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

A 20% pay cut is of limited significance to university presidents, and many are taking them, because they are still making half a million, a million, or more. But to their former employees, who will be taking 100% pay cuts, they lose their livelihood. Yet, somehow the 20% pay cuts give them the freedom to make broad cuts. And you know that they will not be affecting bloated administrative budgets, just poorly paid coaches and adjuncts.

Also, poorly paid janitorial staff, etc.

Columbia and Cornell will follow within a month. Watch .

MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:

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.

The Ivy League sports have never been about money. There are 30+ sports in the Ivy League. Very different than what you are talking about.

wejo wrote:

Mind and body have always been important tenants of the Ivy League schools.

Tenets, dudebro.

Dear Alumni of Men’s Cross Country and Track & Field,

Brown is fortunate to have alumni who remain engaged in the life of the University and who support our student-athletes in meaningful ways. Because you have close ties to Brown Athletics as a former student-athlete, I wanted to reach out directly after Brown President Christina H. Paxson’s announcement to our community earlier today regarding changes to our varsity and club sports programs.

I hope you had a chance to read the president’s letter and Brown’s announcement of the Excellence in Brown Athletics Initiative, which is geared toward improving the competitiveness of varsity athletics, enhancing the strength of our club sports, and upholding our commitment to provide equal opportunities in athletics for women and men at Brown.

Brown has an administration that cares deeply about athletics and our student-athletes, and Brown is looking closely at its athletics program and thinking about excellence the same way the University upholds excellence in academics. This initiative arose from a deep and extensive assessment dating back more than a year — focused at all times on the value of balancing academics and the personal growth of our student-athletes through a commitment to excellence in the classroom and in athletic competition.

This initiative includes enhanced recruiting through the admission process, increased investment in professional development for coaches, ongoing enhancements to facilities, and transitioning 11 varsity sports to club status as part of a revised roster of varsity teams. As you may know, among the sports being transitioned to club status are men’s cross country and track & field.

As the president shared in her email, I know it’s disappointing whenever an institution makes the difficult decision to end a team’s varsity status. For our students expecting to compete on a varsity level, we know this transition will be difficult. It is truly special to be part of a varsity program that helps build lifelong connections among teammates, and that provides a deep sense of community. And we recognize that each student — past and present — who competed on varsity teams at Brown has contributed to a distinguished history for the Brown Bears.

The University will continue to honor the varsity history of every one of the sports being transitioned to club status. Students and alumni who competed in sports that were varsity through the 2019-20 year will remain eligible for Hall of Fame distinction, recognizing the varsity history of the sport at Brown.

Right now, and through the summer, our most immediate priority is supporting the current and incoming student-athletes as well as the coaches affected by these changes. We will be focused on counseling and assisting them in evaluating their options. Our hope, of course, is that they will choose to remain at Brown.

As we look ahead, I hope that our alumni community will be excited for the future. This initiative holds tremendous promise for giving our student-athletes more opportunities for competitive play with success. The Committee on Excellence in Athletics, whose recommendations established this initiative, conducted a thorough, data-driven assessment of the existing strengths of each team, current roster sizes, the quality of facilities available for practice and competition, and the potential of the sport to generate community engagement.

This initiative reflects Brown’s ongoing investment in advancing excellence in our full lineup of sports programs. The University will maintain its current operational budget for athletics, Brown will continue to recruit the same number of varsity athletes, and squad sizes on varsity teams will be adjusted to optimal levels. A new website has more information about the history of this initiative, the decision-making process, FAQs and other details.

Change can be hard, but it can also bring with it great opportunity. I am so proud of Brown Athletics and the traditions that have defined us, and of the students, coaches and alumni whose dedication, enthusiasm and passion have contributed to our success over the years. Together, we can strengthen Brown Athletics for current and future generations of student-athletes, and build a varsity athletics program that could become one of the most competitive among Brown’s peers.

Sincerely,

Jack Hayes

Director of Athletics and Recreation

zxczxcv wrote:

A 20% pay cut is of limited significance to university presidents, and many are taking them, because they are still making half a million, a million, or more. But to their former employees, who will be taking 100% pay cuts, they lose their livelihood. Yet, somehow the 20% pay cuts give them the freedom to make broad cuts. And you know that they will not be affecting bloated administrative budgets, just poorly paid coaches and adjuncts.

Paxson makes $1.3M/year, so 20% is a good deal of money. With that said, her husband is a wealthy lawyer, so maybe $260K isn't much to them.

Coach, Tim Springfield, was left out of discussions and only found out this morning just before announcement.

At some point, we the track and field fans and former high school and collegiate athletes are to blame for this, not university presidents and athletic directors. We need to look in the mirror. When Alan Webb broke 4 minutes in the mile, he was on David Letterman and on the cover of Sports Illustrated. It made ESPN. During a pandemic, when little to no active sports are going on, did ESPN even mention Leo Daschbach's breaking of 4 minutes. I mean, not even on their Sportcenter on SnapChat where stupid people were doing all sorts of stupid activities, many of them epic failures. There is no interest in the sport, and we are to blame.

Why - let me share a quick story. A few years ago I'm running with friends in Portland. During the run, there are complaints about colleges cutting xc/tf teams, and their being little interest in the sport. As we run some more, conversation changes, and at one point, one of the runners mentions that he was going to get season tickets or something like that for the Portland Timbers (soccer). For some reason, the cost was going to be around $10k. Anyhow, I started to think about it. How many of these men or women where volunteering at local road races or even youth meets. How many of them had their kids in youth sports leagues, but not youth track. How many of them were volunteering in youth track. How many of them ever watched a track meet? I mean, they lived in Portland, but did they ever go out to Portland Track Festival, or Stumptown Twilight, or even drive down to Eugene to see an NCAA championship meet or Trials. HOW MUCH MONEY WERE THEY INVESTING IN OTHER SPORTS RATHER THAN TRACK AND FIELD? If our own former athletes, many that still actively train aren't involved or apathetic, no one else will care.

Consider the alumni, boosters and donors for football and basketball and baseball. Not only are there former professional athletes, but also rich, successful men who never worked up a sweat beside running into Dunkin' Donuts for a cruller or some coffee at Barista (keeping the Portland theme) donating money. In fact, you get these guys with no real connection to the sport, and no real athletic background, but they have lots of disposable income, and they donate it in hopes of living out their childhood fantasy of being part of a championship program. That's hard to compete against, but it's impossible when our own don't get involved.

I know track and field and cross country athletes go on to be quite successful. They're some of the best student athletes and just plain best students on campus. They make good money - in the case of the my friends, they all made more than I was making as a high school teacher and coach. But yet I was the one who was supporting local high school programs through fundraisers where public funding was limited.

At some point, in order to save cross country and track and field, we will need to start being involved, providing significant portions of funding, so that keeping our beloved sport will be economically feasible. If we don't, college track and field and cross country (at least mens) will go the way of wrestling and other sports that have even small high school participation numbers.

asdfasdf wrote:

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.

It's definitely saving them some money but not a ton. I mean when the girls team goes to an xc meet, they are still renting a bus but I hadn't thought about reduced donations.

I had nothing to do with the budget at Cornell but made a call or two today to try to get an idea of how much this would save them. I was thinking 400k but forgot befits and what not. Let's say 500k.

The amount of fundraising since I coached has gone way up. I could easily see them losing $100k a year in donations. Some schools might be approachign 500k a year in donations.

It will be intereeting to see if Brown does any better by focusing on a few key sports. What they could have done is just offer no admissions help for minor sports.

The problem for Brown whether they have 10 sports or 25 is they have zero recruiting advantage over any other Ivy. Every other ivy has something big to rely on in recruiting. Columbia is in NYC, Cornell is an amazing college town and has amazing science/engineering school plus a pretty famous business school, you have the HYPE of HYP, Penn has it's business school, and Dartmouth is the like quintessential new england boarding school.

Other than not requiring grades, what is Brown's selling point over the other Ivies? I'm not trying to bash Brown as I think they end up with some of the coolest kids. Not pretentious. Yes it's a city school but if you are picking an Ivy because it's in a city most are going to pick NYC or Boston over Providence. Yes it has good academics but in what area is it academics known to be better than the other Ivies?

This to me is the primary reason why Brown only won 2.8% of the ivy league championships in the last decade. It has little to do with having too many sports. Now if Brown ended up having just like two sports and the big sport on campus was ice hockey or soccer, then that would help in recruiting but i don't think this moves the needle enough.

I mean sure it will help some but I don't expect htem to be challening for top Ivy sports honors soon.. It doesnt' help to not have a recruiting advatnage and then probably have one of the lower budgets in the league for track and facilities so poor that you can't even host an indoor or outdoor championships, but even if you doubled their money, they're not going to start suddently winning track title after track title.

Now they can put most/all of their low SAT kids in one or two key sports but I assume they are doing that already.

This! ^^^^

The rest of this thread is mere dithering over symptoms and minutiae, worrying over a paper cut on the finger when the neck has an enormous gash that is bleeding out.

Maybe this is an early hiss of air coming from the massive balloon that is university education in the US. Universities have become fat cats in American society and arguably take more than they provide.

Most college sports should be on some level between intramural and club level. The Ivy League focuses on mind and body? Great, have at it on a club or intramural team kiddos. Time to trim the fat.

While they're at it, it's far past time to cut administrative budgets, quality of life perks for college kids, and make college a far more utilitarian and egalitarian venture for the betterment of our society.

LRCisTerrible wrote:

Maybe this is an early hiss of air coming from the massive balloon that is university education in the US. Universities have become fat cats in American society and arguably take more than they provide.

Most college sports should be on some level between intramural and club level. The Ivy League focuses on mind and body? Great, have at it on a club or intramural team kiddos. Time to trim the fat.

While they're at it, it's far past time to cut administrative budgets, quality of life perks for college kids, and make college a far more utilitarian and egalitarian venture for the betterment of our society.

+1

at some point the idea of college athletes in non-revenue sports flying around the country to compete will be a thing of the past. And that will be ok.

agip wrote:

LRCisTerrible wrote:

Maybe this is an early hiss of air coming from the massive balloon that is university education in the US. Universities have become fat cats in American society and arguably take more than they provide.

Most college sports should be on some level between intramural and club level. The Ivy League focuses on mind and body? Great, have at it on a club or intramural team kiddos. Time to trim the fat.

While they're at it, it's far past time to cut administrative budgets, quality of life perks for college kids, and make college a far more utilitarian and egalitarian venture for the betterment of our society.

+1

at some point the idea of college athletes in non-revenue sports flying around the country to compete will be a thing of the past. And that will be ok.

Bring back the days of the amateur student-athlete?

Detrie wrote:

Harambe wrote:

Sailing has a much broader appeal to the masses than Track . This is a fact . The surprise here is Golf , which is a well supported sport , by equipment companies .

Is it? I've NEVER seen sailing on TV. Track gets a few weekends a year.

Sailing is a family sport , it has dedicated Sailing TV Channels . More kids look to parents to take them sailing then drive them to the track . 2020 , Track is so unpopular the Governing World Athletics is trying to get rid of events . They concede , it is all boring , but lets drop the most boring . I would also bet 99% of mainstream American Sports journalist , don't even know 5K is dropped from D League .[/quote]

"With 1,006,013 participants, 11-player football remains the No. 1 participatory sport for boys in high school by a large margin. Outdoor track and field is No. 2 with 605,354 participants, followed by basketball (540,769), baseball (482,740), soccer (459,077), cross country (269,295), wrestling (247,441), tennis (159,314), golf (143,200) and swimming/diving (136,638).

Outdoor track and field continues to lead the way for girls with 488,267 participants, followed by volleyball (452,808), basketball (399,067), soccer (394,105), fast-pitch softball (362,038), cross country (219,345), tennis (189,436), swimming/diving (173,088), competitive spirit (161,358) and lacrosse (99,750)."

I'm shocked too. You mean to tell me Brown had a track and cross country team?

rojo wrote:

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.

.

That's a bit far-fetched. Almost no one thinks of sports when they think of Ivy League. They think of academics, and even more so, social exclusivity.

Wiki got it right in the very first paragraph:

"The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private universities in the Northeastern United States. The term Ivy League is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools as a group of elite colleges with connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism."

What sports are revenue sports at Brown? What about 90 percent of colleges? That's the problem. This isn't about money as a whole. It's about football and it's lack of female counterpart.

jersey Shore's Finest wrote:

What sports are revenue sports at Brown? What about 90 percent of colleges? That's the problem. This isn't about money as a whole. It's about football and it's lack of female counterpart.

I'd be interested to know how much it costs to operate each sport, both nominally and per athlete.