Excerpt from an alumni mailer sent at 1:01 PM EST:

To the Earlham College Community:

After consultation with the College Cabinet, the Senior Director of Athletics, Faculty Athletics Representatives, and the Earlham Board of Trustees, I am suspending the Earlham College Football program for the 2019 season and authorizing a review to examine the factors that are necessary to build and sustain a viable and competitive football program that would potentially attract significant numbers of student-athletes to enroll in our College.

As President of Earlham College, I am well aware of the many ways in which a successful athletics program can enhance and strengthen the overall well-being of a college. More specifically, it is certainly true that our football program has contributed to the success and development of many of the College's alumni, and that it means a great deal to these individuals as well as our community. It is important to acknowledge the football program's role in benefitting enrollment, diversity, net tuition revenue, and the overall student experience.

However, it can reasonably be argued that our inability to field competitive teams has significantly hampered our ability to recruit a sufficient number of student-athletes who seek a positive, quality intercollegiate athletics football experience. Therefore, I have decided that our community needs to take a fresh approach to building and sustaining a competitive football program. It is my sincere hope that the approach, described below, will help us discern the appropriate next steps for intercollegiate football at Earlham College.

To be clear, our number-one concern must be the health and safety of our students who participate in intercollegiate sports. Small roster sizes significantly increase the risk of injury and often lead to degraded competitive experiences. Unfortunately, our current and recent Earlham students have participated on football teams with inadequate roster sizes, and this is something we cannot accept.

Earlham College has fielded a football team every year since 1889 with only two exceptions - 1890 and 1918. This marks the end of 100 consecutive seasons.

Fun trivia: One Earlham Football alum was Wendell Stanley, the man who won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Legend has it that he went to UIUC to coach football and while there was recruited by the new Biochemistry department chair. Within 10 years he had made his landmark discovery, and the rest is history.