopping $7 million in student fees to fund its $8.5 million athletic budget. Sometime in the near future, the VCU model could have UNCC hiking student fees by 30 percent just to keep the status quo athletic department barely in the black.

Now 49ers, shut up and get ready to ride the train up and down Tryon Street. Don’t you know that is all the Powers That Be in Charlotte want out of you?