ANOTHER XC Team About to be Cut

Signed. Good luck!

It seems obvious - the solid clear reason is money.

I'm surprised that non revenue programs that require coaching and travel/equipment budgets exist given the cost of education. Coaches aren't cheap, the coach at my uni made ~100k and retired with a pension. He taught for awhile long before my time, so I assume his salary is higher than the norm at a small d3 school. That said even 40k seems like a lot for a coach at a small school outside the national spotlight. I'm surprised these types of schools don't follow the highschool model - finding teachers who like xc/t&f and providing a small stipend for coaching.

Non athlete students should not be financially supplementing athletics, most already have more debt than they can handle. School is for education, running is for fun/sport and in the current economic environment it should be up to individuals and alumni to finance special interests outside of education.

Just my opinion, flame away. . .

*note - I think it is quite lame to target distance running, as the overhead is relatively low compared to sports with bigger teams, facilities, coaching, and equipment budgets.

Until coaches can demonstrate the value of the sport to their ADs through revenue or other means (gpa, service, public involvement, etc) and until all you alumni step up and donate to your alma mater or just favorite team, these programs will continually be cut.

Wake up and solve the problem BEFORE yours is cut too.

Sorry MB coach... But I have to agree with the above post. There are many local HS coaches (not mention the Hartnell coach) that does a better much better job. Small schools like this could give out a HS-ish stipend with better coaching and be fine.

The coach there is a joke. Had a girl that was already accepted and planning on attending. Wanted to see if she could walk on. He told her she had to run under 5:12 if she wanted to run for them. Sub 5 and she would get some help.

Cool if you want to have those standards but I know how to use the Internet. I know you have mostly 26-27 min 6k girls. I know my HS team is faster than your college team. Why not be welcoming and at least invite them to try out? Instead she went to another school and would have been their #2 runner.

I'm guessing this kind of attitude didn't help when decisions had to be made on what to cut.

Sausage King...don't take this as a flame, but I think you are looking at it the wrong way. "Non revenue programs" (more on that in a minute) can be a net positive, in a dollars and cents way, to a college, if the focus is on how they contribute towards admissions rather than just looking at how much they cost to run. And that's no different for an XC team as it is for a jazz band or an academic department that includes "Creative Writing" as a major (just to pick out one on the list of CSUMB's list of majors that seems potentially less academically rigorous). Colleges offer differ programs, academic and non-academic, in order to attract students. CSUMB looks like it costs around $14K/year for the lowest tuition + R&B + fees. I have no idea what their average discount rate is, but let's say it's 25%, that means the average student pays $10,500 to attend. If XC, or any other program, can bring in students that pay more than the average rate then the college benefits financially from those students attending. The ultimate plus for a college is if the students a program brings in pay additional revenues above the average cost of attendance that exceed the cost to run the program. I have no idea if CSUMB's Men's XC program does that.

Here's an example I know of...Private college, list price ~$48K, average discount rate of $22K. Team of ~16, with average discount rate of only $9K. That's over $200K in additional revenue that college brings in over their typical student by having that team - and that doesn't even count students who come to that college, try out, and get cut from that team. Coaching salaries, team travel, team budget is in the $115K range. Easy math, that school is almost $100K to the good because they have that team. (My figures are a few years out of date and I'm ignoring the fund raising side of the game.)

I agree with you that "school is for education", but unless you're going to cut all co-curriculars and any academic programs beyond the essential core academic programs then the fact is that colleges should do things to attract students to their campus, Men's XC teams included in that mix.

Oh, and "non revenue programs"...the number of athletic teams in all the colleges across the country that are what we'd traditionally think of as "revenue generating" are few and far between. I think I read last fall that maybe 20 college football teams actually make money. College basketball, perhaps a few more teams since they have less roster spots (i.e. less scholarships). In total you have somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,000 college teams, I can't believe more than a couple hundred would be in the black on a traditional income statement.

Another team nobody knows or cares about is getting cut. The lack of people caring on a site like this should speak to the root of our problem. Until we learn to market and promote our product we will continue to see programs cut. Asking for help by way of donations doesn't fix anything. We need to be taught to fish, not fed for a day.

It's kind of hard to take them serious when that slap d*ck is wearing a bright green hat right before the race. What a joke. Maybe they should have taken their sport a bit more serious.

Sad day. I expect this is the future for men's college xc at many schools. At my big state school you had to be insanely developed as a runner to even get near the men's team workouts. Meanwhile the women's team encourages and welcomes any woman with moderate talent. The fact that men's sports are substantially more competitive at all levels (and always will be) and that men are more biologically inclined to sports apparently plays no role in title 9's "equality." Not to mention the fact that most men are much later to develop than women. If you didn't train like a junior Olympian when you were in high school or if you were a late bloomer then you can simply say goodbye to ever running in college for a big name state school as a guy. Couple all this "equality" with the reality that xc is at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of revenue generation and it becomes clear that most state schools still have xc programs in order to avoid the inevitable backlash they would get by outright cutting them. Clearly UMB doesn't care so much about that. Over the next decade expect many if not most programs to gradually reduce funding/spots under the constant pressure of corporate AD'S and Title 9 as Men's xc is sadly the first logical target.

The CSU system is terrible. How many CSU athletes GRADUATE in 4 years? It's impossible to graduate from the CSU system in 4 years.

Schools should spend their money getting kids to graduate in 4 years instead of wasting it on part time coaches with part time results.

Monterey Local wrote:

The coach there is a joke. Had a girl that was already accepted and planning on attending. Wanted to see if she could walk on. He told her she had to run under 5:12 if she wanted to run for them. Sub 5 and she would get some help.

Cool if you want to have those standards but I know how to use the Internet. I know you have mostly 26-27 min 6k girls. I know my HS team is faster than your college team. Why not be welcoming and at least invite them to try out? Instead she went to another school and would have been their #2 runner.

.

Yeah, I really don't get this guy. I live in the area and have a good friend that was looking to walk on the team because he just transferred. He never ran in high school and is older now, like 26-27, and has done pretty well in ultra-marathon distances. He's also got crazy speed, like a 53 400 in a workout, as well as a 4:35 1600 off of literally no training beyond his ultra training and just being in generally good shape.

But the guy won't accept him! I mean it's not like the coach has a team as it is, like they struggle to get seven guys every season, he's not in a position to turn down runners. He has to try and develop runners and get lucky as well as have good coaching. I can't imagine that he was a great spokesperson around the table for the sport, and when the Athletic director has to cut a team for funding, I would cut the team that doesn't have a legit coach or really a team to match either.

Can't blame anybody but the coach honestly. Just thought it was funny that he's known by other people for having set unrealistically high expectations for what he has to work with.

I'm sad to even see anything about my team posted on this joke of a 'runner' website. What does wearing a green hat have to do with work ethic. Running is about passion for the sport and filled with goofy runner guys. If wearing a hat correlates with my love for my program and sport then I think a lot of basketball bros wearing bright colored shoes and tights hate their sport too. Good call though man, it's good to see a fellow runner and most likely fellow ccaa runner backing up another. It's totally wrong to have fun doing what I love.

Thanks everyone else for the support.