Fresno putting up a fight

Good for them.

And some great quotes showing that it's not Title IX forcing out soccer, but politics. Title IX is giving them a choice. They choose to cut a sport rather than trim some fat all over.

"This decision was necessary to stabilize our financial future," said athletic director Michael O’Brien. He said trimming spending in other sports would have made it difficult to field competitive teams.

Especially since their football team lost close to $2M in 2001-2002.

It is adding a sport to remain Division I. And no one said what you claim. The writer infers it, but it is never stated.

To meet the NCAA Division I membership criteria, CSU could add either a men's, women's or coed sport, but to comply with federal Title IX requirements the new sport almost certainly would have to be for women.

The minimum requirements are a clear signal that people are more interested in the arms race than providing ample opportunities for all athletes.

The guy writing for the Fresno Bee captures it perfectly:

Title IX plays a role. But so do lots and lots and lots of other things. And we now have at least two ADs on record saying they will not trim across the board to make the budget work.

 

DEATH TO TITLE IX! DEATH TO TITLE IX!

 

Re: Re: Re: Fresno putting up a fight

Notice how I say trim and you say slash. Big difference there.

You won't believe anything I say, but I will offer a wealth of evidence. First off, the current situations are much more driven by state budget problems and tuition increases (which affect scholarship dollars) than anything else. I mean, the fact that in the last 12 months I have worked at a public university and a private college, both of whom have had to do manjor budget cutting means nothing, does it?

Secondly, anyone who doesn't cut a program balances the budget by trimming these days. It's simple math, really. Look at Maryland. Penn State. Michigan. Anyone who hasn't cut has balanced. Even the AD at WVU admitted he did it once, but rejected the idea again. So it can be done.

Thirdly, this document (http://www.ed.gov/inits/commissionsboards/athletics/transcript-102202.pdf) has a wealth of information from people like Debbie Yow and Grahame Spanier, who both have been able to oversee top-level programs without cutting sports.

Some people have brought up Yow before like she's some anti Title IX person. But, in reality, when you read her stuff, you see that she's in line with my line of thinking - the law is good, the interpretation stinks and no one has the guts to be the one to make a really, really, really hard decision like voluntarily go to 75 football scholarships to try and spread the money a little wider.

Peb Bradley-Doppes, AD at UNC-Wilmington and a former administrator at Michigan on how Michigan added sports for men and women without increasing its budget:

There's a lot of good stuff in that document I agree with, some stuff I don't disagree with, like how everyone deserves a place on a team, which I think is BS because this is college athletics, not junior high.

But the bottom line is that this document, part of the Title IX town hall, has college administrators who successfully manage their budgets so they don't have to cut.

But they know they will have to at some point because of the arms race. Title IX is a reality, just like high salaries for basketball and football coaches. You just need smart and brave people in power to work all those things nto the budget.

And as the guy from BYU in there says, it's too easy to just cut sometimes instead of working hard to make things manageable for everyone.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fresno putting up a fight

1. Deb Yow has trimmed. Maryland might run the most efficient athletic department in the nation, all so that they can not cut.

2. Maybe I have single dout three schools with a lot in favor for them. But they all have to struggle to make their budgets work in spite of that.

Some more quotes. I don't know why I fight this when people are so set on believing something that has been proven wrong again and again, but I just guess I like others to be informed, even though you tilt at the Title IX windmill.

It's part of the problem, not all of it. Because if it were, the reductions would be greater.

Deb Groth, Northern Illinois University AD: "I recall a Division 1-A athletic directors meetings last February, one of our colleagues got up and suggested that we all need to take a better look at what we're spending our money on and what priorities we have as athletic directors, and do we need to spend the night before a game at a hotel, and so on and so forth. And it's an issue we all deal with on a daily basis. It doesn't matter if you're a Division 1-A school or if you're a Division 3 school."

Bob Slive, SEC Commissioner: "I've been involved as a director of athletics for almost 25 years, believe
that we're headed for a financial train wreck down the road. And it may be due to the arms race. It may be due to increased tuition that's happening at exorbitant rates all over the country. As we look prospectively, and as if we can accept my hypothetical position, that we are going to have very significant broad-based financial difficulties in intercollegiate athletics in the years ahead. As institutions consider those decisions about dropping sports, it would be my belief, I think, that Title IX might have an awful lot to say about how those program reductions are managed."

He blames budgets for caausing sports to get cut and Title IX for maybe having an "awful lot" of the decision of what gets cut. Notice that he has a wide-spread and sensible approach to the complexity of the problem.

Slive: I probably should have better expressed that I think regardless of broad-based reductions, we're still headed for problems down the road because of some of the things we rely on for revenue.

Rondo Felberg, president of Olympic Aid USA: "... if the recommendations come in a way that give universities enough ability to say, okay, courage, creativity, outside-the-box thinking, and when I say courage, I mean courage in managing opportunities for women without destroying dreams of men. That's what I mean by courage."

Graham Spanier, PSU president: there is a train wreck ahead, and any of the ADs or presidents would understand that. I mean, that is quite factual. And I say that as a person who owns the second biggest stadium in the country, which is full every Saturday, and I can attest to the train wreck that's ahead for all of us.

Of course there are more for people who want to learn about the wide range of problems within the funding of college athletics, instead of just pinning the blame on one of the issues.

Feel free to educate yourself instead of hiding behind a straw man.

 

So educate us:

What has fundamentally changed in the past 20 years that has brought on this 'train wreck'.

Besides Title IX, I mean.

Are schools funding more and more sports programs (that aren't the result of Title IX)? Are they getting increasingly less revenue from their traditional gate receipts? Are they getting less TV revenue? Are they getting smaller and smaller amounts of the tuition $? Of federal program$ Are they spending increasingly more per athlete, and if so, on what?

 

Well, the most recent thing is (ask anyone working in higher ed) the budget crises that are plaguing universities and colleges. And I bet athletics isn't even feeling a fraction of what other departments are, but they are having to rein in costs some.

There is a whole hell of a lot of belt-tightening going on everywhere. Plus, larger tuition increases, which affect scholarship costs. The University of maryland raised tuition in the middle of the year because of their budget problems and won a court case that basically says they can change it whenever they want up until the end of a semester.

Insurance costs have soared in general. Coaching salaries in the big sports are astronomical. Staffs are bigger. Support services are more wide-ranging. And, in some cases, gate receipts are down. Fresno dropped soccer, but has seen hoops attendence drop since Tark stepped down to become a $100,000 conultant after raping the program (and saddling them with huge legal bills to defend his legacy).

Some of all that is because of Title IX. Women go to college more than men. And the men - who asked for proportionality - don't like having to deal with a changing world. The think proportionality as interpreted now sucks big ones. But it's the rule of a day. And a lot of schools get by without dropping sports.

Some of that is because the guy down the street is doing it, so everyone joins in. The arms race is nuts. Toledo has no business in Division I-A, losing $2 million a year on basketball and football alone, then cutting other sports so they can "remain competitive." The new minimum requirements for Division I certification are rolling around and I wouldn't be shocked if a whole mess of schools go down to 16 sports and most of them break down at 10 female and six male, getting by the rules by the skin of their teeth.

Then there's the whole issue of head count scholarships, where the NCAA has designated certain sports where even $1 of scholarship money is counted as a full scholarship. So there's no incentive to not give a full ride because someone else will.

So school that wants to hold down the costs on football can't spread its 85 rides over 100 guys. And a school that wants to boost its female participation by adding more sports at a lower cost has trouble doing this because they have to give field hockey and lacrosse players full rides in order to remain competitive.

It's a whole mess of issues. Title IX is one of them. Women aren't untouchable as some might claim - people drop women's sports all the time. But they usually replace them with another, cheaper woman's sport because it's all about getting closer to proportionality while maintaining cost controls. One of those costs is trying not to get into a lawsuit from women's groups. But one of them is also doing enough to keep male athletes interested, and that takes spending money out the ass to attract recruits.

 

Yea, verrily. I've only worked in higher education since 1986, but even in that time period, you can see things getting tighter, and it's far worse in academic programs than athletic programs (the increasing use of adjunct faculty is one of the most drastic problems that affect both students and faculty, for instance).

State legislatures as well as congress are allotting less money for higher education, and this has implications across the board (even at private schools, where all but a few rely on government sources for large chunks of financial aid money as well as grants for development). When you take into account the increasing cost of higher education and the decreasing availability of state and federal money, budgetary problems are inevitable, even with annual tuition increases that outpace the rate of inflation.

Title IX is one issue, but it's not the only one. However, given that sports are traditionally a male domain, it's the one that's easiest to scapegoat for sports fans, many of whom don't give a rat's ass about underqualified (or overqualified and severely underpaid) adjuncts teaching a huge majority of general ed courses at many places, increasing class sizes, the bloating of college administrations at the level of VP and up, etc.

 

Why are people so upset about this stuff? There are many schools where soccer "works." There are many Div. 1 schools who don't field teams in one of the "big four", but do in others. There are a lot of schools who have good basketball programs for example, but no football team. Some excel in baseball, or track & field. Sure, some colleges will drop soccer, but others will drop wrestling. Some have even cut football! There will always be a lot of quality college soccer programs. Fight the cuts if it upsets you, speak out, raise awareness, money etc. Just don't freak out that soccer is going to disappear from the college landscape. I think as MLS grows there will be less draw for the top players anyway. They'll be turning pro instead of going to college, unless the rules change to allow college teams to be viable developers of talent.

Kevin

 

I actually wonder if going to FIFA rules would help soccer because it would trim costs (fewer players needed) and might be a less attractive target at the mid majors who are desperate to cut costs without affecting the big sports one iota.

Sure, fewer guys might play, but college sports aren't a right. And it's better that 16 guys play instead of none.

 

mmm....surprised I hadn't looked for this thread. As a Fresno State Grad ('93) I can tell ya that even back when I was an undergrad, things were looking gloom for the program. It seemed they were constantly bringing up cutting the Soccer program. They had one of the top Mens Water Polo teams and that got axed in '92 I think. Several others looked like they were about to go as well around that time.

Fresno State is not considered a big sports school (well, not like PAC-10 schools) but for football and basketball (yes, especally with Tark) we would sell out stadiums. The local boosters are great and have very deep pockets (possibly too deep with Tark in town) so I can't say I'm that surprised that the money has already been raised. At one time FSU soccer was ranked #1 in D1 and the Athletic Dept had a big drive to break the regular season attendance record for a game against USF. They did. Better than 15k showed up to see FSU lose their first game of the season. It's the school the locals love.

Now, the real problem is of course Title XI. The money is great and all, but with a big football program (well, not Pac-10 but still, good sized) something will have to give somewhere.

 

Believe me, I love football (and futbol of course!), but 85 scholarships for a D1 program is totally ludicrous. A full NFL roster is 45. Why do colleges need 85 football scholarships? So 40 guys can sit on their butt, getting a full ride, while the 5'10" 170 pound athlete is getting squeezed out of men's soccer, wrestling, track, etc.

Think of how much money schools would save, just by reducing the amount of football scholarships from 85 to 65?

 

You don't even need to go that far. Go to 75. That's 10 schols. That's a minimum 100K most likely

And you won't miss those 10 scholarship players. Or eliminate the head count rule so they can give 25 guys partial scholarships to entice them to come.

 

theyer'e back

good day for college soccer/ fresno state reinstated\collhttp://www.collegesports.com/sports/m-soccer/stories/051503aaa.htmlege soccer

 

Re: Re: theyer'e back

Because they don't care. It's Title IX remember. For every spot money is raised to keep soccer, you have to double it for some girl to play a sport she doesn't really care about and only does cuz it's a freebie (there, that should get me slammed)

 

Re: Re: Re: theyer'e back

Slammed? I give you a standing ovation.

 

Don't blame Title IX for the cut in men's sports. It is the fault of athletic directors who refuse to come up with more creative solutions. It's ridiculous, actually, to cut men's teams when there are other ways.

Also, football does not need 85 scholarships! Does the third string punter need to be on scholarship?

It is a bit strange that those who are saying not to cut soccer and deny men the opportunity to play are the same ones who are saying to take away the opportunity to play sport from women. Interesting.

 

Re: Re: Re: Fresno putting up a fight

I just took a look at the Fresno State site to see what they offer in the way of sports. They have the NCAA required minimum number of sports to be a D1 school--16. They offer the NCAA required minimum of eight womens sports. (This is not a Title IX requirement--it's an NCAA rule.) They can't cut a mens or womens team and remain in D1. All they can do is rearrange the deck chairs to try to save some money.

With the current budget crisis impacting states you have to look at which schools offer more than the minimum number of sports. Find a school offering more than 16 sports, and you've found a school where teams (regardless of gender) are in jeopardy. If you're a prospective athlete looking at a school in the current budget climate, you'd be smart to research all of the sports offered by the schools you're considering. At publically funded institutions anything over the minimum is at risk.

How long before the NCAA reduces the number of sports required to stay in D1? This has to be on many a university president's agenda. At some point I think you can also expect the number of football scholarships to be reduced as well. This has little to do with Title IX, and everything to do with $$$$s.