Covid wiping out some olympic sports
- Thread starter TIGER-PAUL
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Don’t you think once things get back to quote un quote normal these sports will be back? It would be a dam# shame if Pitt ever lost volleyball.
I think you will see more go even when back to normal at least at schools like those above. Most of these schools lose money the minute they turn the lights on for sports. They survive by charging the general student body fees to cover sports. That is going to be harder and harder to sell with increasing tuitions, decreasing enrollment and mounting student debt. This may be a time where we see significant athletics reorganization at schools.
They could use common sense and make all those sports that don't pay for themselves, D3 and just play against nearby local schools you can ride to in a bus in an hour or two. So "the NCAA doesn't allow it" how about they change their rules, it's pretty stupid flying a girls soccer or guys wrestling team halfway across the country to lose money playing Clemson and Miami, just play CMU and Point Park. Just have football and men's basketball D1 because they make money to support all the sports.
I think the D2 and D3 model is brilliant. They use it to increase enrollment. Many kids are great athletes at those schools but most allow a lot of "walk-ons". For the cost of a uniform and some minimal travel expense they get kids who want to come to their school, support the school with their spirit and collect tuition.
Honestly, I’ll start to think we’ll see wholesale changes across the NCAA landscape when a power conference school starts cutting sports. I don’t doubt that some of the lower-level D1s will have tough choices to make, but I can’t help but think that a lot of the P5 schools have enough resources and projected income that they will stay pretty insulated.
There are MANY schools in D3 that wouldn't exist at all without football. All over the Midwest, there's schools with enrollments of less than 1,000 that just happens to have 100 kids paying full cash tuition to go there simply to say they play collegiate football.
I can't remember where I saw the article, but it's complete craziness.
And FWIW, I agree with some of the proposals above. It's very binary, either fund the program (likely via private donations) to endow a full allotment of scholarships and a competitive recruiting budget, or make it club. It makes no sense for Pitt to have a Men's XC team that is as embarrassing as it is.
It's actually why Pitt aside, my favorite school to follow is Stanford. They're so good in so many sports, and they've got a really strong model with heavy inflow of sport-specific alumnus donations.
Except you destroy your T&F program without XC because you eliminate your distance events and leave all those points on the floor. You can't be a truly competitive program without fielding all three of XC, indoor, and outdoor. There aren't more or less scholarships due to XC...all three sports share the same scholarship pool and distance runners compete in all three sports. And XC is cheap to field. Pitt's XC is bad because the of the decisions the head T&F coaches have made with its scholarship allocations and coaching budget.
Other than that, I've always been an advocate for endowing the entire athletic program. I'd be socking $1 million a year away in ACC money to donor match athletic scholarship endowments. That's one of the only ways to future proof sports programs.
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A little bit of Pitt-related cancellation news. Here's a really good story about a middle distance runner from State College who had committed to Central Michigan on a full scholarship, only to have CMU cancel their mens' XC and track programs post-COVID. So he circles back to Pitt, who he took an official visit to in the fall, and commits to Pitt on a partial scholarship. He specifically mentions the benefit of going to a major-conference D1 school because the bigger athletic departments feel more "Covid-proof."
Anyway, it's a really good story, and Pitt seems lucky to have him: https://pa.milesplit.com/articles/281655-zach-decarmine-keeps-pushing-on
Anyway, it's a really good story, and Pitt seems lucky to have him: https://pa.milesplit.com/articles/281655-zach-decarmine-keeps-pushing-on
Ehhh, I don't buy that. There's a lot more bang for the buck in having sprinters than XC runners; at the conference meet and nationals, a sprinter can run more events (100, 200, 4x1, potentially jumps or the 4x4) than a distance runner. That's why the most competitive teams competing for the national title in track (Florida, Texas A&M, etc.) typically don't recruit or extend scholarships above the 800. They have teams yes, but they're certainly not competitive in any realistic way. But I cede the overall point that it'd be foolish for Pitt to out-and-out drop it.
Pitt of course getting access to that talent without an outdoor facility and being a cold-weather state is a completely different argument.
As far as bang for the buck, XC runners are being used three seasons in three sports, not just two. In T&F are are going in the 10K, 5K, Steeple, and 1500m. Some meets have distance medleys (indoors). Standford and BYU are two examples of that...excellent distance/XC programs that get big points in T&F and finish in the top 10 in outdoors.
It's a problem with the sport, IMO, the way it has evolved just to these big invite individual point accumulations with the virtual eliminates dual meets that required teams have breadth of quality. Certainly a coach has to pick what to emphasize with his limited scholarship money. There are different philosophies, but I think if you can get points from a kid, you're going to go after them regardless of specialty.
But IMO, you can't be serious about T&F as a program with out all three of xc, indoor, and outdoor.
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Oh, I agree with that. I'd be much more into a dual-meet championship for track than the way it currently is, where one otherworldly talent can bring home 20-30 points on his or her own, which is why I like the way the WPIAL does their team title..even though it's tilted towards a high-enrollment school like a NA.
And I certainly agree that you can't be "serious" without XC, but again, apart from Oregon, none of the recent winners (Florida, Georgia, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Florida State going back to 2006) put much weight into it.
Actually, FSU does. Of the sprint event schools you mentioned, only FSU placed in men's team standings in the last XC nationals (29th). And that breadth was a big factor in them clinching some of their ACC titles I believe. None of those other schools placed in last XC team standings, but Texas A&M did have individual runners make XC nationals.
But as far as national titles, you can win a national title in XC and still finish in the top 10 in T&F, like BYU. So you are bringing home a natty either way. Look at Stanford, which has won an XC titles in both men and women recently, finished 2018-19 with as 5th in XC (men & women), 21st (men's) and 8th(women) in indoors, and 8th (men) and 3rd (women's) in outdoors. They're essentially a top 10 program in all three sports on both sides.
Sounds like the teams are probably the quality of glorified high school football.
But really, IMO, it makes no sense to have D1 in sports that make no money. Pitt should be D3 with non-scholarship students playing, in things like XC or soccer or wrestling or gymnastics and just compete against Geneva, W&J and teams you can drive to in a bus in a couple hours.
I would almost guarantee you, that a school like Pitt, losing significantly more money on women's basketball then they do on women's soccer.
Then make that D3 too. Football and Men's basketball are the only sports that merit based on income, playing in a national level. Yeah, Title XVI. Time for common sense. I'm not talking about dropping sports, just playing different schools.
More non-revenue sport casualties: UConn has proposed to eliminate men’s tennis, swimming & cross country & women’s rowing
They need to change the rules? Why eliminate them? Just be D3 in those sports and just play against local small schools.
They're also cutting 5 scholarships from men's T&F and one from men's golf. Their T&F program is getting gutted.
UConn is down to 20 sports, one more than Pitt, but obviously UConn's aren't all going to be fully funded.
All of these were low hanging fruit other than wrestling and field hockey. And by low hanging fruit, I mean four sports with 30 or less total Division 1 programs in the NCAA or, in the case of 5 of them, not even NCAA-sponsored sports. Most schools would never sponsor these non-NCAA sports at the varsity level.
Totally agreed - but the broader point is that there are a whole lot of P5 schools out there who have some of the same low-hanging fruit, and nobody at the major-conference level wanted to be the first to potentially make the moves that Stanford did.
Pitt's in a fortunate position, in this regard, that it doesn't have a lot of the low-hanging fruit, with the only potential exception being women's gymnastics as its only non-ACC sport, and no non-NCAA sports. Then again, if the budget really gets tight, there isn't too much low-hanging fruit.
Wow! Stanford has more money than god and a couple exceptionally talented freshman wrestlers. One, Real Woods, already announced his intent to transfer.
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