Fresno update

The chance of the fresno state soccer team coming back is pretty slim. The team needs as much money as they can get, they need as much support as they can get. The womens basketball team at fresno state spends over 900,000 dollars a year and the administration at fresno state is picking this ridiculous team over mens soccer. With the growth rate of soccer it will soon be a popular sport and the college soccer stadiums will be selling out. PLEASE HELP, with any ideas, donations, anything...

 

I don't think Fresno State is in the PAC 10. The Only PAC 10 schools with men's soccer are UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Washington and Oregon State.

 

If Fresno drops soccer and no one replaces them in the Pac 10, there will still be Pac 10 soccer with 5 teams but they will lose their automatic bid.

You need 6 teams in your conference to get an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Before FSU joined, the Pac 10 went with 5 team for a couple of years.

 

I really don't think they need to worry about the automatic bid. The Pac 10 is always well represented in the NCAA tournament. I mean, it's not like UCLA wouldn't have gotten in if they didn't have an automatic bid this year.

And, the chance to play the Pac 10 schools will be appealing to someone. I could easily see someone from the MPSF or Big West Conference jumping in to replace FSU.

Regardless, I see them sticking together as the schools themselves are all members of the Pac 10 in all the other major sports.

 

Does anyone have a wayback machine so Fresno can not hire Tarkanian, not spend the money on his contract, not have to pay massive legal fees to defend his NCAA infractions and not have to continue to pay him 120Gs a year through 2005 as a "consultant" after he totally effed up their basketball program?

This is a non-BCS athletic program in a state with a horrible budget problems in a region with few options for conference affiliations. Title IX is a crutch. It's no more to blame in situations like this than the impenetrable 85 football scholarships.

The decision sucks. But let's not cast a narrow eye when looking for blame.

 

So beineke, welcome to the POLITCALLY CORRECT PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CALIFORNIA, where equality is more important than excellence and all children will soon be conceived and born without the role of father ever being mentioned. After all, who needs men?

 

I want to second monster's points. This is a long, long, long, long, long debate. It's been on here before. Title IX is not causing these programs to be cut, it is the rising costs of big sports as well as athletic directors who have no real vision of how to solve problems. Remember, some schools (like Michigan) have been able to ADD men's soccer programs in recent years without cutting other sports.

 

fresno

title IX does suck because they have just added a womens golf team to fresno state's athletic department. The athletic department is screwing the men's team, they are telling them that they have to raise the 2.7million dollars for four years, but added in the those costs is the mens scholarships, which the school is supposed to pay for but since the day they got cut they had to make their own foundation the valley soccer foundation. also the mens soccer teamis funding the womens swimming and diving program because of titleIX so if mens soccer is coming back so does the swimming program. but is there anything we can do to save the program ??? donate??find sponsors? something??

 

We have heard the "all athletic directors are stupid people" before. They all aren't stupid. They all have to deal with an insane quota.
Our Supreme Court has ruled many times, most recently in the University of Michigan case, that racial quotas are illegal. Racial quotas, as repugnant as they are to many people, are often offered by well-meaning people as a means to rectify an unfair imbalance. Michigan's claw school had something like 5 per cent of the students black while the U.S. is 12 per cent black and Michigan's black population even higher than that. So people are trying to get the black population close to 12 per cent in the name of fairness.
Title IX has this notion of fairness turned upside down. I believe Fresno State's student body was 57 per cent female and is close to 60 per cent now.


http://www.calstate.edu/CalNOW/Sec4d-Report_on_Efforts.shtml

If you were interested in fairness, you would look for ways to get the percentage of males from 40 or 43 per cent, whatever number you want to haggle about, closer to 50 per cent. In the name of fairness. Instead, Title IX fanatics use the Quota-illegal in race cases-to compound the inequity.
Many soccer fans want the sport to grow and don't want to see programs eliminated, for many reasons. Some of the reasons are giving young men a chance to play, growing interest at the local level, and perhaps developing players who could help our national team.
Football has 85 scholarships at a lot of schools but brings in a ton of money and publicity. Fresno State's equestrian team and women's golf team are welfare for affluent white women. These teams generate no revenue to speak of.

 

This is not exclusively Title IX's fault and it is not exclusively D-I football's fault. But, it's naive and misleading to say that Title IX or D-I football aren't part of the problems here.

As the last poster illustrated, FSU just added a golf team and that money is coming from the same budget that is being squeezed to the point that soccer is on the block. And, because of Title IX, FSU has to raise not just enough money to pay for themselves, but to pay for another women's program to maintain the equity - in this case, swimming and diving. That's pretty cut and dried.

At the same time, because of the 85 scholarships for football, it is much more difficult to achieve the proportionality that Title IX requires. And, football at a school like FSU is only in the black when it makes it to a bowl and gets a good payday. Otherwise, it's a losing venture.

I'm not anti-college football. In fact, I'm for it. Even when programs lose money, they do good things for a school when they're successful. The publicity an fund raising that happens when a program does well is good for the university. I don't have the numbers but I'm positive that when David Carr was the hottest player in the country, FSU football indirectly and directly got a lot of money for the school.

Also, alumni love football and so do the students. Obviously I love soccer and I watched a lot of college ball when I was in school. But, that was because I liked soccer. When I wanted to have fun and make a lot of noise and hang out with my buddies and get all drunk and taunt the opposing team and paint my face and what not, that was at football games. It's just part of the social fabric of college life and I'm glad I went to a school that has a decent - neither great nor really bad - football team.

And, when I go back for tailgates now, I run into college buddies that I see ONLY at football games. And, I know a lot of the alums at the football games donate a lot of money to the school and that the school raises more money when the football - and basketball - programs do better.

The point is, for all its evils, there is a lot of good that comes out of college football for a univeristy. The trick is to not have to pimp yourself too much to get all the positives that come from it. ANd then, the trick is to be able to make sure the football program truely does enable you to fund a broad range of non revenue sports like soccer and women's golf, etc...

I can see why team's roll the dice and try and sell their soul's for football. If you to a town like Ann Arbor or Tuscaloosa on a football weekend, the amount of money raised, not just for the school but for the overall economy of the area is awe-inspiring. From restuarants, bars and hotels to all the paraphanialia and school-licensed crap to the ticket revenue, it's just a constant stream of cash.

Obviouusly, not many programs can duplicate that kind of money that an Alabama or Michigan do, but as long we live in a capitalist society, people are gonna try to get to that level.

Now, does football need 85 scholarships? I would argue no. I'd like to see it go to 70, which would allow a team to go two deep at every position, have scholarships for specialists like kickers, etc., redshirt about 20 guys, and still have a little extra depth. I see no reason why a major football program couldn't make 70 scholies work and that would ease the Title IX burdens and budget crunches so many schools face.

For that to happen, someone needs to get serious about change and that person needs to have enough balls to standup to the football coaches - and the alums that back them - AND be able to build a coalition of like-minded thinkers.

Are those people out there? Perhaps. But, as long as football is so dominant on campus, it's going to be a tough issue to push through.

In the mean time, schools can still do a better job managing their budgets and not blowing cash on the things that were documented in the whole Tarkanian fisaco.

And, let's be fair - soccer needs to do its part here, too. The programs need to be more creative and proactive in fund raising, in getting on TV, in playing games and putting on a product that more people will pay to see. I know a lot of schools court the local soccer community but there isn't a program in the country that couldn't do a better job of marketing itself and raising its profile to help put butts in the seats and get "School X Soccer" sweatshirts sold.

The coaches all manage to pimp their soccer camps, where the cash goes directly to their pockets, but they don't seem to be nearly as proactive when it comes to getting more people to pay money to see their team play.

The Maryland-UCLA game earlier this year was a great night for college soccer and while you can't have No. 1 vs. No. 2 Final Four rematch games all the time, you can certainly promote games the way that one was.

Because, if you're selling tickets and making money or, at the least, coming close to breaking even, it's going to be a whole lot harder for a an AD to eliminate your program.

 

Fresno's athletic budget in the most recent stats was pretty much break even. So that would be a good indicator that the budget crisis is a big player. The Tark money is way above and beyond the golden parachute he got. They had to return NCAA proceeds and had to do their investigation, defend the charges.

That's not cheap.

It's all Title IX is a crutch. Title IX is a great law that is unfairly interpreted. But to ignore the state budget crisis, the demand to be in the right conference to get the right NCAA bids and the 16-sport minimum is just folly.

Look at all the stories with an objective eye. Budgets and conference affiliations have more than anything to do with cuts.

But when you have no real argument, I guess you try to paint it as black and white, not a nuanced process that is very different from institution to institution. It's easier to blame someone else. Which is why you never cry like a 4-year-old who dropped their ice cream cone when a women's sport is dropped.

 

Go to 75 and allow them to split them amongst people. Wouldn't help the numbers issue, but would help a little scholarship-wise.

My biggest problem is the whining about roster management. No one ever said being a varsity athlete is a God-given right. They cap the number of people in class. Why can't they cap the number of people in an extracurricular activity?

I'm not saying anything unreasonable, but 100 football player should be the maximum.

 

Some proactive facts to try and counter the myth that will probably soon come that men's sports are under attack while women's sports are protected.

Announced this year:

Division I has lost 14 men's sports and added two. Division I has added seven women's sports and lost one.

Division II has added five men's sports and lost five. Division II has added 10 women's sports and lost two.

Division III has added 15 men's sports and lost five. Division III has added 11 women's sports and lost five.

A women's school (I forget the name, but it was in Mississippi) dropped its entire atheltic program, which included four sports. Hood College went co-ed this year and added a handful of men's sports.

Source: NCAA News

 

Title IX is a good law, with noble purposes. Most college sports don't make money, including soccer. If we cut all sports that don't bring any money into a school, lots of wrestling, rowing, lacrosse, baseball and soccer teams on the men's side would be cut. Title IX tries to bring more women into sports. It has done an amazing job so far. Just b/c the number of women playing isn't equal to men doesn't mean the law should be scrapped--look at the vast increases in participation in the first 25 yrs.

Football needs to cut scholarships, which then could be divided up among other sports. I agree with the 75 number, but it won't happen b/c boosters pressure ADs to keep those 85 as part of the whole bloated system (BTW, I love college football too, even if IU's team isn't exactly of quality).

 

Title IX IS a good law but the use of it is WAY out of balance.

The biggest problem is that the Title IX "supporters" have an anti-football, anti-male agenda. They base their pleas for women's sports on enrollement numbers and not on the number of women who are interested in sports.

But then this whole debate has gone on for years and I am tired of it...in the case of Fresno the fact that the "supporters" have been able to ELIMINATE a men's sport is being celebrated more than the fact a women's sport has been ADDED. What does that tell you about what the real issue is here?????

 

Don't confuse pragmatists with what you call "supporters."

 

No need for this to get personal and nasty. Debate, but don't make personal attacks.

 

I should have said which is why the people who only blame Title IX like that. It isn't an individual thing. I'm more than happy to debate. That's why I bring actual facts and references. That's why I don't lean on one tired, old argument.

Feel terrible for Fresno State. Feel terrible for the athletes. Feel terrible that their situation is being minimized when people look to shift the blame. Any discussion of any cuts in higher education that does not bring up state budget problems first, second and third is simply misinformed.

Back to the facts, Fresno lost a couple of hundre G on Tark's golden parachute. They lost several million dollars in NCAA revenue because of his action. Lord knows how much athletic department time and money went into defending the charges.

Believe me, Hoosiers, I'll go back to using the ignore list in the way it is meant to be. Because I'm as tired as you of hearing the same, tired old argument. Maybe I think I can change people who have their eyes closed. Bad habit.

 

Beineke, as I have said in the past, ignore Mr. Monster until he observes TOS and stops the personal attacks.
I was going to start a thread: "Title IX and the Greedy Soccer Dad" about the odd phenomenon of soccer "fans" defending the Quota, which is retarding the advance of men's soccer.
Welfare can be very popular, and Title IX is seen as an Ed Dorado for fathers who are worried about paying for college. It is a very selfish approach.
Of all the arguments in favor of the Quota, cutting a few football scholarships is the most ridiculous. So many factors favor female enterering college that in a few years you will be back where you started and have to cut again to mee the Quota.