(10-23-2020 11:13 AM)Justanodufan Wrote: There is a very good chance that a D1 school that has 20,000 students would still fill those seats of “walk-ons”. So it’s not as if they can’t fill a spot of a wrestler who doesn’t go to their institution because they don’t offer wrestling (assuming that wrestler is D1 level talent).
Take a smaller D3 school that has an enrollment of 2000, it is likely that a D3 wrestler may in fact attend that school because it offers them a chance to wrestle.
I am not a fan of the argument of the school loses money if an Olympic sport is dropped because those students won’t go there anymore... Smaller institutions, it might be a factor, but larger schools, not so much
I'm not disputing that, but guess what, I can tell you with 100 percent certainty, all those out-of-state students who came to the school occupying space on Hampton Boulevard came to wrestle - and that's why ODU got their tuition dollars beyond the partial scholarship they were on. The ones who got academic rides, came because they got their school paid for in other ways and got to wrestle. Once that opportunity dried up, they left. Less than 10 athletes, to my knowledge, remain from the cut program. I'll be keeping a running tab on their performances next season (provided there is a season).
That out-of-state student's cost per credit is costs significantly more than the in-state non-athlete, but that's not anything you or I don't already know.
It's not just likely D3 athletes chose a school because of a sport, its closer to absolute certainty. There's an incredibly small portion of athletes at any level who pick a school, then decide they're considering competing in that sport.
Per dropping Olympic sports - At Michigan State, not an issue. Those seats get filled. Most Power 5's it's not an issue. At Stanford and W&M where there's a competitive process to get into the school, those seats will be filled and the school gets their tuition dollar no matter what.
Thing is, because there's no uniformity in how schools account for this (thus, why I feel "scholarship costs" is bogus), we have zero to compare. This pandemic has exposed how bad some schools are at actually budgeting.