Another one bites the dust, Delaware Men's Xc and Track cut

The Real Truth -

Muir is a coward. Title 9 isn't the scapegoat.

I'd like to know. Did Pearlman donate to the Track/XC team? Per his article there were no scholarships. Are there no successful Delaware Track/XC grads? I know plenty of friends that endow scholarships at their alma mater's.

Face facts. Football wins. We need to self-support our sport and we need to give back.

The thing is, it always looks like the football games are crowded because the parking lots, which are very big, are full before the games. The truth though, is it is mostly a bunch of drunk students who fill up the lots, and then don't bother watching the games. The school think these people care but they don't. The school is currently in an identity crisis. The academic heads of the school interprets the "Path to Prominence" as becoming more like what has been referred to as a Public Ivy League school - W&M, Virginia, etc.-, while the athletic heads of the school interprets the "Path to Prominence" as becoming more like Michigan or Penn State. There is no school in existence that embodies what both the athletic and academic sides of the University of Delaware envisions. They can be like Princeton and be academic leaders with a well rounded athletic department that exists to enrich the lives of the student athletes, or they can be like Michigan that is good academically yet its academics are greatly overshadowed by its image as a football powerhouse. Sorry to continue, but as mentioned many times before this post the possibility to turn into a Michigan doesn't really even exist. The A.D. gets all excited when the U of D has a good season, and they begin to think that they are dominating their conference and 1-AA so they deserve to move up because they are better than what they are currently competing in. And that is what makes the XC and Track teams being cut suck all the more because it was in order to to reach an impossible end: UD being a quality BCS team

There is one school that actually does embody both of the "Paths to Prominence" and that is Stanford.

Hem...Haw...mmmmm. Ok, I'll give you that, but don't try to slide anymore by me.

Take a look at the D1 Track and Field Championships. Who do you see? Texas A&M, Oregon, LSU, USC, Auburn...

Take a look at the D1 XC Championships. Oklahoma State, Oregon, Stanford, Alabama, Oklahoma...

Take a look at the final BCS standings, and who do you see? THE SAME SCHOOLS.

At REAL UNIVERSITIES, Football is a friend (where do you think some of the sprinters' scholarships come from, and who do you think helps the WR and CB improve their speed?) and a supporter. Much of the money for Track and Field at major programs comes from football.

People like Delaware are not real major league universities. They are mediocre losers with ego problems. They will NEVER be Stanford, Berkeley, Notre Dame, USC, UCLA, or Michigan on or off the field, and cutting sports like track and xc is not going to change that.

Mahopac Indians wrote:

The Real Truth -

Muir is a coward. Title 9 isn't the scapegoat.

I'd like to know. Did Pearlman donate to the Track/XC team? Per his article there were no scholarships. Are there no successful Delaware Track/XC grads? I know plenty of friends that endow scholarships at their alma mater's.

Face facts. Football wins. We need to self-support our sport and we need to give back.

I am fairly certain that if he were to donate it would go into the general athletic fund and not directly toward the track and XC programs. That’s how it works at most schools anyway. Your contention then is that Pearlman should donate to the very beast that destroyed the tf/XC.

I donate annually with 5 friends (including me) to a soccer scholarship at my d1 alma mater. It's a state school. Not huge dollars but it helps.

Former Hen wrote:

January 19, 2011

The members of the media know that it is athletic department policy that no student-athlete, coach or staff member should engage in interviews - either in person or by phone, text, or email - with a member of the news media unless it has been arranged by a member of the UD Athletics Media Relations staff. If you are contacted directly by a member of the news media, please instruct that reporter to contact the UD Athletics Media Relations Office first and they will arrangements will be made for him or her to visit with you, should that be your wish.

The only possible response to this seems: "Dear director Muir, you just told me that I'm no longer a student-athlete here, so I guess there's no need to go through the media office. Go **** yourself."

Also, as to the team becoming a club sport: is this really such a horrible outcome? Yes they'll have to pay for meets, and no more scholarships. But if you love running how hard is it to self-coach? I think you can get like 98% of the performance that you otherwise could just reading some books and experimenting.

I don't think any of the BCS institutions and other major D1 powerhouses will ever view UD as legitimate or a threat when the Big Tens, PACs, SECs of the world offer 30+ sports and the UD AD is a measly 8 male programs. Heck even the Big 10 thinks mockingly of 'little Northwestern' for not having MTF/XC.

At the end of the day UD is DI-AA and I ca't envision them anywhere on the scale of a UM in the near future unless they happen to come upon some wealthy booster with $$$ (ala Steve Knight UO).

Ron Swanson wrote:

I don't think any of the BCS institutions and other major D1 powerhouses will ever view UD as legitimate or a threat when the Big Tens, PACs, SECs of the world offer 30+ sports and the UD AD is a measly 8 male programs. Heck even the Big 10 thinks mockingly of 'little Northwestern' for not having MTF/XC.

At the end of the day UD is DI-AA and I ca't envision them anywhere on the scale of a UM in the near future unless they happen to come upon some wealthy booster with $$$ (ala Steve Knight UO).

haha Steve Knight haha

If you look at the number and quality of the xc meets we would be attending, it definitely does matter. It means entering in open races and having less competition. Also, it's not just about becoming a club, it's about the school disrespecting not only ourselves, but the sport that we all love. It's a pretty big low-blow. You don't think it's too bad until it happens to yourself.

i ran at the maryland invite today. i actually felt bad walking past the udel section of the bleachers.. they ran well today too. sad to see.

from a female perspective this sucks. The goal of Title IX is to allow women the opportunity to compete not to take this opportunity away from men.

Cutting men's sports not only fails to achieve equality; it also creates resentment toward women's sports.

At my school there was a situation where legitimately talented male runners were unable to compete, but every female who wanted to be on the team - even if she had never run 3 miles before - was given that opportunity.

When this happened, a sort of backlash occured toward the women's XC team as a whole. People just don't take the women's team seriously when there are 7-8 females of the caliber to run at the D-I level and 30 or so that are really just filling the roster. Allowing anyone on the team devalues the efforts of the women who worked hard to become D-I athletes on their merits.

Title IX was created to allow women an opportunity to compete in sports where this opportunity did not exist. When my mom was in school her only sports options were volleyball, cheerleading, & field hockey. That was it! Consequently, she did not start running until her 40s. Great opportunity missed. It is really neat to see how many girls run high school XC today and this is, in part, because of Title IX.

Still, cultural norms and what not, boys are more prone to compete in sports than girls are, so trying to force the college that is 63% female to have 63% of its athletes be female just doesn't make sense.

It makes me sad, and aggravated, that the enforcement of this law has gotten so far from the original intent. Imho, equality should never mean taking away opportunity from anyone.

Well said!

Don't forget men's lacrosse's 55 team members(nice roster management)... next step is drop women's indoor so keeler can have his indoor practice facility

Keeler already has use of the fieldhouse whenever he wants, he can and does kick out the indoor track team (and teams in the past) to use it in the winter. So does baseball and lacrosse for that matter.

A money wrote:

The academic heads of the school interprets the "Path to Prominence" as becoming more like what has been referred to as a Public Ivy League school - W&M, Virginia, etc.-, while the athletic heads of the school interprets the "Path to Prominence" as becoming more like Michigan or Penn State. There is no school in existence that embodies what both the athletic and academic sides of the University of Delaware envisions.

Absolutely not true, look at the top 5 public Universities (don't remember the exact order, but every year it is these 5):

Cal

UCLA

Michigan

UVA

UNC

UNC, Cal, and UCLA are always right at the top of the Director's Cup standings (tracking postseason success in all NCAA sports combined), and Michigan and UVA aren't exactly slouches athletically either.

Now whether Delaware has any shot at reaching that level is a different question, but yes those schools that excel academically and athletically do exist.

I promise you UD will never reach an equivalent to these large prominent schools. If they continue in the path they're going, their campus will look amazing but their reputation will be no better than your local community college.