?

Nr 1 priority is our new football stadium; then maybe we will talk. Master plan does include a new baseball stadium in the Mean Green Village.

http://oxblue.com/pro/open/unt/stadium?DB_OEM_ID=1800

It's curious that at least two Dallas-area institutions (SMU & NT) don't play baseball.

And of course DBU is very, very solid in baseball but otherwise not a Division-I program. I have said on many C-USA/Tulane boards that C-USA should accept DBU as a baseball-only member until (if ever) SMU gets a team. But that -- the part about DBU -- doesn't seem like it's going to happen. Don't know about SMU getting a team. I feel like that probably will happen eventually.

Has NT ever had a team?

(03-06-2010 05:56 PM)MT FAN Wrote:  Has NT ever had a team?

Yep

NT dropped quite a few mens sports to move up to Div I football and stay Title IX compliant. Mens soccer, mens tennis... baseball was a little bit before that but was around the same time. When the stadium looked like it wouldn't happen - we almost added a team just to do something new but it was going to be an agreement between NT and a new minor league team that fell through. We had so many improvements to make to our facilities that adding two new sports (that would be underfunded and without facilities) was not a good goal. Don't forget - if we bring back baseball, we have to add the same amount of scholarships for a women's team of some type (again, Title IX). My guess - the stadium will be built by 2011 and we will have baseball (with brand new facilities) by 2013/2014. Our student fees kick in as soon as our stadium is "complete" and the fee retires as soon as the bonds are retired. I imagine that we will bond out both just to drag out the repayment period to about 20 years or so.

(03-06-2010 08:07 PM)stebo Wrote:  NT dropped quite a few mens sports to move up to Div I football and stay Title IX compliant. Mens soccer, mens tennis... baseball was a little bit before that but was around the same time.

What a perfect description of life in the PC-ified world of modern college sports. And even in a place like Texas, the new orthodoxy was meekly accepted without so much as a whimper of dissent or challenge.

I wish there were a comprehensive master-list, encompassing every NCAA Division I athletic program, of each team that has been disbanded in the last 20 years, as well as of each team that has been started/created in the same span of time. It would be very instructive to see -- in a unified, coherent fashion -- a kind of roll-call of the casualties brought about by the "Changes" in college sports in our time.

(03-06-2010 11:53 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  

(03-06-2010 08:07 PM)stebo Wrote:  NT dropped quite a few mens sports to move up to Div I football and stay Title IX compliant. Mens soccer, mens tennis... baseball was a little bit before that but was around the same time.

What a perfect description of life in the PC-ified world of modern college sports. And even in a place like Texas, the new orthodoxy was meekly accepted without so much as a whimper of dissent or challenge.

I wish there were a comprehensive master-list, encompassing every NCAA Division I athletic program, of each team that has been disbanded in the last 20 years, as well as of each team that has been started/created in the same span of time. It would be very instructive to see -- in a unified, coherent fashion -- a kind of roll-call of the casualties brought about by the "Changes" in college sports in our time.

Schools don't drop sports to comply with Title IX, they drop sports because their priorities are elsewhere. As Stebo noted, UNT dropped sports because they wanted to ADD 23 football scholarships (and FBS allows an additional assistant coach) so they dropped sports totaling 26.1 scholarships.

They didn't cut opportunities for men, they shifted them from one sport to another.

When an athletic director gives the football or basketball coach a $300,000 raise then cuts a $100,000 a year men's sport to help pay for it and Title IX gets blamed there is a rat loose.

(03-07-2010 01:40 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Schools don't drop sports to comply with Title IX, they drop sports because their priorities are elsewhere.

Title IX effectively mandates what those priorities are allowed to be.

Quote:They didn't cut opportunities for men, they shifted them from one sport to another.

It is Title IX that helps to make many of these "shifts" necessary, instead of simply expanding men's sports overall.

But the number of athletic scholarships awarded to men is larger today than when Title IX was adopted.

Title IX doesn't require that schools spend 72% of their budget on football and basketball but that is the average in FBS. Budgets in those sports have risen far faster than the rate of inflation. Rutgers dropped men's tennis a few years ago citing Title IX. They also spent $175,000 housing and feeding the football team in a hotel, before HOME games. They could have cut that practice and had ample money to have men's tennis. They valued the questionable "me-to" practice of hotels before home games over men's tennis. Without Title IX maybe they cut women's tennis instead but that doesn't get to the root issue which is managing money.

The US population has increased by about 50% since 1972. The consequent fact that there are, today, more total athletic scholarships floating around should not be taken as some sort of proof of Title IX's neutrality or benevolence where men's non-revenue college sports are concerned (sorry I didn't specify that detail before; I thought it went without saying); to do so is naive at best, dishonest at worst.

By and by, football (and to some extent, MBB) is the goose that lays the golden eggs in college sports. You cite the 72% statistic and evidently consider that to be undesirable in some way, but you leave unspecified what the "correct" % should be, and how it should be calculated. People can honorably disagree about whether the U.S. Government should be passing laws and issuing judicial opinions about any of this. What people cannot honorably disagree about is -- since the U.S. Government has done precisely those things -- the impact such actions have had on men's non-revenue college sports. It has been devastating.

(03-06-2010 10:52 AM)Native Georgian Wrote:  It's curious that at least two Dallas-area institutions (SMU & NT) don't play baseball.

And of course DBU is very, very solid in baseball but otherwise not a Division-I program. I have said on many C-USA/Tulane boards that C-USA should accept DBU as a baseball-only member until (if ever) SMU gets a team. But that -- the part about DBU -- doesn't seem like it's going to happen. Don't know about SMU getting a team. I feel like that probably will happen eventually.

I believe DBU is a D-1 team....weren't they in the NCAA's last year?

(03-07-2010 06:59 PM)SOT1977 Wrote:  I believe DBU is a D-1 team....weren't they in the NCAA's last year?

I don't think so.

What I believe to be the case is that schools are permitted to have one sport in a separate competitive classification-level from all the other sports the school happens to sponsor. So that, for example, DBU is permitted to have a Division-I baseball program, but Division II (or III) athletic program for everything else.

(03-06-2010 08:07 PM)stebo Wrote:  When the stadium looked like it wouldn't happen - we almost added a team just to do something new but it was going to be an agreement between NT and a new minor league team that fell through.

My guess - the stadium will be built by 2011 and we will have baseball (with brand new facilities) by 2013/2014. Our student fees kick in as soon as our stadium is "complete" and the fee retires as soon as the bonds are retired. I imagine that we will bond out both just to drag out the repayment period to about 20 years or so.

I'm hoping for a team in 2013, but realistically I think we're looking at 2014-2016. If we're going to build a competitive ballpark, it's going to take a while. When the topic came up as part of the TCL deal, there were a lot of alums in the camp of starting up an underfunded club just to say we play baseball.

Today was so nice that I wish I were watching Mean Green Baseball. That said, I'll wait a few extra years if it means that we start them off in a park that's competitive with any school in the state and our conference. Here's hoping for Peterbilt Park...

(03-22-2010 08:25 PM)Gakusei Wrote:  

(03-06-2010 08:07 PM)stebo Wrote:  When the stadium looked like it wouldn't happen - we almost added a team just to do something new but it was going to be an agreement between NT and a new minor league team that fell through.

My guess - the stadium will be built by 2011 and we will have baseball (with brand new facilities) by 2013/2014. Our student fees kick in as soon as our stadium is "complete" and the fee retires as soon as the bonds are retired. I imagine that we will bond out both just to drag out the repayment period to about 20 years or so.

I'm hoping for a team in 2013, but realistically I think we're looking at 2014-2016. If we're going to build a competitive ballpark, it's going to take a while. When the topic came up as part of the TCL deal, there were a lot of alums in the camp of starting up an underfunded club just to say we play baseball.

Today was so nice that I wish I were watching Mean Green Baseball. That said, I'll wait a few extra years if it means that we start them off in a park that's competitive with any school in the state and our conference. Here's hoping for Peterbilt Park...

Hey man, where ya been?