(07-08-2020 02:41 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  

(07-08-2020 02:32 PM)YNot Wrote:  Men's volleyball is the biggest casualty. They were the runner-up in the national championship match last year and one of the best programs in the nation.

This was the biggest surprise. Wonder if we will see a "Save Volleyball" campaign

I’m surprised men’s volleyball is getting chopped also.
They do have a club team, so I guess the men’s vb club is going to be getting some good talent.
Seems like the club level sports may be getting even more talented and competitive as more schools trim sports.

(07-08-2020 02:14 PM)CardinalJim Wrote:  Don’t feel the least bit sorry for them. Stanford has been a member of the good lo’ boys club since 1918. They earned 31.1 million last year. Schools in the AAC just negotiated a contract that pays them 7.1 million a year.

If AAC schools and others can get by on less than a quarter of what Stanford makes, than it’s their own fault.

AAC Athletic Departments are heavily subsidized by their parent institutions. Many runs spending beyond income as large as MAC schools ($20M or so). Stanford also runs on donations 10x higher. They just refuse to transfer institutional money. And they are private, not public, so there would be no issue of redirection tax dollars for higher education to pay for athletics.

(07-08-2020 01:46 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Even after these cuts, Stanford will still have more varsity sports (25) than all but three FBS schools. Ohio State has 35, BC has 29, Cal has 28. And given the current state of college athletic finances, it's likely that at some point within the next few years, only Ohio State will have more than Stanford.

Many other schools are going to have trouble maintaining even the 16 varsity sports required to stay in FBS. When you look at real revenue -- ticket sales, donations, conference revenue, licensing and sponsorships -- there are about a dozen FBS athletic departments that were already bringing in less than $5 million/year before the pandemic started, and about 30 that were bringing in less than $10 million/year. Those athletic departments needed their university general funds to cover massive deficits every year. Those university general funds are now hurting badly, and good luck getting university presidents to cover even larger athletic deficits year after year from now on.

Notre Dame sponsors 26 varsity athletics programs (13 men, 13 women).

Stanford will now fall one behind ND.

My jaw drops on any west coast school shuttering volleyball. It’s to the west what lacrosse or ice hockey is to the east. It’s more popular and competitive out there.

(07-08-2020 03:34 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(07-08-2020 01:46 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Even after these cuts, Stanford will still have more varsity sports (25) than all but three FBS schools. Ohio State has 35, BC has 29, Cal has 28. And given the current state of college athletic finances, it's likely that at some point within the next few years, only Ohio State will have more than Stanford.

Many other schools are going to have trouble maintaining even the 16 varsity sports required to stay in FBS. When you look at real revenue -- ticket sales, donations, conference revenue, licensing and sponsorships -- there are about a dozen FBS athletic departments that were already bringing in less than $5 million/year before the pandemic started, and about 30 that were bringing in less than $10 million/year. Those athletic departments needed their university general funds to cover massive deficits every year. Those university general funds are now hurting badly, and good luck getting university presidents to cover even larger athletic deficits year after year from now on.

Notre Dame sponsors 26 varsity athletics programs (13 men, 13 women).

Stanford will now fall one behind ND.

Different lists appear to be counting varsity sports in different ways. The one I got those numbers from has Cal at 28 varsity sports, but the Cal athletic department says it's 31.

I would guess that Notre Dame, like Ohio State, has more than enough money, especially in donations, that they could keep all those sports even if there's a big revenue shortfall for 2020-21.

Well, the athletic department's "Sugar Daddy", John Arrillaga made his most recent $55M donation in February not to athletics, but to the medical school to reduce medical student debt.
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020...t-stanford


They may have been told about this as soon as the pandemic hit.

The Capital One Cup Club gets further thinned out.

Maryland couldn't afford it a decade ago.
Stanford can't afford it now.

UVA, UNC, Duke are up there at 27. UCLA is 25. Michigan is 29. Ohio State clocks in at 37, king of the red ink no-names!

(07-08-2020 03:03 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(07-08-2020 02:32 PM)YNot Wrote:  Men's volleyball is the biggest casualty. They were the runner-up in the national championship match last year and one of the best programs in the nation.

Stanford wasn't in the NCAA men's volleyball tournament last year. Long Beach beat Hawai'i in the final.

Here's the bracket: https://www.ncaa.com/brackets/volleyball-men/nc/2019

Men's volleyball seems to be getting more and popular at DI, but that could be because DII accepted at the DI.

(07-08-2020 03:38 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  My jaw drops on any west coast school shuttering volleyball. It’s to the west what lacrosse or ice hockey is to the east. It’s more popular and competitive out there.

volleyball and wrestling had to go because they were cutting a bunch of obscure women's sports.

(07-08-2020 07:22 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(07-08-2020 03:38 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  My jaw drops on any west coast school shuttering volleyball. It’s to the west what lacrosse or ice hockey is to the east. It’s more popular and competitive out there.

volleyball and wrestling had to go because they were cutting a bunch of obscure women's sports.

It also makes the diversity of their scholarship allotment look much more in keeping with PC policies. Those are a lot of mostly white athletic scholarships.

Men's Volleyball.....wow! I mean that in a serious way. Volleyball is huge on the West Coast.

(07-08-2020 01:14 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  Stanford had tried to endow all athletic scholarships - and took pride in the minor sports to help win the Director's cup

This makes even more sense then.

In the aftermath of an effort to try to endow athletic scholarships ... some programs will have been successful, or largely successful, and others will have fallen well short.

The following announcement of the sports that didn't make the cut, well, that's just the dropping of the other show.

If there are some wealthy donors or some latent donor communities that can be activated, who simply were not paying attention when the first show dropped and the fund raising efforts for the endowed athletic scholarships were taking place ... then obviously, if they get off the stick and establish enough contingent Division 1 endowments for the sport, that sport will then get a reprieve.

It's very much a money talks, BS walks kind of system.

But the Covid19 emergency really does give an excellent time to for the administration to announce the entire slate of sports on the chopping block at once, without having to do the "these sports are presently planned to be cut, and further these other sports are under review" that might be used to phase the roll-out.

(07-08-2020 12:35 PM)Rube Dali Wrote:  

Stanford transitioning to Football-first school at alarming rate at this point.

There goes the Learfield Cup.

(07-08-2020 08:11 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(07-08-2020 01:14 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  Stanford had tried to endow all athletic scholarships - and took pride in the minor sports to help win the Director's cup

This makes even more sense then.

In the aftermath of an effort to try to endow athletic scholarships ... some programs will have been successful, or largely successful, and others will have fallen well short.

The following announcement of the sports that didn't make the cut, well, that's just the dropping of the other show.

If there are some wealthy donors or some latent donor communities that can be activated, who simply were not paying attention when the first show dropped and the fund raising efforts for the endowed athletic scholarships were taking place ... then obviously, if they get off the stick and establish enough contingent Division 1 endowments for the sport, that sport will then get a reprieve.

It's very much a money talks, BS walks kind of system.

But the Covid19 emergency really does give an excellent time to for the administration to announce the entire slate of sports on the chopping block at once, without having to do the "these sports are presently planned to be cut, and further these other sports are under review" that might be used to phase the roll-out.

Stanford has basically all of it's football costs endowed - 100% of scholarships, most of the coaching salaries, etc.

Even the men's and Women's head coaching salaries are fully endowed

https://gostanford.com/news/2018/2/2/men...dowed.aspx

(07-08-2020 04:24 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  The Capital One Cup Club gets further thinned out.

Maryland couldn't afford it a decade ago.
Stanford can't afford it now.

UVA, UNC, Duke are up there at 27. UCLA is 25. Michigan is 29. Ohio State clocks in at 37, king of the red ink no-names!

Carolina sponsors 28 sports.

Men's Volleyball cancelled at Stanford That's like Alabama cancelling football

Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks like Stanford was drawing about 300 fans to mens volleyball games. Doesn't really seem like it's something they cared that much about

(07-08-2020 01:00 PM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  Considering they had 36 varsity sports to begin with, not hugely shocking. However, all at once is a definite surprise. Once again, yet another example of an organization/institution using the COVID pandemic as a reason to make widespread cuts in costs that would have otherwise been met with substantial backlash.

I agree. This is an example of "not letting a crisis go to waste". As you say, they'd never admit it, but the Stanford brass knows they were carrying way too many sports to begin with, but the prospective flack from interest groups prohibited action.