Connecticut Cuts Men’s XC

The problem with collegiate football is that a large percentage of the 85 scholarship players won't play a down. They're just tackling dummies in practice for the starters during their 4 years of eligibility. At least with the other sports, the athletes are participating and competing. Don't get me wrong, I love college football but there needs to be a limit on scholarships. Being a "Student-Athlete" is not just dressing up for games and never playing and then afterward getting into all the best parties on campus. You actually have to participate.

"Go Run One"

Title IX

No there doesn't need to be. And you are incorrect thinking that the runners compete. Check the stats at many of the big name schools and you will see that the 2nd stringers run 1 meet.

New Queen wrote:

Distance guys count 3 times for 3 sports for roster spots. Scholarships don't have to change by cutting XC.

Distance runners count 3 times but they will already be on the roster for track, you need distance runners to win conference championships. So having XC only counts each athlete 1 additional time.

Try again. They are cutting distance. Get rid of 15 guys and that is 45 roster spots. Sprint schools win track titles anyway.

They’ll easily sweep indoor and outdoor track. It’ll be huge joke of the big east. The distance conference

results oriented wrote:

Kvothe wrote:

You and I both know they save peanuts that they'll throw into their football program. UConn, like too many other schools, dreams of being a football powerhouse. Never mind that they went 2-10 last year, a big bowl game is right around the corner.

I'm not going to jump on your "football is evil" bandwagon. Universities have a football team because it helps attract students - I understand that.

Please find me a single student who is not on the football team that attends UConn that their sole choice in picking UConn was because they had football.

Popcorn Charlie wrote:

NFL has 55 player roster limit

NCAA has 85 scholarship limit

Why does the college game need 30 players more than the professional game when only 11 can be on the field at one time?

Keep football, reduce its scholarship limit AND roster size to be inline with other sports:

Baseball, 11.7

Basketball 13 (also needs reduction)

Soccer, 9.9

Tennis, 4.5

Track & Field (includes XC but counted separately for Title IX compliance), 12.6

Water Polo, 4.5

The truth is, NCAA football is a developmental league operated by the colleges. It's time to defund college football and the arms race it causes.

I agree. College sports should be amateur, not a farm team for the nfl. Beyond that, its crazy that colleges would pump so much money into losing programs, including 85 scholarships. I get a down year, but consistently year after year, man.

I didn't know that basketball had so many scholarships for its small team size. 13 means some 3rd stringers are on scholarship. Its crazy to think guys on football or basketball scholarships aren't going to start until their junior or senior year, or maybe for football, never. Imagine if a track coach gave a scholarship to a guy who probably wouldn't score until junior or senior year. Most d1 teams I've heard about expect their scholarship athletes to be at a minimum scoring points at conference as a frosh, or a sophmore if they redshirt. The only exception to this is where scholarships are insanely broken up (ie the whole xc team is on half scholarship or something at a distance school).

notwashedyet wrote:

Here is the article posted on UConnHuskies.com answering some questions:

https://uconnhuskies.com/news/2020/6/24/general-uconn-announces-changes-to-division-of-athletics.aspx

This article ignores the elephant in the room: 2-10 UConn football. They have to cut all these sports, because it would be unthinkable to have a reasonable size football roster or cut the team even though it performs so badly. A 6th string quarterback is equivalent to a 30 minute xc man. No one on letsrun would suggest the 30 minute guy should be running anywhere other than nirca or d3. Yet at UConn, he's probably on (the 6th string qb) scholarship!

DistaceCoach10k wrote:

If you do not fly to meets, having the men’s XC team would cost the University maybe 7K to 8K assuming 16-20 men on the roster with the assumption they still keep men’s track - distance athletes (apparel - bags, warm ups, singlets) It had to be a Title 9 decision

Plus the coach's salary.

brickrunnin wrote:

results oriented wrote:

I'm not going to jump on your "football is evil" bandwagon. Universities have a football team because it helps attract students - I understand that.

Please find me a single student who is not on the football team that attends UConn that their sole choice in picking UConn was because they had football.

There are probably a lot. Like slower runners going to any school that will let them walk on or give them scholarship, the UCONN football players are there because they weren't good enough to play elsewhere. No good football player would go to UCONN just for academics. It would be like a distance runner choosing Miami. When sport is a big part of one's life, it plays a major impact on the college decision. Runners chose between say Florida and Florida State, not Florida State and Miami. Football players choose between Uconn and a 3-9 team.

Americans should start moving from a school system to a club system.

In Europe and most other countries in the world, schools are never the place where promising athletes are nurtured.

JamesD2 wrote:

Popcorn Charlie wrote:

NFL has 55 player roster limit

NCAA has 85 scholarship limit

Why does the college game need 30 players more than the professional game when only 11 can be on the field at one time?

NFL teams also have taxi squads for players who aren't quite as good as their top 55 but who they want to be available in case of injury. Some of the 85 NCAA scholarship players are similar to taxi squad players, and others may be redshirted or otherwise expected to be better in the future.

NFL practice squads are limited to 10 players. NFL squads are almost half the size of DI FBS teams.

As for UConn. Nobody is surprised. They have had terrible fiscal management in the athletic department for years. Luckily, the entire men's track team was not eliminated.

Not even close. A 30 minute guy wouldn't have been top 10 on many teams in high school but the 6th string QB on any D1 team would have been a high school stud.

There was also an SI Article that came out that stated

Connecticut, for example, lost more than $13 million in football alone in 2019

And were asked to lose $10 million in costs... hmmm

- yes I know its not that easy but certainly worth stating...

heat guy wrote:

results oriented wrote:

Serious question - how much money do they save by only cutting men's xc? Women still have a team and are traveling, and they will still have almost all of the same athletes because they still have men's track.

This was a Title IX decision. With womens rowing getting the axe, an equal number of mens scholarships has to be eliminated

Why can't they just eliminate scholarships instead of the sport? Keep all the sports but with 0 scholarships. Wouldn't that take care of Title IX?

No. They need to b equalize roster spots and scholarships.

Mitchy Gan wrote:

I hate to burst the the bubble of most of you skinny geeks. One of the top Football programs in the country, University of Michigan, had 25 guys and 30 women on the XC roster last year. So they had 3.5 guys per position and 4 women per position considering that 7 runners compete. Following the silly logic here, cross country rosters probably should be limited to about 14 because the positions are interchangeable, unlike football. So 7 subs per position is way more than enough.

That is a top program. My xc program had 10 guys as the most in my 4 years. These guys were split between all distance and middle distance events in track as well. Most programs are somewhere between here and Michigan's roster size. The issue is bottom of the barrel football programs have 150 guys as well as top tier ones.

Where's The Beef wrote:

Randy Edsall, the head coach of UConn's football program makes about $1.5 million a year.

In the last 3 years with him as head coach, they've gone:

3-9

1-10

1-11

He's made approximately $4 million in that time frame. So the university has given him basically $1 million per win.

Yeah, that is money well spent.

Football is a sport with only 2 teams, unlike xc. I wouldn't expect at an xc coach who's top team finish in a meet in 3 years was 20th place (or say whatever last is in a smaller meet, 5th of 5 teams, whatever) to be retained for long. Yet this guy gets to be a millionaire off winning one game a season. And him being a millionaire is so important, a bunch of other teams have to get cut, wow.