Who’s next? How do we feel about this?
I appreciate this. While sports can become a part of a school 's culture and there is achievementin this, these are institutions of higher learning first and foremost. Every sport offered prioritizes achievement in that sport over other attributes. Every dollar spent could be used to advance work that might have more value to more students and maybe society at large. Many sports contribute to preferences for wealthier, white students. Some of these sports were added relatively recently, some not. But the “creep” needs to be reexamine from time to time.
Stanford, at least, had a ridiculous number of sports, so this seems sensible. I realize it could be an issue for individual student athletes, and I hope they support them well.
Both schools had ~35 sports while most D1 schools have about 20.
I think it’s fine. Colleges are businesses and when your revenue stream is negatively affected you need to trim expenses. Education is the primary business, sports, clubs etc…are gravy.
@gardenstategal Are we sure “Many sports contribute to preferences for wealthier, white students.” is true? When I visited these schools, I saw pretty good diversity in most sports except maybe swimming. But swimming was not dropped.
@vpa2019 So the dropped sports are loss-making components of the brands? Who would be next?
@twoinanddone Stanford has the nation’s 3rd highest endowment after Yale and Harvard. Shouldn’t they do more for the community?
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@LimboKid , you can look at the rosters and decide for yourself. Start with s sailing and crew. These are sports that are often cited as ones that allow a school to continue to favor white, wealthy kids under the guise of recruiting.
Which colleges are next? Not clear to whom the “who” refers.
@vpa2019 “who” refers to which colleges are next in line to drop sports.
I don’t know what you mean by Stanford doing more for the community. I’m sure they have youth sports and activities for residents, but maybe not in wrestling, men’s volleyball, or sailing. Most colleges have big youth sports or summer camp programs.
Also, the sailing coach was one caught in the Varsity Blues scandal. Punishment?
I do think that schools that are part of a league/conference should do what the league does. If everyone has hockey and lacrosse, that school should too. My daughter’s school was in a conference and had requests from two schools to join. The conference approved their requests, but they had to add women’s and men’s lacrosse and keep certain other sports (baseball, basketball, rowing). The conference wanted the members to have similar sports.
There is already a thread to discuss the impact of covid on college athletics:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/2188086-college-covid-collateral-damage-athletics-p1.html
@Mwfan1921 Thank you for the reminder. That link talks about fencing a lot which is a niche sport that has minimum impact on NCAA Div1. I feel most of us kids will benefit from a separate discussion that speculates which schools might drop more non-niche sports.
I understand the arguments, but wrestling is not fencing or sailing.
It’s an ancient sport that was part of the first Olympic games! Plus, the kind of kids/families that gravitate to wrestling are not trust fund kids by any means - @dadof4kids has touched on this in other threads, it’s definitely a blue-collar sport.
The majority of college programs are on the east coast and midwest, and yes, travel costs money. But, I would be curious to see how much it costs to run Stanford’s wrestling program. They don’t fully fund scholarships as it is and you can wrestle anywhere as long as you have a mat.
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@NovaMom93 Agree.
I think the dropping wrestling has more to do with which schools do offer it. PAC 12? Only Ariz State, Oregon St and Stanford. They add in 3 non-Pac12 schools to qualify for a championship.
I’m surprised at how many schools have dropped swimming in the last few years. It would seem to be an inexpensive sport to sponsor (assuming they already have a pool).
Maybe it has to do with coach and staffing salaries and benefits? Or scholarship funds? Seems like all these activities have more costs associated with them than may be evident.
Well every team has a budget with both scholarship limits and then the cost of running the team such as uniforms, fields, travel, meals, office space for the coaches, trainers. Some of this has to be cash that is paid to others (buses, hotels, meals when traveling) and some of it is mixing money around the school like the cost of the weight rooms, trainers. Even giving the scholarships is moving money from one department to another.
Dartmouth dropped golf. Golf is tough to get a whole season in that close to the Canadian border. It just doesn’t match a northern school to try to play golf late in the fall or early in the spring.
I predict Cornell to be the next domino.
“I understand the arguments, but wrestling is not fencing or sailing.
It’s an ancient sport that was part of the first Olympic games! Plus, the kind of kids/families that gravitate to wrestling are not trust fund kids by any means - @dadof4kids has touched on this in other threads, it’s definitely a blue-collar sport.”
The Olympics dropped wrestling and only put it back temporarily for 2020.
Yes, I recall @arbitrary99. The “Save Wrestling” campaign was successful however.
Sad for Stanford wrestling - this team was posed to be a real contender this year at the NCAA tournament.
The truth is, you get better by competing against the best (“iron sharpens iron”). If they weren’t willing to fund travel to compete against the best (Cornell, Penn State, Iowa, etc), then it becomes difficult to BE the best.
Also, California has fantastic wrestling on the high school level. It’s a shame.
@NovaMom93 Echo that!