Men's golf rarely gets mentioned on these pages, but congratulations are in order to junior David Hicks, who yesterday tied for the Championship of the large Fighting Irish Tourney in South Bend.

This is a major tourney and a singular co-win for a W&M golfer. David shot a final round 68 yesterday!

Way to go David!

Unless it's entirely self funding, no earthly idea why we have this sport.

Yeah, who knew we still had Golf...

Seriously, if I had said we dropped Golf two years ago, how many would have had to go check to see if that was true.
The Golf teams (BOTH of them) have done so very little with their funding. If not for the McCormick money, that would be the first two teams I would say to cut to get down to 20 teams overall.

Still, congrats to David.

Both golf teams have performed well last couple of years. Liz Choi of women's team shot under par at Pinehurst Challenge.

(10-10-2017 09:21 AM)tribeintexas Wrote:  Both golf teams have performed well last couple of years. Liz Choi of women's team shot under par at Pinehurst Challenge.

To me, it's not really about wins and losses. Both could be winning national championships for all I care. It's more about what benefit it provides the school. I don't remotely understand what having two golf teams does for William and Mary. Make it a club like a zillion other valuable activities on campus.

Will note - I don't begrudge the students on this team the experience one bit, and I'm sure it's very valuable for them. Just makes zero sense to spend hugely disproportionate resources on 12 students.

[Second note - if this team is self funding I take this back and have no problem with it, but I have never heard any indication it is]

Would we actually save any money by cutting golf? That's not rhetorical, I have no idea what the overhead costs look like for a sport like that.

(10-10-2017 10:14 AM)zablenoise Wrote:  Would we actually save any money by cutting golf? That's not rhetorical, I have no idea what the overhead costs look like for a sport like that.

We'd definitely save on travel. Men's team goes to SOuth Bend, Akron, and Washington State this year, Women's goes to Tampa. Those can't be cheap flights.

Last year the men's team went to Colorado, Nebraska, Indiana, and Arizona, while the Women's team went to Scotland.

Seems like the women's team does a better job of only really having one big road trip a year, the rest of their tournaments are in NC,SC, and Maryland, and I assume they drive.

We'd also save money on coaching, renting out courses to practice on, buying expensive clubs, recruiting trips, etc.

We would probably save hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million dollars, by cutting both programs.

(10-10-2017 09:40 AM)Tribe2011 Wrote:  It's more about what benefit it provides the school.

W&M routinely gives academic scholarships to kids whose parents are quite wealthy and could easily afford the tuition. Why? Among other reasons, one could be that they figure a small investment now (in tuition) will lead to larger dividends later (in large monetary gifts).

Same thing could apply to athletics. Support olympic sports and some of those athletes will graduate and donate big money (Plumeri played baseball, I believe).

Look at the recently published statistics on which sports had the most alumni donations. I believe football was very low (23%) and might have been last. The olympic sports' percentages of alumni giving were very high.

So, for those people whose bottom line is "what does the college get out of it", perhaps the answer is they get more money than they spend. (Not to mention all the other "touchy-feely" good things the kids and the school get out of championship teams). I, for one, am pleased and proud of every track, cross country, swimming, tennis, gymnastics, soccer, etc, championship.

A Tribe student athlete wins a tournament, and within a couple of posts we are talking about how much we could save by cutting the program. You could ask the same question of why each program exists for any program outside of Football, Men's Basketball, and possibly Baseball.

I cringe every time a poster wants to cut a varsity sport. Playing right into the hands of those academic weenies who hate college sports.

Purdue is a Big Ten school. W&M is a CAA school. The schools are apparently tied in a recent academic metric / rating.

W&M has more varsity sports than Purdue.

Yet, two of the sports that Pudue does have are men's and women's golf. In fact, Purdue owns two golf courses.

Posters here want to cut a sport deemed valuable by an institution like Purdue? Posters here want to cut a sport in which there are a plethora of good local courses, and favorable golf weather?

IMO, you can't start picking and choosing which sport goes to the right line and which sport goes to the left line because, once you start, both lines will end up in the same place, and that is not a pretty place to be.

(10-10-2017 11:16 AM)Zorch Wrote:  W&M routinely gives academic scholarships to kids whose parents are quite wealthy and could easily afford the tuition. Why? Among other reasons, one could be that they figure a small investment now (in tuition) will lead to larger dividends later (in large monetary gifts).

Same thing could apply to athletics. Support olympic sports and some of those athletes will graduate and donate big money (Plumeri played baseball, I believe).

Look at the recently published statistics on which sports had the most alumni donations. I believe football was very low (23%) and might have been last. The olympic sports' percentages of alumni giving were very high.

So, for those people whose bottom line is "what does the college get out of it", perhaps the answer is they get more money than they spend. (Not to mention all the other "touchy-feely" good things the kids and the school get out of championship teams). I, for one, am pleased and proud of every track, cross country, swimming, tennis, gymnastics, soccer, etc, championship.

This argument gets posted repeatedly on this board by the same few people and is the biggest load of crap. I applaud any contributions to the school these individuals make, but to say that it's a net gain to the school to spend all that money because 12 individuals might have slightly higher chances of donating in the future is absurd. Any halfway intelligent business student could point out how that is a terrible investment strategy.

And again - my argument isn't about these kids on the team - I have no doubt they get a lot out of the program and represent the school very well. Kudos to them and that's a great thing. But there are dozens of dozens of activities our students do that they get a lot out of (and in which many, many more than 12 kids are involved), and I fail to see how golf is any different or more important than any of them.

And then, gee, I was under the impression that we gave academic scholarships because... that's kind of the entire point and mission of WM? As you know... a school where we seek to attract and educate the best students? I fully understand how fundraising concerns impact that mission, but to suggest we give academic scholarships because primarily students might donate in the future is disingenuous at best (although after considering this post further I'm more suspecting it's merely a polemic, so I'm sure I'm taking the bait by responding).

(10-10-2017 12:26 PM)nj alum Wrote:  I cringe every time a poster wants to cut a varsity sport. Playing right into the hands of those academic weenies who hate college sports.

Purdue is a Big Ten school. W&M is a CAA school. The schools are apparently tied in a recent academic metric / rating.

W&M has more varsity sports than Purdue.

Yet, two of the sports that Pudue does have are men's and women's golf. In fact, Purdue owns two golf courses.

Posters here want to cut a sport deemed valuable by an institution like Purdue? Posters here want to cut a sport in which there are a plethora of good local courses, and favorable golf weather?

IMO, you can't start picking and choosing which sport goes to the right line and which sport goes to the left line because, once you start, both lines will end up in the same place, and that is not a pretty place to be.

This post literally makes no sense. We should have college golf because Purdue does? Huh?

Also I'm pretty sure that any "academic weenies who hate college sports" aren't part of the .001% of WM alums who love Tribe sports enough to post on a message board about it. I'm not suggesting we cut sports to put more money into academics (although I would have no problem whatsoever with that if we or any school did) -- I'm suggesting we cut them so we can instead fund and have an actually competent basketball program that competes at the level of our peers and doesn't have to rely on getting lucky with an excellent coach who for some reason has stayed for over a decade despite the fact that he's been given embarrassingly few resources to work with. Make the tourney once, and we'd be far better off than with 100 years of a golf team, from alumni giving to fan support to free advertising, etc.

You're wrong.

All that W&M has to do is to say to the donors that 100% of your hoops donation will go to hoops, and zero of the general budget dollars will be taken from hoops.

That will have a bigger impact than cutting golf.

I have news for you. You cut golf, and those golf funds aren't going to hoops.

So, lay off the golf team, and put your energy into changing the "bait and switch" way the AD funds Tribe sports.

(10-10-2017 12:26 PM)nj alum Wrote:  I cringe every time a poster wants to cut a varsity sport. Playing right into the hands of those academic weenies who hate college sports.

Purdue is a Big Ten school. W&M is a CAA school. The schools are apparently tied in a recent academic metric / rating.

W&M has more varsity sports than Purdue.

Yet, two of the sports that Pudue does have are men's and women's golf. In fact, Purdue owns two golf courses.

Posters here want to cut a sport deemed valuable by an institution like Purdue? Posters here want to cut a sport in which there are a plethora of good local courses, and favorable golf weather?

IMO, you can't start picking and choosing which sport goes to the right line and which sport goes to the left line because, once you start, both lines will end up in the same place, and that is not a pretty place to be.

OK what's up with you and Purdue? I don't think you're wrong here but you seem to mention Purdue a lot...

Son graduated from there. To succeed in Big Ten athletics, they have to overachieve. One of top engineering universities in the world. Mitch Daniels, the President, has frozen tuition for several years in row. They just bought on on-line school, and will make it part of the University. They start each football game with "I am an American" and they have the All-American marching band. No grade inflation. State school. Quarterback, astronaut, and hoops tradition.

This is Purdue's first year with permanent lights. They still play on grass.

While there are a lot of differences, there are a lot of similarities. Purdue is ahead of W&M in certain areas, and the converse is true as well.

In some respects, they both face the same athletics challenges, albeit on a different scale.

I would never use TOSU Buckeyes as a comparison (wife's school), but Purdue is a good comparison school.

BTW, Purdue does have diving boards / platform, and has nurtured Olympic divers. Glad to see that the new AD appears to be thinking along the same lines for W&M.

(10-10-2017 12:39 PM)Tribe2011 Wrote:  I have no doubt they get a lot out of the program and represent the school very well.

but to suggest we give academic scholarships because primarily students might donate in the future is disingenuous at best (although after considering this post further I'm more suspecting it's merely a polemic, so I'm sure I'm taking the bait by responding).

Re the first sentence above: thanks, you just made my argument for me.

Re the second section: congratulations, you used two big words in one paragraph. However, you misused disingenuous. Generally, that means saying one thing while actually meaning another, in order to confuse or hide the true situation. So I wonder what part of what I wrote you consider a smoke screen for what I really meant.

Re polemic: I had to look that up. The definition that seems to apply to how you mean it is "The art or practice of argumentation or controversy". So I submit that you actually did that when you posted your "why do we have golf" post, knowing that it would get responses. By the way, which I think was obvious to most readers, I responded in the vein of defending expenditures on olympic sports as an economic investment since your post was all about economics and not wasting money on sports. The real reason for keeping such sports is that they add value in many ways that have absolutely nothing to do with money.

Lastly, if you truly want a school that carries only one major sport (basketball) at the expense of all others, then transfer your allegiance to VCU.

(10-10-2017 01:08 PM)nj alum Wrote:  You're wrong.

All that W&M has to do is to say to the donors that 100% of your hoops donation will go to hoops, and zero of the general budget dollars will be taken from hoops.

That will have a bigger impact than cutting golf.

I have news for you. You cut golf, and those golf funds aren't going to hoops.

So, lay off the golf team, and put your energy into changing the "bait and switch" way the AD funds Tribe sports.

Completely agree with you on this point. This is more a desire for an idealized athletic model for WM. No point whatsoever in cutting golf only to see that funding subsumed into swimming and volleyball or something. And I fully recognize that reforms like cutting sports like golf are never going to happen regardless, so this is an entirely hypothetical discussion (but that is essentially what message boards are for at the end of the day).

(10-10-2017 03:31 PM)Zorch Wrote:  [quote='Tribe2011' pid='14662659' dateline='1507657141']
Lastly, if you truly want a school that carries only one major sport (basketball) at the expense of all others, then transfer your allegiance to VCU.

Yes, exactly. The VCU model [with football in addition to basketball] is perfect for WM and best serves the school. A highly competitive basketball program (in a sustainable manner) would pay enormous dividends for us across the board.

(10-10-2017 04:27 PM)Tribe2011 Wrote:  

(10-10-2017 03:31 PM)Zorch Wrote:  [quote='Tribe2011' pid='14662659' dateline='1507657141']
Lastly, if you truly want a school that carries only one major sport (basketball) at the expense of all others, then transfer your allegiance to VCU.

Yes, exactly. The VCU model [with football in addition to basketball] is perfect for WM and best serves the school. A highly competitive basketball program (in a sustainable manner) would pay enormous dividends for us across the board.

Honestly, I hate the VCU model. I believe at some point the "liberal arts" mission of the school should extend to it's athletic offerings. I'm not suggesting we offer every single NCAA sanctioned sport but I am definitely on the side of "more sports" even if it isn't the soundest fiscal decision.