By ZACH SCHONBRUN
STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Scattered throughout the campus of Stony Brook University are red banners proclaiming, “Welcome to Seawolves Country.” The banners are two years old and echo a marketing campaign that began in 2005.
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In December, Hofstra University, the local sheriff on Long Island’s football landscape, suddenly cut its program, succumbing to budgetary concerns and stunning fans and recruits who had considered the Pride a mainstay in Nassau County. The obvious beneficiary is Stony Brook, which now is the lone Division I program on Long Island.
“We’re the only show in town,” Jim Fiore, the athletic director, said.
Indeed, the curtain is up on Stony Brook’s third season as a member of the Big South Conference and its first replacing Hofstra as the destination for homegrown recruits. Posters dotting Long Island Rail Road platforms trumpet Seawolves football, and attendance at 8,200-seat LaValle Stadium is already reaching new levels. Red has become such a branding force that athletic department employees are mandated to wear some article of colored clothing on Red Fridays.
And on Wednesday, Fiore announced a $4.3 million donation for a new weight room — the largest gift in the history of the athletic program of Stony Brook, which is part of the State University of New York system. That is the latest face-lift in an image makeover Fiore has directed with the intensity of a campaign manager. It was done, in part, to build a rivalry with Hofstra.
But suddenly the Seawolves find themselves running unopposed.
“We can expand our wings,” Coach Chuck Priore said. “The kid that wants to stay home wants us.”
Fiore, who played for Hofstra in the late 1980s, was in his office when he received a call last December from a former teammate telling him the Pride had cut its program. The words echoed in the receiver.
“I think I went through the five stages of death that anyone would when they lose somebody close,” said Fiore, who came to Stony Brook in 2003 after working at Princeton as senior associate director of athletics. “We miss the competition. For many years, Hofstra was the benchmark for Long Island college football.”
But from a business standpoint, it was fortunate news at Stony Brook’s 1,000-acre campus along the northern rim of Long Island. Despite constraints from the state, Fiore had already been reinvigorating Stony Brook’s fund-raising to take aim at Hofstra, its competition in Hempstead.
Fiore has been known to fly in planes trailing “Beat Hofstra” banners, and in the last three years, Stony Brook’s football team has benefited from a new scoreboard, turf field and locker room and stadium expansion.
Over all, the athletic budget has nearly doubled to $16.8 million from $9 million in 2003.
On the field, the Seawolves earned a share of the conference championship last year. But they were invariably held up against Hofstra, which played in the more formidable Colonial Athletic Association and had five players on N.F.L. rosters, including the New Orleans Saints star receiver Marques Colston. Another alumnus, Raheem Morris, is the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Hofstra cited lack of interest in its decision to fold, but Stony Brook believes it is a program on the rise, mirroring the recent success of its basketball and lacrosse teams. More than 350 participants showed up to its football camp in July, a record and an increase of more than 100 from the year before. The Seawolves also took five transfers from the Pride, including running backs Miguel Maysonet and Brock Jackolski, who are first and second in the Big South in rushing after combining for 190 yards in a 27-9 trouncing of Virginia Military Institute on Saturday.
“Stony Brook was trying to catch up with them; now, they’ve become the Hofstra,” said John Anselmo, the secondary coach for Syracuse, who coached at Nassau Community College for 16 years. “As soon as a coach would send his kid to Hofstra, now they’ll send him to Stony Brook.”
Six hundred fans traveled to Tampa, Fla., in September to watch Stony Brook play South Florida, which also brought back $350,000 for the football program. The university also has commitments with Buffalo, Army and Boston College within the next three years.
“We’re pretty aggressive; we have to be,” Fiore said. “We don’t have the tradition to base our platform on.”
The latest marketing campaign centers on four local football stars, each of whom was named the high school player of the year in Suffolk County, winning the Hansen Award. The poster has the four players — Edwin Gowins, JeVahn Cruz, Jackolski and Maysonet — wearing glasses like the Hanson brothers of “Slap Shot.”
“Even on the radio there’s little radio commercials about Stony Brook athletics,” Jackolski said. “I’d never heard that before.”
Currently, 36 of the team’s 88 players come from New York, and Priore believes that number is bound to grow significantly. He predicted a third of each new recruiting class would be local.
And on Saturday, tailgate tents lined the parking lot behind LaValle Stadium. It was homecoming, or Wolfstock as it is known, and it was a celebration: finally free from Hofstra’s shadow, the local program left standing.
“If kids want to stay on Long Island, we’re the option, period,” Fiore said. “Football is here to stay.”
