ADVERTISEMENT

Colleges are cutting sports.

CardX

Five-Star Poster
May 29, 2001
23,458
4,981
26
502
Bowling Green University just eliminated baseball. Old Dominion axed wrestling. FIU dumped track. UC's soccer program is no more. And Akron dumped cross country, golf, and women's tennis. More to follow, I'm sure.
 
I'll wager all of those schools were losing money on sports BEFORE the pandemic...
 
The majority of schools are losing money on sports. You should have statistics on that.

GO CARDS - BEAT EVERYBODY!!! God Bless America!!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: PHCARD
The majority of schools are losing money on sports. You should have statistics on that...
Legit accounting stats I do not have nationally.

The ranking we commonly see is in USA Today, and three of the four schools in the OP were losing money on their list in FY2018. Bowling Green made $280K on $25 million in revenue.

LINK

This reference does NOT show that most programs lose money. It shows that >60% break even or make money. However, the NCAA reports that member institutions LOSE $8 billion annually on athletics.

So I believe your "majority of schools" statement to be true. However, on a list where most schools make money, most of the schools in the OP lose money. If legit GAAP accounting was involved, all four would probably lose money.

I make this argument because of the purpose behind many of these posts. "Look how bad they're doing" or "we haven't cut sports" comparisons are usually feel-good comments about yourself or an attempt to disguise your own performance. Not to mention, comparing yourself to athletics lightweights like Old Dominion and Florida International would be setting a low bar based on ANY data...
 
Sad for the athletes. Hope they can land somewhere and then these schools eventually bring those sports back.
 
ECU just eliminated some sports teams. Men's & women's swimming, diving, and men's and women's tennis.
 
Poetic justice for the phantom fair catch....

Yep, payback is a bitch. I’ve been waiting for the payback for a long time. That happened during the Krag years.

GO CARDS - BEAT EVERYBODY!!! May God Bless America!!!
 
UConn and these other schools were already "bush league"...
 
I think we're going to see a number of schools never open again at all. And even more programs will disappear. These programs and schools may have eventually folded over time but I think the pandemic will accelerate the process.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mayoman
Stanford with massive cuts today. Their athletic dept. is top to bottom one of the best in the country. They've won 25 straight Learfield Cups. Them announcing 11 varsity sports getting cut is huge.
 
Stanford with massive cuts today. Their athletic dept. is top to bottom one of the best in the country. They've won 25 straight Learfield Cups. Them announcing 11 varsity sports getting cut is huge.

Men’s Volleyball is a surprise. Isn’t Stanford a powerhouse in MV? The others were Squash, Sailing, Wresting, M & W Fencing, Synchronized Swimming, rowing, and lightweight rowing. Not exactly sports you see on TV in non Olympic years.
 
I guess now would be a good time for all the parents to pool their money together and bail their respective programs out. At least the ones who think that a scholarship and room & board was not enough for their kids.
 
Vanderbilt did away with its entire Sports Information Dept and they have “$EC money”.

Yeah, but their revenue from ticket sales totally sucks. If not for the $ec money they’d be totally broke.

GO CARDS - BEAT EVERYBODY!!! May God Bless America!!!
 
Yeah, but their revenue from ticket sales totally sucks. If not for the $ec money they’d be totally broke.

GO CARDS - BEAT EVERYBODY!!! May God Bless America!!!

Vandy’s endowment is somewhere around $6.5 billion. FWIW.
 
Vandy’s endowment is somewhere around $6.5 billion. FWIW.

Yes, I understand that, but I was under the opinion that those funds were for academic pursuits. But a private school can do what they will with whatever funding that is available to them, i.e., the Vandy baseball program.

GO CARDS - BEAT EVERYBODY!!! May God Bless America!!!
 
Now that football revenue is gone or reduced, we'll probably see lots of other sports programs cut by their schools. It will be interesting to see how this impacts Title IX (women's sports). Football is usually the major source of income for most athletic departments (but certainly not all -- many lose money even with football). But funny how you don't hear much now from the annual parade of liberal professors who constantly bash or seek to eliminate football when it might result in the elimination of their preferred women's sports. It's a shame all around and I'm definitely not celebrating any of this but there is a certain hypocrisy that comes to light when real-world finances are crunched.BTW, this will probably hurt more men's sports programs since football consumes so many scholarships; But reductions are reductions and women's sports programs will be on the cutting block too.
 
“ But funny how you don't hear much now from the annual parade of liberal professors who constantly bash or seek to eliminate football when it might result in the elimination of their preferred women's sports. It's a shame all around and I'm definitely not celebrating any of this but there is a certain hypocrisy that comes to light when real-world finances are crunched.”

Yes, some professors and others think sports are over-emphasized at universities. Frankly this COVID situation probably proves them correct as too much of budgets are predicated on athletics, specifically football.
 
I guess now would be a good time for all the parents to pool their money together and bail their respective programs out. At least the ones who think that a scholarship and room & board was not enough for their kids.

We could cut the salaries from the revenue sports HC salaries and keep a lot of teams running.
 
ADVERTISEMENT