(11-16-2020 11:43 AM)dbackjon Wrote:  If we are getting rid of the sports that more average student/athlete, what is the point of college athletics anymore?

Well said.

How many football and basketball players would get into the school if they weren't an athlete, or were maybe a soccer player?

The % is pretty small.

(11-16-2020 11:36 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(11-16-2020 10:03 AM)ccd494 Wrote:  There's a big part of me that feels like if P5/FBS football and basketball are money making, clearly there's a market for a private entity to take over and run them as actual professional leagues that provide compensation and security to the players without the amateurism fiction.

Consider that the amateurism fiction is a big part of the business model. Google up "Jerry Seinfeld Cheering For Laundry." The names on the back barely matter, the names on the front matter a lot.

If you move from the wink-wink "scholar-athlete" Ohio State Buckeyes to the mid-level professional Ohio Scarlet and Gray, you're liable to see ticket sales and TV revenues drop to XFL/AAF/Big 3 levels.

(11-16-2020 10:23 AM)jdgaucho Wrote:  What makes no sense is Clemson dropping men's cross country, indoor and outdoor track on one side of the spectrum, and Iowa and Minnesota dropping several sports - and on the other UC Santa Barbara breaking ground on a new tennis facility while cutting nothing.

We can't be better off financially than these P5 institutions, can we?

You guys got a big fat donation for a tennis center. Maybe you can talk to the donor about using that tennis complex as a multi-sport facility somehow, but you've gotta work that out with your billionaire.

https://www.noozhawk.com/article/john_an...ex_at_ucsb

Does Clemson not have any alums or donors willing to step up and save their sports?

A few points:

Many Olympic sports don't have student athletes in the strictest sense either. A decade ago when Auburn Swimming was at it's zenith when our swimmers placed on the Olympic team only a few were swimming for the U.S. We had swimmers swimming for many other countries. Arkansas Track and Field had many foreign nationals to appear in the Olympics for other countries and if you look around the nation you will find that the NCAA Olympic sports were functioning as a training facility for those our athletes would compete against.

I believe what you will see is a separation of revenue from non revenue sports and that most if not all of the coaches required for Olympic Sports (which with travel is the bulk of the overhead along with trainers and doctors) will be funded by Corporate Sponsorships like with many on the Olympic teams.

Right now those trimming this overhead are doing so to assist the continuation of revenue sports for national recognition of the brand of the school, but also are surreptitiously hoping to put pressure on the IOC in hopes of landing funding by corporate sponsorship.

We'll see.

(11-16-2020 01:22 PM)jdgaucho Wrote:  

(11-16-2020 11:36 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(11-16-2020 10:03 AM)ccd494 Wrote:  There's a big part of me that feels like if P5/FBS football and basketball are money making, clearly there's a market for a private entity to take over and run them as actual professional leagues that provide compensation and security to the players without the amateurism fiction.

Consider that the amateurism fiction is a big part of the business model. Google up "Jerry Seinfeld Cheering For Laundry." The names on the back barely matter, the names on the front matter a lot.

If you move from the wink-wink "scholar-athlete" Ohio State Buckeyes to the mid-level professional Ohio Scarlet and Gray, you're liable to see ticket sales and TV revenues drop to XFL/AAF/Big 3 levels.

(11-16-2020 10:23 AM)jdgaucho Wrote:  What makes no sense is Clemson dropping men's cross country, indoor and outdoor track on one side of the spectrum, and Iowa and Minnesota dropping several sports - and on the other UC Santa Barbara breaking ground on a new tennis facility while cutting nothing.

We can't be better off financially than these P5 institutions, can we?

You guys got a big fat donation for a tennis center. Maybe you can talk to the donor about using that tennis complex as a multi-sport facility somehow, but you've gotta work that out with your billionaire.

https://www.noozhawk.com/article/john_an...ex_at_ucsb

Does Clemson not have any alums or donors willing to step up and save their sports?

I think it's more that "John Arnhold, former chairman of the board of the International Tennis Hall of Fame" happens to be a UCSB alum.

Clemson's donors and alumni are tapped pretty hard to fund competitive football. If there's more juice in that orange, it's more likely to go to a wall of TV's and PS5's in the football center than to save three sports with one coach that, clearly, no one at Clemson cares much about.

Frankly, if it weren't for Title IX there would be a lot more sports getting the axe, and way fewer athletes getting scholarships. And how many soccer players would get scholarships if the NCAA didn't mandate how many sports a school had to sponsor?

(11-15-2020 11:13 AM)Native Georgian Wrote:  Timely and well-written article. Thanks for the link, BRB.

(11-15-2020 10:05 AM)Big Ron Buckeye Wrote:  The only psuedo-stupid question the article poses is why have no football and men's basketball of the revenue generating variety on the chopping block... Obvious retort, because they bring in revenue dumb-ass.

I read it differently. To me, the author wasn’t posing it as a question, but simply noted the difference.

The author's exact words were "while colleges in the NCAA's Division I have yet to cut a single team in revenue-generating sports like football and basketball."
Of Course Not!!! They are, by the author's own words, revenue generating. If they meant to point out the difference... is felt a little loaded. My argument stands that Title IX be damned, non-revenue sports don't exist without either massive student fees AND/OR profitable sports to subsidize them, and that a revenue producing sports has yet to be cut is the biggest Duh I've seen in a while.

(11-18-2020 10:45 PM)Big Ron Buckeye Wrote:  

(11-15-2020 11:13 AM)Native Georgian Wrote:  Timely and well-written article. Thanks for the link, BRB.

[quote='Big Ron Buckeye' pid='17097218' dateline='1605452743']The only psuedo-stupid question the article poses is why have no football and men's basketball of the revenue generating variety on the chopping block... Obvious retort, because they bring in revenue dumb-ass.

I read it differently. To me, the author wasn’t posing it as a question, but simply noted the difference.

The author's exact words were "while colleges in the NCAA's Division I have yet to cut a single team in revenue-generating sports like football and basketball."
Of Course Not!!! They are, by your own words, revenue generating. If you mean to contrast, this was a weak, ill-conceived, and obviously faulty line of argument. Title IX be damned, women's sports don't exist without either massive student fees OR profitable men's sports to subsidize them.

There is an argument to be made that if football and men's basketball abandons the amateur model and becomes pay for play that the root calculation for Title IX becomes moot. So by eliminating Olympic Sports (men and women's in equal numbers) the universities can cut a lot of overhead.

I know we have some attorney's here who seem to think that Title IX implications would remain. But if the nature of compensation changes from scholarship to salary I'm not so sure that is true and I think we would at least see it tested in the courts.

BTW: I strongly suspect that Olympic Sports remain but as with the IOC they become supported by Corporate Grants. So very many of those who participate in the NCAA in Olympic Sports are foreign nationals that we are training for other countries so that they can field Olympic Teams. I'm not sure these should be the burden of the taxpayers of the state schools they represent.

(11-18-2020 10:51 PM)JRsec Wrote:  There is an argument to be made that if football and men's basketball abandons the amateur model and becomes pay for play that the root calculation for Title IX becomes moot. So by eliminating Olympic Sports (men and women's in equal numbers) the universities can cut a lot of overhead.

I know we have some attorney's here who seem to think that Title IX implications would remain. But if the nature of compensation changes from scholarship to salary I'm not so sure that is true and I think we would at least see it tested in the courts.

BTW: I strongly suspect that Olympic Sports remain but as with the IOC they become supported by Corporate Grants. So very many of those who participate in the NCAA in Olympic Sports are foreign nationals that we are training for other countries so that they can field Olympic Teams. I'm not sure these should be the burden of the taxpayers of the state schools they represent.

I think Title IX has been proven it can be used as a legal cudgel in a pretty wide variety of circumstances on any kind of perceived gender bias. If Title IX can be used to create kangaroo courts for sexual assault on campuses and not allow non-revenue sports to be exempt from scholarship counts, there is no way it'll fly to pay the backup center on the football team while the all-conference midfielder on the women's soccer team doesn't even get a full ride.