I just looked at a paper published by the NCAA that among other things showed numbers of college sport programs cancelled in the last 30 years. For women, rifle was sport most likely to be cut at a D1 school, getting cut 54 times in the last 30 years. Men had 10 different sports that had triple digits. Some sports had over 300 programs cut, many over 200.
The average football team has 109 players. I believe 85 on scholarship at the top level. That’s a lot of spots and scholarships to fill to make it equal. The easier thing to do is just cut men’s programs. Wrestling is almost non-existent at the SEC and PAC12 schools. That didn’t used to be the case. Men’s gymnastics was pretty much killed off entirely.
I am happy to see the women’s programs supported, but think football programs, at least ones who are self funding, should not be part of the equation.
As was pointed out earlier, my family is not negatively affected by this. One S still got a spot and is headed to a no scholarship school, the other S isn’t an athlete. Who knows, maybe my D mentioned above or her little sister gets better and ends up playing somewhere. I couldn’t go to her tourney this weekend, but apparently she played out of her mind and got moved to starter mid tourney over a teammate who is playing in college next year.
But I stand by what I said, if you are a non football playing athlete, your odds of finding a roster spot and a scholarship are much better if you are female than male.
But schools lose money in general. Why have a history department if there isn’t a million dollar grant? The theater and dance departments? Not breaking even. Marching band? Nice rec center or beautiful flower gardens? People are attracted to colleges because they have nice things, including sports teams.
If you only had 20 football teams, who would they play? Those teams at the bottom of the Big 10 are still making money off shared revenue.
DU doesn’t have a football team and the basketball team isn’t making any money, but the athletic department as a whole doesn’t do badly. The facilities are constantly rented out for everything from birthday parties for 5 year olds to high school graduations. Almost every program has some kind of lessons or summer camps for kids which brings in money to the coaches and rent to the facilities. The women’s gymnastic team isn’t getting credit for the birthday parties or the practice gym used for the local club team, but they wouldn’t have the facilities to use if it weren’t for the gymnastics team, and that brings in the money.
@GKUnion , that is unfortunate, but if that is what the school had to do to move towards equatable standings on female vs male sports than so be it. Do you realize how many females can now play sports in college, how many can afford to attend due to scholarships. Title IX was not designed to reduce the number of male sports, but to increase the opportunities for females. How colleges decided to do that is up to them.
Title IX was pass in 1972, a time when there were many men only schools or some were just starting to admit women. Women were not admitted to the service academies until 1976. The focus was not on sports but on education as a whole.
Sports is the part of Title IX that everyone points to, but I’m happy to see women in the classrooms and labs and getting equal facilities.
I actually wonder why sports play any role in college admissions. I understand the big football/basketball hype that brings spectators and money from graduates. It goes back to the question of should we pay these athletes, many of whom could never get into the school otherwise, to play? The D1 schools anyway, make a lot of money off these athletes.
And I agree with your comment @dadof4kids that females are more likely to find scholarship $ as a female, because there are less of them competing for the pot.
@twoinanddone I have not analyzed the numbers of girls/women playing in HS vs boys but suspect there are fewer girls playing then boys. So you may be correct, but I don’t have date to dispute.
@dadof4kids the reason why things are so strange is the NCAA is trying to pretend their model, in the free market sense, is not exploiting the players (“student athletes”).
“I am happy to see the women’s programs supported, but think football programs, at least ones who are self funding, should not be part of the equation.” -D0f 4 Kids
More men’s basketball programs are profitable than football; $19.6 billion dollar TV contracts for the rights to televise men’s hoops.
the reason the system is so bizarre is because schools want federal funding so must comply with men=women=scholarship #s but they want the MONEY TOO.
The problem is only the top 20 or so Football programs turn a profit but there are 130 FBS D1 football programs. The question I have (not just for D1 but D3 too) - why have a football program at all if you aren’t profitable at it?
Thinking of NESCACs, U chicago etc. it must be hard to fill football teams with “good” students given all the evidence it causes brain damage.
@mamom according to one source there are fewer girls playing sports than boys (by about 1M) HOWEVER the overall number of students participating in sports has increased each year for the past 29 years, and more young women contribute to that increase than young men. I would wager some (if not most) of that has to do with the dream/hope/need for a sports scholarship to attend college and more spots opening up for women’s’ sports.
And as far as why keep a football program at your school if it isn’t profitable… simple - for school spirit! For the tradition of pitting one schools top brawn against the others. For the Rivalry. For the bragging rights. For the opportunity to bring students and alumni together and have one more piece of the community building puzzle in place. Universities are not in this for the profits anyway (at least not ones with sports teams) so why does it matter if their football team turns a profit or just gets out there each Saturday and competes - win some, lose some? Can’t they just enjoy the game - both those watching and those playing? All work and no play makes Johnny (and everyone else around him!) a dull boy.
@Mwfan1921 in our general area high schools that used to have JV and Varsity football now only have 1 football team. One school that does really well in affluent sports (state champs in multiple sports) had to forfeit all their football games one year cause couldn’t field a team, another high school had to quit midseason sense not enough players/injuries and a third had to restart from JV (since the players were too young and would get killed) and drop varsity (hoping to bring it back in a year or two). So in affluent districts I think football is dying. I would expect the high academic D3 schools to think about dropping football sooner than D1 money losing schools.
@ASKMother Yep Alabama, Texas (SEC) will probably always have football but even at a school like Duke a couple decades ago students and alumni could care less about the football team. If schools that lose money on football drop it they can then drop 85 female money losing slots too.
Football is on the wane in my affluent suburban area as well @anon145. Fewer programs, combined across suburbs, where each town used to have its own. Very few kids looking or getting football scholarships–maybe 1 or 2 a year from a 4,000 student high school. A few more go to NESCACs each year. Agree the higher academic colleges will drop football faster, the insurance risk though is the same for all programs.
Title IX does not require equal numbers of M/F athletes (and few schools come close to equal numbers), just equal athletic opportunity, and then proportional scholarships based on the numbers actually playing.
There is an entirely separate debate on revenue sports like football and basketball, which frankly exploits many athletes who barely receive an education, exposes them to long term injuries and disabilities, and who for the most part, are long shots, even at major D1 programs, to make a real living in pro sports. It seems the coaches and the sports machine are the major beneficiaries. Lebron James co-produced an excellent documentary on this for HBO. https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/student-athlete
On the other hand, I look at my daughter’s experience as a D3 athlete at a NESCAC. She was a four year starter and certainly had to put in the time in the gym and on the field almost year round and still managed to graduate with honors in her STEM major. I am sure the commitment would have been less in a D1 program, but it was still substantial. Being on a team forced her to be better organized, and frankly made her focus her time on productive uses, academic, athletic and social/community endeavors. Her best friends were her teammates. Athletics, no different than music, art and theater enriches the environment of the college experience, for both the participant and the school community. If admissions were based solely on the highest mathematical formula for grades, rigor and test scores, and did not account for other talents, including athletics, it would make for a pretty monochromatic 4 year experience.
@Mwfan1921 apparently you are all academics and wealth focused, and have no personal regard for sports. And that’s good for you and how you chose to focus your energy. However those not involved in a sport really should not have a say or be critical of those who are or how the system itself is managed. No one is forcing students to play sports in college - be it football or basketball or soccer or swimming. Kids who have been involved in something growing up like to continue to do it… they find it to be a stress reliever and just enjoy the workout, being with teammates, competing, etc. We have a good friend who was involved in dressage and eventing all her life (equestrian) … she was thrilled when she made the team at her college even though that was not a driving factor for her to attend - academic scholarships were. My cousin played volleyball at GATech, a school that she might not have chosen had it not been for her sport (she was also recruited by LSU and UVa! just putting that there to brag on her!) She wouldn’t change a thing about her college life - which would have been vastly different had she not continued playing a sport (BTW her husband played football for GATech too!) Sports in college is a good thing IMO for men and women.
Those are quite a lot of assumptions @askmother My comments were football focused and only represent my feelings on football, and its related financial and physical costs. Sports have always been an important part of my life and my family’s, I played two sports in college and D19 will be playing her sport at a NESCAC.
There is still olympic and professional boxing, although I think most parents don’t want their kids doing it. Football is/should be the first to go at D3 academic school and money losing D1; there’s not just the money issue (40% of money lost by men’s sports at Bowdoin was lost by football) but the health issues too.
I would not be surprised if there was some class action suit against D1 big name schools and later in life CTE at some point. Thankfully it has not happened in college but what happens if someone gets paralyzed for life in a college football game? who pays?
@Mwfan1921 then you of all people should realize the importance of ALL sports not just a select few. Football will remain at institutions profitable or not, and it’s mainly because of football that many collegiate women, your D19 included, have opportunity to pursue sports in college…
The thing is @askmother is that we now know so much more about the effects of football than we did just last year, yet alone 10 or 30 years ago. To support football requires one to overlook or ignore scientific data. There are relatively few football programs that make money and those tend to be DI FBS programs, and of course that money does support other sports. But at a random nescac, not so much.
if football went away it wouldn’t necessarily be the end of woman’s sport. Harvard runs 40 varsity sports; if football went away they might run 20. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. Right now D1 schools have something like 11 baseball scholarships and 9.9 for men’s soccer; affluent sports would just lose scholarships on the mens’ side to balance out…