SETON HALL - "THE HALL" cuts MEN'S and WOMEN'S INDOOR AND OUTDOOR TRACK

It won't "run dry," it'll just be better concentrated. What % of varsity runners continue after college now with serious intent to run their best? It already IS a "sport for funrunners," and the only thing that would change is that top runners would no longer have future funrunners for teammates in college.

Stanhope wrote:

So you want the pool for professional athletes in track and field to run dry?

ukathleticscoach wrote:

That's bad news you'd think they could restrict expenditure all round rather than wielding the axe

Would be interesting to know coming from UK how exactly the schools income is directly affected by the economy?

Anyone have an email for the school?

Umm.... ever heard of a search engine?

Tragic = sad. This doesn't affect that many people and all will go on to lead productive and fulfilling lives after this. It's just an extracurricular activity, not like they were curing cancer or solving third world hunger and got their funding canceled. Sport is what you do for fun, so don't be so weepy over something that in the rest of the world doesn't matter at all. People who think it's sad have been foolishly too attached to it.

try this one wrote:

Per Spec Tiv wrote:

Sad is children dying. Not this.

No, children dying is tragic, this is sad and affects alot of people.

This is awful.

Preventable, yes. The problem here is the school did even try to work with the coaches and figure out where budget cuts could be made to try to save the programs. They just axed the whole thing with no input from the men's and women's programs. To see such a great program cut without giving it a chance to save itself is such a waste.

Per Spec Tiv wrote:

Tragic = sad. This doesn't affect that many people and all will go on to lead productive and fulfilling lives after this. It's just an extracurricular activity, not like they were curing cancer or solving third world hunger and got their funding canceled. Sport is what you do for fun, so don't be so weepy over something that in the rest of the world doesn't matter at all. People who think it's sad have been foolishly too attached to it.

try this one wrote:

No, children dying is tragic, this is sad and affects alot of people.

dude, go on a letsbehumanitarians.com message board with this stuff. having a primo track school completely cut their program out of the blue sucks, regardless of your greater humanitarian worldview. people on a website dedicated to running are gonna be pretty bummed out, so why dont you let them talk about it without lecturing us on the moral implications of employing the word "sad"

Tigerfan wrote:

Hardly, you failed to notice that they also cut women's T&F, however cutting both track programs cuts 4 sports which takes them below the minimum required to remain Div 1. So they have to add one more sport, as mentioned above they already have men's golf so they can add women's golf for very little expenditure. This change has no Title IX effect, maybe the move could be challenged under Title IX though, it may be that the men are now under-represented regarding opportunities(6 sports vs 8, women have tennis and volleyball extra).

This is why they added women's golf. To stay DI. Cut an expensive sport with lots of people on the team, and add a cheap one with few participants. No Title IX issues, ya crazy conspiracy theorists. Money, plain and simple. I don't know about you guys, but there are only 8 people on the women's golf roster at my school.

The real question is, who do we direct our angry emails at?

Primo track school? Lose the east coast narcissism. It's been basically a club program on the national scene for a while now. They've had one or two decent sprinters and middle distance runners in the past decade and that's it. The decent runners could get scholarships elsewhere, like Providence or American or Virginia or BC or Iona, truly solid programs. I know people have attachment, but really culling the weak and the sick from the sport will only make it stronger overall. Don't be irrational and you'll come to understand that.

Yes, you are right, they do go to school for an education. But what is part of that educations? Well, according to the Greeks, which is what our college education is modeled after, includes not only the mind, but the body and spirit, too. MIND, BODY, SPIRIT. Get it?

They cut a program without even discussing it with a coach who has been successful there for 39 years! That sucks.

Lost opportunities in a sport that is already suffering.

Their basketball team has to loose more money than it makes. Maybe they should look at cutting that mess.

This point may have already been made, but didn't the article say the TandF money would be used to strenghten other athletic programs??

If this money is still being used for athletics, why not keep the track team?

Just don't make no sense.

Ray, I am not a Seton Hall insider. I doubt you are. Cutting a revenue-producing team that essentially ties the university to Big East revenue sharing sounds like an atrociously awful avenue to pursue. Especially, when it's the flagship sport for a campus and may in fact provide funding for the rest of the department.

If basketball were to be eliminated, it'd be a good indicator that they will cut all their Division One offerings. Perhaps not the worst decision if it's a real mess.

Certainly, they should evaluate every sport and the overall athetic program on its own merits. This situation surprises me more than most because football isn't in the equation and because they cut the women's teams. It's economics plain and simple with Women's golf an easy adder.

The answer is to raise funds from your track and field alumni and to get inside the boardroom where these decisions are being made. Again, while not privy, it astonishes me that a coach with this much tenure at a relatively small university could be blindsided. You must work with your athletic dept.

Does cutting the men's and women's track programs affect the university's diversity goals in any way? Are there diversity goals at Seton Hall?

Maybe you are, douchebag, but they aren't.

Douchebag Dave wrote:

Somewhere Bryan Spoonire, Andy Valmon, and Kevin Lyles are crying.

ray wrote:

Their basketball team has to loose

"lose"

more money than it makes.

Thomas wrote:

No this is not sad. These runners go to Seton Hall for an education. That is the point of going to school. Is it a bummer that they will no longer compete, yes. If they want to compete go to another school.

How the f*** are they supposed to go to a different school if every school is trying to save money by cutting track and cross country? This isn't just seton hall, this is an epidemic across the nations. Track and cross country are getting screwed over to save money, to equal the sexes, whatever. Football takes up a lot of resources, but even without that this is still happening, and hundreds of schools are losing scholarships and track programs. To say "Just go to a different school" is very naive. This is happening across the nation and good athletes are having to relocate. Some can't afford to, and others simply don't want to and lose sight of what they had. You can't blame them because these things are being taken right from under their feet. It is sad, and it makes me angry that this hasn't become an issue of larger concern. We struggle for equality in sports, and yet we allow runners to continually get screwed in favor of "the greater good"?? Why?

Right, he must have been willfully ignorant and/or unwilling to work with the athletic department and its processes for it to get to that point. I wonder how many of the people who are gnashing their teeth over this situation ever helped with getting significant financial contributions to the program. Or did they do nothing and now they wonder how something like this could happen and blame others for something that happened as a result of their own inaction?

Chaka wrote:

The way this was handled was horribly incompetent. So incompetent that pink slips should be issued.

And I can't help but notice that the department kept the predominately white cross country program and shed the rest. They just dramatically reduced opportunities for minority athletes and added golf?

Pathetic.

What, you don't think this affects the white cross country runners just as much? They didn't come there just to run cross country. Track is very important, and while they still have cross country, many of predominantly black sprinters have football or other sports. Don't make this into a race thing because there is no way that you can attribute the cut of track to be simply because there are black sprinters, that would be absurd.

Someone would have to show me how much revenue is generated by Seton Hall Basketball. I am not an insider, but I am aware that Jim Calhoun also brags about the revenue he brings into UCONN. Turns out it's not anywhere near what he claims. Not when you look at salaries, equipment, travel, everything associated with running their basketball complex, rental of HCC, scholarships, etc So if Seton Hall basketball is not nearly the program that the other Big East schools are, how much revenue is actually coming into the athletic department and used by other sports.