Furman University in Greenville has cut their baseball program. This is a huge deal. In a state like South Carolina, so fertile for college baseball, this is a surprise. Kendall Rogers is reporting this.

Furman has played in 5 NCAA regionals, and plays Clemson and South Carolina almost every season.

Furman is also cutting their men’s lacrosse program.

http://twitter.com/KendallRogers/status/...4707399681

http://twitter.com/tyxanders/status/1262473117240381440

And their stadium is free ... they play in the minor league stadium in Greenville.

I hate to see schools shutting down or losing programs - both athletics and academics. That being said, I “like” the narrowing down of schools to work within their means. If Furman baseball takes the school past what it can reasonably afford, then it shouldn’t exist. Once it fits within the budget, bring it back. Whether or not baseball was the right cut for the school, I don’t know.

I'm surprised Furman cut their baseball program over their Men's soccer program. According to Equity in athletics, Men's Soccer costs the school 300k annually while Baseball only cost 188k. In terms of revenue, I'd assume baseball would be the more worthy investment. After Soccer, Men's Lacrosse was their second most expensive non-revenue sport.

Men’s soccer is one of Furman’s legacy programs. They’ve made the NCAAs 13 times. Clint Dempsey played there along with Ricardo Clark. So the entire soccer community in the US would have been angry if they had cut that.

(05-18-2020 02:52 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  And their stadium is free ... they play in the minor league stadium in Greenville.

Just select games. The majority of their home games were played at 2000 seat Latham Stadium on campus, and they rarely came close to filling it. They had recently spent some money renovating it though.

Perhaps the fact that they have only had two winning seasons in the past decade played a big part in this decision.

(05-18-2020 03:50 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  I'm surprised Furman cut their baseball program over their Men's soccer program. According to Equity in athletics, Men's Soccer costs the school 300k annually while Baseball only cost 188k.

Are those numbers believable?

At pretty much every D-I school, baseball costs significantly more than soccer, and baseball is one of the most expensive "non-revenue" sports to operate.

South Carolina-Upstate, for example, reported annual expenses of $115,237 for baseball and $38,843 for men's soccer.

Wofford reported annual expenses of $204,017 for baseball and $77,879 for men's soccer.

(05-18-2020 03:50 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  I'm surprised Furman cut their baseball program over their Men's soccer program. According to Equity in athletics, Men's Soccer costs the school 300k annually while Baseball only cost 188k. In terms of revenue, I'd assume baseball would be the more worthy investment. After Soccer, Men's Lacrosse was their second most expensive non-revenue sport.

Yeah, this is good baseball and lacrosse country.

Furman did sponsor 20 sports which was unusually high for a non-P5. Guessing this is Title IX.

They have cross-country, indoor T&F, outdoor T&F, golf, Tennis, basketball, soccer, football, women's volleyball, women's lacrosse and softball.

(05-18-2020 03:59 PM)sctvman Wrote:  Men’s soccer is one of Furman’s legacy programs. They’ve made the NCAAs 13 times. Clint Dempsey played there along with Ricardo Clark. So the entire soccer community in the US would have been angry if they had cut that.

Then it makes sense.

(05-18-2020 03:50 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  I'm surprised Furman cut their baseball program over their Men's soccer program. According to Equity in athletics, Men's Soccer costs the school 300k annually while Baseball only cost 188k. In terms of revenue, I'd assume baseball would be the more worthy investment. After Soccer, Men's Lacrosse was their second most expensive non-revenue sport.

Rumblings were already happening with Furman to cut sports. Their AD said in the announcement that despite having the third smallest enrollment in the SoCon that Furman fields 20 teams -- the most in the SoCon. If there is to be a major shift found first in college athletics from COVID it is the largess of non-revenue sports will be seriously curtailed. Why do you need to field 15 other teams to play Division 1 football, particularly when at best 13 of the other 15 will lose money forever and ever until the end of time no matter how good you are in them?

Furman is also very highly-priced. COA is $67K a year. With so few scholarships for baseball, it was hard for them to get in-state players to pay tuition. Furman only had 10 players from SC on the baseball team out of 35.

Their attendance was also very low. In 2019 if you took out the Clemson and South Carolina games at Fluor, they averaged around 360 fans a game. Furman has had trouble getting into the Greenville fanbase for years.

They just started playing a couple of basketball games at Bon Secours this year. For the game against Wofford they got like 6,000 or so into that 15,000 seat arena.

(05-18-2020 05:51 PM)sctvman Wrote:  Furman is also very highly-priced. COA is $67K a year. With so few scholarships for baseball, it was hard for them to get in-state players to pay tuition. Furman only had 10 players from SC on the baseball team out of 35.

Their attendance was also very low. In 2019 if you took out the Clemson and South Carolina games at Fluor, they averaged around 360 fans a game. Furman has had trouble getting into the Greenville fanbase for years.

They just started playing a couple of basketball games at Bon Secours this year. For the game against Wofford they got like 6,000 or so into that 15,000 seat arena.

Wofford is structurally behind Furman in every way other than football and basketball facilities. Their football stadium is nicer because of the Carolina Panthers training camp and their basketball arena is nicer because the former owner of the Panthers wrote a big fat check for it. Timmons Arena is by comparison shabby and one of the most bizarre layouts for a D1 basketball arena you'll ever see in your life.

If we are to play forward the clock on college sports in SC I think over time it would shake out something like this:

Big time football:
- Clemson
- South Carolina

Still relevant, probably can play for titles in most sports with Clemson and USC-East:
- Coastal Carolina
- USC Upstate
- College of Charleston

A division lower or in a separate athletic classification:
- Winthrop
- Furman
- Wofford
- The Citadel
- Charleston Southern

Not surviving:
- Presbyterian
- SC State

Furman is also cutting 45 athletic scholarships across the department (including these sports).

IMO, they should just drop to the minimum number of sports required for DI (they can still drop 2 more after this). If you're not going to fund the max number of scholarships for a sport you shouldn't even have that sport to begin with.

Furman has been in Division I pretty much since it started (as far back as the late 1930s). Wofford has only been D1 about 25 years. Outside of football and basketball, their facilities aren’t very good.

The SoCon will also be down to just seven schools in baseball (VMI, UNCG, WCU, Mercer, Citadel, ETSU, Wofford). As recently as 2013 it was an 11 school league in baseball.

GTS’s list is pretty spot on. Whenever it does split up (probably within a decade), maybe CSU gains some enrollment from being in the growing part of the Charleston market. Maybe you flip Upstate and Winthrop because of Winthrop’s basketball program.

But the football fan bases of the SoCon SC schools are slowly dying. Furman didn’t have a game fill half of their 16K stadium last year. Wofford had 6,500 for the football game against Furman last year at their 13K stadium, while Citadel cut their stadium from 21K to 11K.

Still weird GA has only 5 D1 schools with more than double the population while SC has 12.

(05-18-2020 07:34 PM)sctvman Wrote:  Furman has been in Division I pretty much since it started (as far back as the late 1930s). Wofford has only been D1 about 25 years. Outside of football and basketball, their facilities aren’t very good.

The SoCon will also be down to just seven schools in baseball (VMI, UNCG, WCU, Mercer, Citadel, ETSU, Wofford). As recently as 2013 it was an 11 school league in baseball.

GTS’s list is pretty spot on. Whenever it does split up (probably within a decade), maybe CSU gains some enrollment from being in the growing part of the Charleston market. Maybe you flip Upstate and Winthrop because of Winthrop’s basketball program.

But the football fan bases of the SoCon SC schools are slowly dying. Furman didn’t have a game fill half of their 16K stadium last year. Wofford had 6,500 for the football game against Furman last year at their 13K stadium, while Citadel cut their stadium from 21K to 11K.

Still weird GA has only 5 D1 schools with more than double the population while SC has 12.

6. You are forgetting either Mercer or Kennesaw (or are you just talking football?).
Most of the Georgia schools are small. Until the recent mergers there were, I believe, 34 state colleges. And only Mercer among the privates is Division I.

(05-18-2020 06:50 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  Furman is also cutting 45 athletic scholarships across the department (including these sports).

IMO, they should just drop to the minimum number of sports required for DI (they can still drop 2 more after this). If you're not going to fund the max number of scholarships for a sport you shouldn't even have that sport to begin with.

That would likely include dropping several women's sports also. At least one of volleyball, soccer, softball and lacrosse. The Title IX folks will have a field day.

(05-18-2020 07:55 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(05-18-2020 07:34 PM)sctvman Wrote:  Furman has been in Division I pretty much since it started (as far back as the late 1930s). Wofford has only been D1 about 25 years. Outside of football and basketball, their facilities aren’t very good.

The SoCon will also be down to just seven schools in baseball (VMI, UNCG, WCU, Mercer, Citadel, ETSU, Wofford). As recently as 2013 it was an 11 school league in baseball.

GTS’s list is pretty spot on. Whenever it does split up (probably within a decade), maybe CSU gains some enrollment from being in the growing part of the Charleston market. Maybe you flip Upstate and Winthrop because of Winthrop’s basketball program.

But the football fan bases of the SoCon SC schools are slowly dying. Furman didn’t have a game fill half of their 16K stadium last year. Wofford had 6,500 for the football game against Furman last year at their 13K stadium, while Citadel cut their stadium from 21K to 11K.

Still weird GA has only 5 D1 schools with more than double the population while SC has 12.

6. You are forgetting either Mercer or Kennesaw (or are you just talking football?).
Most of the Georgia schools are small. Until the recent mergers there were, I believe, 34 state colleges. And only Mercer among the privates is Division I.

Savannah State was FCS but dropped down to DII before this past season. It’s weird though as Mercer and Kennesaw are both relatively new programs (heck, so is Georgia State), and Southern only moved up in the past decade to FBS.

(05-18-2020 06:50 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  Furman is also cutting 45 athletic scholarships across the department (including these sports).

IMO, they should just drop to the minimum number of sports required for DI (they can still drop 2 more after this).

The D1 minimums in the FCS is minimum is 7 men, 7 women, 2 team sports each (By-law 20.9.10.1 -- M/W 7/7 or 6/8). This is the same as the overall Division 1 minimum By-law 20.9.6.

It's FBS that has a 16 sport requirement.

So it seems like Furman could drop four more ... but they don't have free reign on what they drop, since they still have to meet the three season sports requirement in both men and women to be Division 1.

Quote: If you're not going to fund the max number of scholarships for a sport you shouldn't even have that sport to begin with.

There are already minimum scholarship requirements in Division 1 ... converting the ceiling on scholarships into a required number of scholarships doesn't seem like it has much justification. It would be a massive increase in required FTE scholarship spending in most of the men's team sports other than FB and BBall in most D1 programs around the country at exactly a time when funds will be unusually tight.

___________________

(05-18-2020 08:10 PM)jdgaucho Wrote:  

(05-18-2020 06:50 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  Furman is also cutting 45 athletic scholarships across the department (including these sports).

IMO, they should just drop to the minimum number of sports required for DI (they can still drop 2 more after this). If you're not going to fund the max number of scholarships for a sport you shouldn't even have that sport to begin with.

That would likely include dropping several women's sports also. At least one of volleyball, soccer, softball and lacrosse. The Title IX folks will have a field day.

If they wanted to keep FCS football, it would probably be a 6 men sport / 8 women sport program, to be able to meet Title IX. Men Basketball, Football, Soccer, & Track (cross country, indoor, outdoor), Women Basketball, Soccer, Lacrosse, Volleyball, Softball & Track.

Depending on golf and tennis coaches salaries and travel costs, the savings might be more of an accounting fiction than real savings ... a quarter ride scholarship to play golf or tennis at Furman likely brings in tuition to Furman which exceeds the cost to Furman of an additional enrollment, but is counted in the official statistics as costing Furman a net quarter of a full time tuition.

Drop FCS football, they could probably get some real savings: M/W Basketball, Soccer, Track (x3), golf, tennis to get to the minimums, plus women's lacrosse for the Northeastern enrollment profile reasons they have it, they save some cash money on softball and volleyball team travel.

(05-18-2020 04:27 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(05-18-2020 03:50 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  I'm surprised Furman cut their baseball program over their Men's soccer program. According to Equity in athletics, Men's Soccer costs the school 300k annually while Baseball only cost 188k.

Are those numbers believable?

At pretty much every D-I school, baseball costs significantly more than soccer, and baseball is one of the most expensive "non-revenue" sports to operate.

South Carolina-Upstate, for example, reported annual expenses of $115,237 for baseball and $38,843 for men's soccer.

Wofford reported annual expenses of $204,017 for baseball and $77,879 for men's soccer.

No, those numbers are not correct. They are the numbers Furman reported for "operating (game day) expenses", not the cost of the program. For example, the numbers reported for football are less than $600K, while elsewhere in that report total cost by sport lists over $6 million for their football team.

(05-18-2020 05:51 PM)sctvman Wrote:  Furman is also very highly-priced. COA is $67K a year. With so few scholarships for baseball, it was hard for them to get in-state players to pay tuition. Furman only had 10 players from SC on the baseball team out of 35.

Their attendance was also very low. In 2019 if you took out the Clemson and South Carolina games at Fluor, they averaged around 360 fans a game. Furman has had trouble getting into the Greenville fanbase for years.

They just started playing a couple of basketball games at Bon Secours this year. For the game against Wofford they got like 6,000 or so into that 15,000 seat arena.

That typically happens when you become a school of mostly out of state students and ignore where you are from.