Brown University, with a $4.2 billion endowment, cancels men's track and field and men's cross country

Not any more! Now its mind and body for women, mind and football for men!

I doubt promoting sailing to varsity status cost Brown any money... they have a nice boathouse and nice boats and won a varsity college championship as a club team last year btw

I mean mostly big state schools should go to a D3 model of no scholarships and only a very small admissions bump if any. Big D1 schools spend vast fortunes on sports and lower standards significantly.

Ivies are always a weird subset because they are private, have endless resources and can choose top students.

That said, 25% of Dartmouth's early decision class is recruited athletes. That's against the spirit of the Ivy League.

One of these sports is not like the others wrote:

Or maybe I'm underestimating their football team. Last year they did squeak out a win over powerhouse Bryant College and also beat Columbia, home of multiple record losing streaks.

I dont' think the argument should be based on the competitiveness of the teams in the Ivy League. Brown's men's xc/tracl program isn't very good. They xc team was 7th and the track team 8th.

I think the argument is simple - Track is a longstanding sport at Brown. It's an original Olympic sport. They aren't cancelling the women's team so you are already paying for the coaches and the facilities so you aren't saving that much money. I just wish someone had the guts to stand up to a judge on a title ix lawsuit.

I wonder if an argument can be made about the endowment for the head coach. I believe it's endowed at Brown. When was it created? When the endowment for the head coach was created, was it before women's track existed? Did the wording say for the "Men's track coach" or did it "Just say track coach." I imagine it was fairly recent but it would be hilarious if that was clawed back somehow.

rojo wrote:

wejo wrote:

Male athletes should mandate for title ix purposes you don’t count the same athlete three times.

I agree. Counting them three times is absurd. XC/Indoor/Outdoor should count as one sport for title IX purposes. There is a fall and spring golf season. Theydon't count the golfers twice, same thing for soccer, football, etc.

I don't think that would help much -- the same thing works to women, so if you get rid of double dipping it only helps if you didn't already have a women's team. Although it would make men's track/XC a less juicy target.

agip wrote:

That said, 25% of Dartmouth's early decision class is recruited athletes. That's against the spirit of the Ivy League.

How is it against the spirit of the Ivy League? The Ivy League is a sports league. You do get that the Ivies wouldn't have the huge marketing advantage they have without sports.

If someone wanst to make the argument the Ivies should go D3, I can understand that.

My two best friends in life had n o chance at Princeton if they weren't recruited athletes? Are they bums? No, one has written two books and the other speeches for hilary clinton.

bad day to be a beer wrote:

I doubt promoting sailing to varsity status cost Brown any money... they have a nice boathouse and nice boats and won a varsity college championship as a club team last year btw

I'm all for promoting top club teams to varsity status. Doubtless the club guys already trained like they were varsity athletes, but schools shouldn't cut a bunch of other teams to do it, especially ones that have been successful. If you want to cut a bottom of the conference team or two to elevate a top club team, fine, but not teams with a long history.

Endowed chair established for both Men's and Women's Teams in 2006

https://www.brown.edu/research/pembroke-center/sites/brown.edu.research.pembroke-center/files/uploads/2014%20Updated%20Women's%20Sports%20Timeline.pdf

CO Coach wrote:

Would the Ivy League allow Brown's men's team to compete at Heps as a club team?

I was going to say "not a chance," but I suppose there are two chances: Slim and None.

And Slim's leavin' town.

Kvothe wrote:

malmo wrote:

By "a few", what do you mean? I'm looking at my hand, how many fingers?

I knew one guy who liked watching sailing, thats it. I've never known anyone who wanted to watch equestrian. The consensus is that horse girls are really weird and most people tried to avoid them. When I was running in college a few students who weren't on the teams came to watch home meets, mostly friends or sos of team members, but every now and then there would be local high school teams that turned up to watch college meets even with no associated hs meet.

Everyone would watch sailing if this guy announced it:

The athletic departments at P5 universities fund themselves. They also bring in a large number of jobs to the university and fill hotels and restaurants and gas stations. The average GPA of the student body is lower than that of student athletes.

whitey loses wrote:

The average GPA of the student body is lower than that of student athletes.

This is almost always the case. Only when a school has just a handful of sports or you take a single sport (cough football, basketball, baseball) do you see anomalies.

You all acting like this is some new concept or something.

In times of financial difficulty (regardless of endowment, savings, etc) you cut things that are losing money or don't provide value.

In collegiate sports, almost every sport outside of major D-1 football and basketball loses money.

Do restaurants keep things on the menu that no one orders? Nope

Do companies keep around departments that aren't providing value or losing money? Nope

Any manager, AD, business owner, whomever will only put up with that sh*t for so long before they make cuts. It's been fun while it lasted.

College sports have really lost their way. Now it's all about the money and only competing in sports our school is good at. Can you imagine selling that to a school board for high school or middle school sports?

Rojo - when you coached at Cornell, how much of your budget came from the school and how much did you fundraise for?

I'm curious to know how much money this is actually saving Brown. If the school gives you 50k per year and you fundraise 75k, cutting the program actually results in less money.

Brown wrote that its initiative "is not a measure to reduce budget or an effort to contend with the financial impact of the pandemic."

rojo wrote:

I dont' think the argument should be based on the competitiveness of the teams in the Ivy League. Brown's men's xc/tracl program isn't very good. They xc team was 7th and the track team 8th.

I agree--the decision shouldn't be based on competitiveness.

But, track & field is one of the men's teams at Brown that HAS competed in the top half of the league in recent years. Not consistently, true, but 3rd as recently as 2018.

CO Coach wrote:

College sports have really lost their way. Now it's all about the money and only competing in sports our school is good at. Can you imagine selling that to a school board for high school or middle school sports?

It already happens at smaller high schools and private schools, just on a lesser scale. Fortunately the state can mandate sports at the public hs level and they aren't in the hands of some money grubbing administrator.

RI wrote:

rojo wrote:

I dont' think the argument should be based on the competitiveness of the teams in the Ivy League. Brown's men's xc/tracl program isn't very good. They xc team was 7th and the track team 8th.

I agree--the decision shouldn't be based on competitiveness.

But, track & field is one of the men's teams at Brown that HAS competed in the top half of the league in recent years. Not consistently, true, but 3rd as recently as 2018.

The IVY is usually competitive though. Ya, every now and then a team turns in to a dud when a nutso coach insists on all hard runs or all hard intervals, but for the most part every ivy track and xc team is regionally competitive and the best are nationally competitive. The bottom of the ivy league xc isn't a Boston College or Miami.