Baseball is Coastal's top sport obviously but soccer is second. Sixteen NCAA appearances ranked a bunch of times. It would be great for Coastal to get in an Expanded C-USA soccer league keeping the SBC rivals.

(05-27-2020 07:04 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(05-27-2020 05:34 AM)MercerFan Wrote:  I still think that many college presidents (academic types, sports haters) are using the virus as a cover to chip away at the athletic departments. They can't eliminate the entire program overnight, but they can start removing smaller sports.

Interesting theory, but I see it as the opposite: Those who worship at the Golden Calf of Football are using the crisis to eliminate other sports to (a) protect football right now, and (b) set football up to get more money in the future by not reviving these sports once the crisis is over.

I doubt the athletic-hater theory, because really, there are no professor types who have an issue with tennis or cross-country. They dislike the pernicious influence of football and men's hoops.

Yeah—but the reality is, to the extent athletics is a marketing tool for the school—-its value lies in football and basketball. Nobody ever hears if or cares about cross country and wrestling. Football and basketball games are 2 to 3 hour long marketing ads on national tv. Non-revenue sports are rarely if ever televised and have essentially no value in that area.

(05-27-2020 08:09 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(05-27-2020 07:32 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(05-27-2020 07:12 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  

(05-27-2020 05:34 AM)MercerFan Wrote:  I still think that many college presidents (academic types, sports haters) are using the virus as a cover to chip away at the athletic departments. They can't eliminate the entire program overnight, but they can start removing smaller sports. If we shrug and say "oh well, it's only track and tennis", we'll soon find ourselves having our favorite sports eliminated too. You cannot tell me that track and field or tennis make any kind of noticeable dent in the athletics budget at App State. This is a test to see how much push back fans, students, faculty, and especially donors give the schools. It's not just App State on the line here, it's everyone potentially.

The next time there's a "crisis" or anything they can latch onto, and all the small sports are already eliminated, they'll go after basketball and football. First they'll lower the scholarship totals, reduce coaching salaries, and kill the program from within. Then when the teams are at the bottom of the standings they'll pull the plug completely. I'm not saying this is App State's future, but many other small D1 schools that are eliminating sports are already doing these things (Furman).

Not everything is a conspiracy. Sports need money to run. Public schools, especially those at the G5 level, rely heavily on allocated funds and state monies to operate. When there is a projected budget shortfall, every administrator at the school must tighten their belts including the athletic director. If the money was going to be there, these sports wouldn't have gotten cut, but it's not and it won't be for a while. The university presidents didn't just all get together and say "Hey, we should start cutting non-revenue sports at our school and see what happens."

I agree, but what we are seeing are likely *permanent* solutions to a *temporary* situation. Covid-19 won't be around forever, but it's hard to re-start a sport once you've eliminated it.

The seemingly neutral move would be to just make across-the-board cuts, such as cutting expenses for each sport by 20%, or whatever is needed to make up the deficit. Rather than take the ax to certain sports and leave others much less scathed. That does suggest a longer-term agenda.

I look at it differently. The problem is permanent, which a temporary condition is providing the opportunity to fix. Heavy athletic subsidies are there for much of the G5 and lower divisions, and have been for some time.

Fair point, though i was referencing the problem as relative to the pre-covid baseline. Of course you are eight, heavy athletic subsidies at the G5 level aren't caused by covid, so the only way to get rid of them is to radically scale back athletics. And since sports like women's soccer and men's tennis are small cost potatoes, to really reduce that you have to start with football.

(05-27-2020 09:06 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Academics have always hated athletics. They don’t see the overall value they have to the institution in terms of marketing and building a sense of community and comradery among the student body and alumni. They resent that the institution’s academic standards get bent to admit athletes who might not otherwise be admitted.

But above all their biggest gripe comes down to money.

Which is a fair gripe, since at most schools, a lot of money is transferred to athletics with no evident ROI, including in terms of marketing and building a sense of community. These are typically just asserted by those who support athletics, with no evidence, while the dollars lost are real.

Does athletics make money and have spirit-building and marketing value at places like LSU, USC, Notre Dame, and Clemson? Obviously. But at Akron, North Texas, Eastern Michigan, and FAU? We know that sports loses a ton of money at those places.

(05-27-2020 10:36 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(05-27-2020 07:04 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(05-27-2020 05:34 AM)MercerFan Wrote:  I still think that many college presidents (academic types, sports haters) are using the virus as a cover to chip away at the athletic departments. They can't eliminate the entire program overnight, but they can start removing smaller sports.

Interesting theory, but I see it as the opposite: Those who worship at the Golden Calf of Football are using the crisis to eliminate other sports to (a) protect football right now, and (b) set football up to get more money in the future by not reviving these sports once the crisis is over.

I doubt the athletic-hater theory, because really, there are no professor types who have an issue with tennis or cross-country. They dislike the pernicious influence of football and men's hoops.

Yeah—but the reality is, to the extent athletics is a marketing tool for the school—-its value lies in football and basketball. Nobody ever hears if or cares about cross country and wrestling. Football and basketball games are 2 to 3 hour long marketing ads on national tv. Non-revenue sports are rarely if ever televised and have essentially no value in that area.

No question, football and hoops are far more likely to be televised. However, there's little evidence that the televising of football provides any meaningful marketing value to a school in terms of stuff like applications, enrollments, donations, etc.

The available evidence suggests that winning big does provide a boost in those areas, but not merely existing on TV. Which kind of makes sense - when marketers buy TV time to run ads, they craft those ads to pitch their product in the most positive possible light, they don't merely have the product on TV.