(05-27-2020 11:27 AM)Buc66 Wrote:  

(05-27-2020 05:44 AM)Efan Wrote:  

(05-27-2020 04:05 AM)MercerFan Wrote:  

(05-26-2020 05:28 PM)ncrrt08 Wrote:  App State cutting men’s soccer, men’s indoor track and men’s tennis....

https://www.journalnow.com/sports/colleg...1a839.html

They can't possibly tell us that cutting indoor track saves any amount of money. A blip on the radar within the budget. Tennis? Another blip. Soccer? A minor bump but nothing much. I personally think this is a dream scenario for many college presidents. Most are anti-athletics and this is the perfect cover to start wiping out athletic programs. Academic types that want to funnel money to an art program instead of football. They can't eliminate big sports overnight like football or basketball, but they can chip away at the smaller sports and overall scholarship numbers (see Furman). What Furman did was outrageous and just might cripple them out of Division 1 in the long run. Taking out baseball was a big flex from the academic side of Furman. Especially when they said in the Q&A that no donor would be allowed to save it. They want it dead.

Exact same scenario played out at ETSU back in 2003 with football. They didn’t want to entertain anyone saving it either. There are a lot of hidden agendas in some of these moves. ETSU is way better off now than we were in 2003 though.

We’ve been there, seen that, done that without a pandemic. It BACKFIRED then as NOBODY followed us by adopting the Stanton/Mullins model. So, now proceed with great caution and planning. Of course no one knows the final outcome of this crazy thing, but being back in the nice geographical footprint of the SoCon is a good place to be now.

I was a big follower of that saga just from being an ASUN fan when you joined (and student at the time!). What a great victory to return to the SoCon and bring back football. The current group of ASUN posters on this board seem to think that ETSU, UTC, and WCU might leave for the new ASUN football conference they are dreaming of.