U of Minnesota reinstates Outdoor TF, Indoor remains permanently cut

out of state observer wrote:

https://mn.milesplit.com/articles/287379/umn-board-of-regents-cuts-mens-indoor-track-and-field

Good news, I guess

Indoor track is an abomination and should have been eviscerated from the planet years ago.

Can someone explain the rationale of this? I mean how much money do you save by not having indoor? 25k? Seriously it's hardly anything.

I assume it's simply a Title IX thing as the athletes get counted twice? That's why we really need a re-boot of how we look at Title IX. If we are going to go by ratios, look at the total number of men's and women's athletes on campus, don't count the same xc runner 3 times. Personally I think football shouldn't be counted at all as for some reason women don't play football in serious numbers at any level.

If I was a distance coach, I'd try to sell it as a positive. You have time to have two proper base phases and you can go run a 5th year at another university. But stuff like this pisses me off as it shows administrators don't understand the sport. It's certainly not as bad as having just xc.

But if you want to be good at something, you need to go all in on it.

JohnNgugi wrote:

Indoor track is an abomination and should have been eviscerated from the planet years ago.

Given the weather, keeping indoor track is logical.

All of those cuts saves a whopping 1.6 million? Take it out of the football budget.

Cutting indoor is even better than not cutting it. Mindless, pointless, pseudo-competition, means nothing. Just train for outdoor - or take advantage of cheap modern travel and go south to compete.

This is great news and a win. Indoor can be added back later. There are many T&F programs that don't emphasize indoor.

They would have been better off just getting rid out outdoor track too.

Now they are just going to have an underfunded program, a drastically reduced roster size, and they are still probably going to eliminate a coach or two.

Top recruits aren't going to want to go there for two reasons. First, because they don't have indoor track. And second, because they can see the athletic department doesn't support their team.

Of course Malmo is right , cutting indoor doesn't save much.

Not underfunded or a reduced roster.

Bittersweet for sure. Men’s indoor will likely be reinstated at some point. The good news is that the student athlete experience from a competition perspective shouldn’t change much. Indoor is pretty local outside of Big Tens. You can easily drive to Ames, Madison, or Iowa City from mpls.

We all need to look at our sport and think about its vitality. The contribution from student athletes of Olympic sports is not endless. Somebody has to pay for their experiences. How much is too much? It has to be both a revenue and expense solution.

From a revenue standpoint, alums have the ability to donate way more that they have historically.

From the expense side, there is an argument to go to a more localized, dual and triangular model (partially, at least). Doing so should bring a team aspect to the schedule outside of conference and connect the community to the teams. For Minnesota, duals should happen with Wisconsin and Iowa every year. You could loop in Iowa state and the Dakota schools into the mix too.

Wrestling does this with much success. If you haven’t been to a dual between Iowa and Minnesota, it’s a sight to be seen. They don’t make much money, but the connection to Minnesota is huge.

The University of Minnesota has a chance to lead the nation in reforming Olympic sports and the athletic department business model. They failed to step up to the challenge today.

Mostly, I am disturbed by how decisions are proposed and made. Where did they engage the stakeholders? How did they evaluate alternatives? My heart goes out to the tennis and gymnastics community who were robbed of opportunity due to the lack of basic situational and alternative assessment.

I know a few people that know Mark Coyle fairly well. He is not well suited for this scenario. He’s been there long enough to account for either budgeting woes or lack of planning. He good for hiring coaches, that may be his strength. But you are THE college program in the state with several large corporations down the street from campus in a mid-large city with a very high quality of life. How many institutions can say that? Something doesn’t add up. Are they shelling out more to Fleck and Pitino than posted?! What about a 10% austerity budget cut across the board. Recruiting can’t happen in person (to or from campuses) like it has in the past, isn’t that a place to save money?

number dude wrote:

Not underfunded or a reduced roster.

If it's not underfunded or a reduced roster, then why are they cutting indoor?

I'd like to hear the rationale. Was one given?

I gave a rationale! Nobody cares about indoor competition.

rojo wrote:

number dude wrote:

Not underfunded or a reduced roster.

If it's not underfunded or a reduced roster, then why are they cutting indoor?

I'd like to hear the rationale. Was one given?

They claim it's for Title 9 b/c the enrollment numbers of women at the school have gone up and they now have too many male athletes compared to enrollment. Except when you dig deeper into this and look at those numbers, the AD has disproportionately cut women's roster spots (mostly from track/cc) each of the past 4 years, while women's enrollment went up. We have direct quotes from them stating their goal is to make the women's team significantly smaller to be more in line with national averages and b/c they believe they can't possibly be providing "meaningful experiences" for that many women (yet admitted they never talked to any women or got complaints of that nature.) They were found to be in compliance with Title 9 just 2 yrs ago, yet continued to cut women which is why they are out of compliance with Title 9...they created this problem so they could cut men's olympics and then more women from track/cc and rowing. The women's cc coach has had her roster size slashed each of the past 9 yrs and said she could take those women back for little to no addition to her budget which would comply with title 9 due to those women being counted 3x each. Except the AD manipulated the regents to believe that wasn't a viable option and the only alternative to cutting men was adding new women's sports for millions of dollars which isn't financially feasible. Cutting only indoor track saves around $350k which is around the amount the team had already raised in donations to support them by that amount each year for the next 5 years (and I'm confident we could get the money to add the extra women for Title 9 too), yet the AD has been planning this for years and had several loyal board members set on supporting him, so they refused to consider the real facts or other options or the true impact on this. The only reason outdoor track was spared was b/c we all assume they feared lawsuits from fraudulent fundraising for the new outdoor track that was opened last year and backlash/lawsuits for cutting the 3rd most ethnically diverse team on campus. If you want the exact quotes and facts, I'd be happy to share, but this is it in a nutshell. UMN leaders had the chance to step up as leaders today for furthering the mission of the school and finding a way out of this unsustainable funding model, but instead chose to take the cowardly way out. Our leaders have lost all integrity at UMN. =(

I guess discus and javelin throwers don't mind if there's no indoor track. Plus people who are only in the steeplechase for the water

I'd have to guess - since the AD made a bunch of tough-guy a-hole comments, he had to save some pride by still cutting something from track, whether it matters or not - cutting indoor and not outdoor was a compromise so he could look like he kind of won.

Outdoor is better than no track for sure...but for those of you that disparage indoor, you are forgetting the non distance athletes on the team, who don't have a fall.

Majority of college track athletes do not compete late into the summer. In a place like Minnesota, cutting indoor means losing half the competition dates. And in a new era where teams may travel less (probably a good thing overall) it also means a team like Minnesota will have fewer decent weather competitions.

And this is purely Title IX. With a now combined program, the cost savings are less than 25k, when you sponser men's outdoor and women's indoor/outdoor.

Outdoor is better than no track for sure...but for those of you that disparage indoor, you are forgetting the non distance athletes on the team, who don't have a fall.

Majority of college track athletes do not compete late into the summer. In a place like Minnesota, cutting indoor means losing half the competition dates. And in a new era where teams may travel less (probably a good thing overall) it also means a team like Minnesota will have fewer decent weather competitions.

And this is purely Title IX. With a now combined program, the cost savings are less than 25k, when you sponser men's outdoor and women's indoor/outdoor.

number dude wrote:

Not underfunded or a reduced roster.

They already cut a lot of women's roster spots, and in this sport that ALWAYS means at least an equal reduction in men's roster spots.

They were going to move from 12+ scholarships to 5 scholarships as XC only. There's no way they decided to to keep 12 scholarships while cutting indoor. Their men will likely have only 7 scholarships at most.

this is NOT good news.

please go to

www.savegophertf.org

to get the low-down.

How are they going to recruit without indoors?

You now have an entire team that knows they are worthless in the eyes of the AD, and the University.

Minneapolis is a very diverse place with all the Somali and Ethiopian populations. How many of them run track, and track is their opportunity to go to college? Not to mention African Americans.

They just proposed to cut the most diverse (or second to football) team at the U, but basically did by cutting track.

This was a step to eliminate outdoor down the road.

this was NOT a win. Research further if you think it is.