W&M Cuts Men's Track & Field - WARNING All NCAA Track/XC Programs Now at Risk

Some things are worth paying for, because of the memories to the athletes and participants. Drama programs, comedy clubs, clasical music...all that also doesnt "bring in much money" from massive ticket sales at events but its worth it nonetheless.

Before Covid, track programs were not "always" at risk. If you take that financially aggressive mentality, you could argue that the entire F ing university is not worth it because no college degrees prepare anyone for anything. Even med school students still need to go on to more school. Your line of thinking reduces the world to sales people and software developers.

If youre going to have the charade of college, then you need to include athletics. It is a wonderful opportunity and experience for students to remember in their life...EVEN if they dont go pro.

I say: allocate less money to evil administrators and athletic directors like the one at WM.

D3 baby wrote:

I was unaware that W&M even had a football team. And I never see them in the March Madness basketball tournament. So clearly their programs there are a complete joke.

Funny you say that - W&M is one of the perhaps now 2 teams to have never made the NCAA tournament in men's basketball. That being said, there has been a much greater emphasis on men's basketball in the last 7 years or so, which included firing a long-time coach who wasn't fired previously because the Athletic Department didn't want to spend the money to do so, and updating facilities.

I was smoking with the boys upstairs when I heard about the whole affair and said, "Whoa, no!".

XC was spared as they are at the minimum required sports for men (7). While track is not very expensive for the university, the decision ultimately was title IX related which allowed them to cut volleyball (which will save more money).

Posing a question. Will the XC team 'nosedive' if it becomes fully funded? I'd accept a 100% scholarship at W&M and run T&F unattached. Terrific school and beats a 25% scholarship elsewhere.

2nd Oldest School wrote:

Posing a question. Will the XC team 'nosedive' if it becomes fully funded? I'd accept a 100% scholarship at W&M and run T&F unattached. Terrific school and beats a 25% scholarship elsewhere.

It will lose recruits to a 100% scholarship somewhere else that does have a team.

A lot of people gave money to support the programs that were cut. The sad pathetic letter says it all. See you suckers. Thanks for the support. Here is how we support you. How do you like it? Our letter says how sorry we are.

I'm surprised that no one has asked the questions of why the CEO of the United States Cross Country & Track (USTFCCCA) hasn't been able to do anything to curb this. Coaches across the country are starting to wonder what Sam Seemes actually does and why he doesn't get politically involved or have a legal staff ready to address this issues. Seems like a lot of money flowing to Mr. Seemes from coaches dues, etc. Isn't the purpose of a huge coaches association to have clout in situations like this? When a decision is made against the football coaches, their association comes out swinging. Just curious. Thanks for replies.

You know they were in trouble when they hired Chris Solinsky

Time to wake up wrote:

I used the example of Japan because yes there would be some very good clubs form and just as NCAA Athletic Departments have sponsors right now the same would happen for individual sports. City to city, state to state there would be no limit on what you could do.

You don't need the structure of the NCAA or NAIA for our sports.

Japan? They have a huge collegiate system. The #1 race in all of Japan is the collegiate Ekiden.

And yes you don't need the NCAA but the NCAA is amazing. There is no single better talent development system in my opinion than what we have in the US. Up until recently, people were saying we need more pro teams and what not. Why? You have an 8-year developmental system - 4 in HS and 4 in college. By the end of college, we clearly know who the mega talents are.

Yes some peopel who weren't great in college catch on with some minor team and maybe make a team but please name me a single Olympic medallist who could be described as not incredibly good in college.

Rojo, to say "but that may not fly in the BLM era given the racial discrepancies of the sports." implies that you agree with cutting Track and Field, but it wouldn't be PC. As a supposed supporter of the sport, why would you think it could "fly" in any time? I know that Let's Run is primarily a distance running site, but really?

GrahamStephan22 wrote:

Basically, the team is there to pump numbers up, but they aren't there to sell tickets or cable packages. This means that what the team does comes at a cost to the school.

Can you tell me what program at William and Mary sells tickets or cable packages? Does a single program at W&M actually make money? Men's basketball probably would be it if I had to guess. Maybe their football team which seems to draw like 8-10k a game and probably picks up a few hundred k by agreeing to get destroyed by someone like Virginia Tech every year.

And I've never understood the logic of it loses money so it should be cut comes from. Do you thin the English department makes money?

Noooo! How will Zach break 14 minutes now? Extremely disappointing that W&M ruined his promising college career.

rojo, a couple of thoughts -

1. The NCAA itself does not market itself as a talent development system. The athletes happen to run within an NCAA framework, but as we are learning across DI and DII, you don't need the NCAA to continue to have a season and championships. The NCAA is not "responsible" nor credited with developing talent. That is credited to the individual school coaches and programs. Do not confuse the two.

2. I worked for my alma mater at a football school like W&M at the time. They made a lot of money by playing early, out of conference, P5 schedules. We were paid seven figures for each game against SEC, ACC and Big East Schools.

Corin wrote:

rojo, a couple of thoughts -

2. I worked for my alma mater at a football school like W&M at the time. They made a lot of money by playing early, out of conference, P5 schedules. We were paid seven figures for each game against SEC, ACC and Big East Schools.

The problem is it costs a lot of money to play those games. A quick google gives a number of 7 million with a revenue of 5.4 million. They made a lot of money but they spend a lot of money also.

I think all NCAA XC / Track programs were at risk before W & M. Sadly the sport has become late 80's / early 90's NCAA Wrestling. First to get cut.

I don’t know for sure but I suspect the men’s XC / Track team may be the most successful all time team at WM. Until about a decade ago they had the second longest streak of consecutive NCAA XC qualification at something like 22 years in a row (2nd to Stanford), we finished 6th one year, had multiple all Americans, an Olympic 1500 runner. In contrast my senior year dorm was literally 200 feet from the football stadium and I didn’t go to a single game. Someone said 10,000 supporters for football games....I’d be surprised if we ever had more than 500. I watched more tennis and volleyball matches at WM than I ever watched football or basketball. It just wasn’t fun watching crap teams that thought they were the sh&$ because they were playing “big time” sports. Maybe the problem in this country is way to much emphasis on football. How many full scholarship football players are there in D1? It seems like colleges like WM Are choosing to invest tons of money so that they can be mediocre at football when a fraction of the investment could be used to be really good at a large number of other sports.

BenDrankin wrote:

In all seriousness, wonder if UNCW and Northeastern try to get out of the CAA, since they still have men’s programs? Essentially their men’s programs will be like Independent teams with no conference championship. Who knows, maybe they’ll be cool with that

UNCW dropped track a few years ago and only brought it back after alums raised enough money to cover it. It seems this will be the needed opening to drop it for good. That is unless the CAA drops it officially first then tney can ride their coat tails without looking as callous. I do not know where Northeastern stands in it all.

If you look at the attendence stats you will be surprised. Yeah the average of average is really inflated by playing VA and East Carolina, but they were still pulling in 7k for most games.

And what did all that XC success do for them? Sure spending say 2 million bucks on track and a couple of other sports instead of football might get you a more successful team but absolutely nobody will care. Occasionally some niche sport will have some success and kids will go out and see the big games (i.e. the womans soccer team is playing for a championship) but it is rare. W&M could win the next 10 XC national championships and pretty much the only upside would be a bit more name recognization because of the press.