ODU has 17 sports (not including football). We are likely adding beach volleyball to get to 18. If we had to get to 20, Id bring back wrestling and hope cheering would count. The bigger point is the P5s want to make it so that only schools with P5 media money can afford to compete.

(06-27-2022 01:42 PM)GSUdpb Wrote:  Georgia State currently has 14 sports not including football which he says wouldn't be counted. So that means we'd need to add 4 to 6 sports.

Women's Lacrosse has often been mentioned as our next sport should we add one. After that I could see both Men's and Women's Swimming & Diving and bringing back Men's Track and Field.

That's 4. Beyond that I'm not sure. With Title IX I doubt we add more men's sports than we do women's so Men's Cross Country is likely out.

I know Arkansas State had a really good rugby team for a few years, as my wife is an alumnus and I have some friends from Jonesboro I give a hard time about football/basketball being recently irrelevant. Maybe rugby/lacrosse could be seen as low cost sports that could be added.

(06-27-2022 02:59 PM)Usajags Wrote:  Maybe add women’s flag football to offset the numbers that football adds to the mens side. Either that or football doesn’t need to be counted towards Title IX rules dues to there not being an equivalent sport in womens that requires that many athletes.

Edit: or scholarships for dance and cheer leading need to be counted towards the Title IX rules.

My rough understanding of it is your scholarship allocations need to roughly match your student profile. Nationwide, I believe female students outnumber male, something like a 55-45 to 60-40 range split. So for each male sports scholarship, you need 1.x womens. This varies a little bit based on each school's demographics. When push comes to shove, and this gets challenged, the football schollies matter and must be balanced. Theres no legal exemption.

Dance and Cheer might be able to count if they were a sanctioned NCAA sport. I'm not sure if they do today, or if full scholarships are awarded. JMU dance and cheer participate in various other associations/competitions.

(06-27-2022 02:23 PM)T-Dog Wrote:  "Budget issues" for discontinuing varsity sports is mostly a cover for FBS schools. When Clemson did it, Matt Brown did some digging and the real reason was that Clemson just didn't want those sports on its portfolio anymore. I feel App used COVID-19 as a cover two years ago to cancel three men's sports for other reasons, including Title IX.

Men's Soccer should come back. Period. The community has shown to support a product. 1400 paying at the last AppFC match (no one sitting on the hill pays, so add a hundred or more).

Men's Indoor T&F should come back as it only helps outdoor T&F.

The other two slots could be whatever. App has Snowboarding and Skiing teams. Not sure they're NCAA sports. App's Hockey Team is only club level, but fairly popular. But going with Men's Soccer and Beach Volleyball sounds like a no brainer for App since the conference is going to sponsor those sports.


Need a few schools to sponsor Field Hockey to help out the Sun Belt to start the sponsorship of the sport which would help ODU, JMU, and App.

Years ago when 1A and 1AA came about you had too sponsor so many sports. i think it was the Ivy League exemption. Same thing all over. stAte started a softball program that was a joke. When more changes came and we got bounce to 1AA a couple years later along with the Ivies softball went away. I think we will see that sort of thing again. Of course it would just match our baseball program.

its not the scholarships that matter its participation in individual sports

for titleIX compliance

We have 16 varsity teams without football. We could easily add women’s beach volleyball and men’s cross country at very little cost to bring us into compliance if the threshold ends up being 18.

We have 12. I have a hard time seeing us adding 6 to 8 sports. Most SBC schools seem to have 15 or 16 sports.

(06-27-2022 06:14 PM)OsageJ Wrote:  We have 12. I have a hard time seeing us adding 6 to 8 sports. Most SBC schools seem to have 15 or 16 sports.

I would imagine in most cases, states will finance the extra teams needed to maintain division 1 status. The return on investment for the state’s economy is there.

(06-27-2022 06:48 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  

(06-27-2022 06:14 PM)OsageJ Wrote:  We have 12. I have a hard time seeing us adding 6 to 8 sports. Most SBC schools seem to have 15 or 16 sports.

I would imagine in most cases, states will finance the extra teams needed to maintain division 1 status. The return on investment for the state’s economy is there.

Not in Arkansas. If our state government thought they might help us stay FBS and keep the pigs from being the only team like that in this state.. They would never.... Let me repeat ...never lift a finger. If they thought the NCAA could pass something that would shut down our teams...they would complain but applaud behind closed doors. As a matter of fact when I read this first thing I thought of is they figured out how to resurrect Frank Broyles.

Arkansas State sponsors 16 sports currently. Men's Tennis. Beach Volleyball, and softball would be the easiest to add. This would get you to 18 or 19 depending on what is added.

I thought 12 wasn't right but they don't split cross country and track and field. Still can't find 16 but I was wrong before. Ok indoor and outdoor track and field. Still hope they don't go to 20.

Track can count as up to three sports for each gender if you include cross country.

Beach volleyball seems a simple add. You don’t need to award any extra scholarships or hire any new coaches. Bowling certainly doesn’t have the same sex appeal, but I agree it is something you could do on the cheap, assuming you have a bowling alley nearby.

It would take group participation, but men’s volleyball would be a possibility if a bunch needed a new sport.

(06-27-2022 03:24 PM)monarx Wrote:  ODU has 17 sports (not including football). We are likely adding beach volleyball to get to 18. If we had to get to 20, Id bring back wrestling and hope cheering would count. The bigger point is the P5s want to make it so that only schools with P5 media money can afford to compete.

Yup. It'll never work though. The P5s need the G5s. For 50% of them, playing G5s and FCS in OOC is their only realistic chance of having a winning season. Even the crummy P5s have wealthy and influential boosters who want winning seasons (even if they never can do better than 3-5 in conference play).

(06-27-2022 06:48 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  

(06-27-2022 06:14 PM)OsageJ Wrote:  We have 12. I have a hard time seeing us adding 6 to 8 sports. Most SBC schools seem to have 15 or 16 sports.

I would imagine in most cases, states will finance the extra teams needed to maintain division 1 status. The return on investment for the state’s economy is there.

Not in Virginia. In VA, by law, no tax dollars can be appropriated or used to support college athletics.

Southern Miss lists 16 sports besides football on its website. I can’t remember if it was our current A.D. or a predecessor, but one of them mentioned possibly adding gymnastics in the foreseeable future.

(06-27-2022 08:45 PM)AssKickingChicken Wrote:  Beach volleyball seems a simple add. You don’t need to award any extra scholarships or hire any new coaches.

I guess it shows how much I've paid attention if I'm even asking this, but are D1-level team volleyball players typically the same athletes that can compete that well at beach volleyball? I mean, clearly they're, y'know, related...but aren't there different women at the very top in each sport?

(06-27-2022 08:45 PM)AssKickingChicken Wrote:  Track can count as up to three sports for each gender if you include cross country.

Beach volleyball seems a simple add. You don’t need to award any extra scholarships or hire any new coaches. Bowling certainly doesn’t have the same sex appeal, but I agree it is something you could do on the cheap, assuming you have a bowling alley nearby.

It would take group participation, but men’s volleyball would be a possibility if a bunch needed a new sport.

True, but Title IX doesn’t care about the number of sports a school offers. To remain compliant with Title IX it’s the number of scholarship opportunities offered in proportion to a school’s enrollment % of men and women.

The NCAA also puts a cap on the number of scholarships offered in each sport, so if a school sponsors FBS FB, and has a 60-40 ratio of women to men (a % common to many college and universities), the number of women varsity sports will (by necessity to meet Title IX guidelines) outnumber the number of men’s varsity sports.

At present the minimum number of men’s sports to qualify as a D1 NCAA program is 6.

To meet Title IX guidelines, JMU (where the men to women ratio favors women 60-40%) JMU offers just the minimum of 6 mens varsity teams. Track & Field, Cross Country, and Swimming & Diving are supported for women only. It’s also why JMU sponsors Field Hockey and a women’s LAX team, but no men’s LAX.

It all boils down to equal, sponsored opportunities for men and women, based on each institution’s unique enrollment profile. So long as a school offers 85 scholarships for men in football a school will most likely have several more varsity teams for women.

(06-27-2022 10:32 PM)Longhorn Wrote:  

(06-27-2022 06:48 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  

(06-27-2022 06:14 PM)OsageJ Wrote:  We have 12. I have a hard time seeing us adding 6 to 8 sports. Most SBC schools seem to have 15 or 16 sports.

I would imagine in most cases, states will finance the extra teams needed to maintain division 1 status. The return on investment for the state’s economy is there.

Not in Virginia. In VA, by law, no tax dollars can be appropriated or used to support college athletics.

Virginia universities make up for it with higher student fees than most states where athletics is subsidized. It's the same principle. Students will pay a higher fee to maintain D1 status and fund a few more teams.