<p></a>" + artTitle.replace("-","") + " - " + "The Brown Daily Herald" + "</p>
<p>Somewhere on here is a thread asking about how many admission slots are reserved for athletes. This answers the question for Brown.</p>
<p>“The report also includes a recommendation to decrease the number of recruited athlete admission spots from 225 to 195. Half this decrease will occur through the elimination of admission spots for the four cut teams, but the remainder “can be realized through some selective tightening” by the athletics and admission offices, according to the report. The other 15 spots will be taken from the remaining varsity teams. Several teams will then “go forward without any dedicated admissions slots,” the report states. A decision on which remaining teams will lose recruiting positions has not yet been made, Spies said.”</p>
<p>In terms of the total number of slots it answers the question, c’smom, but individual teams have different numbers of slots. That’s where it gets tricky.</p>
<p>Before we all start getting too nervous (yeah, right)–the last paragraph said that this was their proposal and that President Simmons is looking for feedback before she has any comment or makes a decision. I’m sure that her office has been getting plenty of it from every student-athlete group (meeting yesterday) as well a friends of brown athletics.</p>
<p>The report writers however have been very clever by trying to buy the acceptance (literally) of the coaches who remain by promising them all raises. I wonder if their desire for money will diminish their anger at this report. If they “support” this report, then, more than likely–that’s the game-- the students an others will be ignored. </p>
<p>What it does is makes Brown a yellow flag for all of us who are considering the school. Even if the sport you do is spared now, who gets the axe next–if they do it once, very likely more will follow.</p>
<p>This article reminded me of the article that riverrunner posted awhile ago
[Recruitment</a> caps strain teams | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/jan/27/recruitment-caps-strain-teams/]Recruitment”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/jan/27/recruitment-caps-strain-teams/)</p>
<p>In a nutshell, it’s about Yale reducing the number of recruitment spots and relying more on walk-ons. Of course each school is free to do as they wish with respect to athletics, but it’s a shame that some schools seem to be ‘throwing in the towel’ on the rich tradition of Ivy League sports</p>
<p>My older d went Ivy as an athlete. We looked at Brown, but kept hearing they were decidedly unfriendly to athletes, and decided to go elsewhere. The number of “assisted” athletes per team is dependent on the academic index for the recruited group. The higher the index, the more recruits they can get in that class. That is why you never get a clear answer to how many student athletes are supported in admission. It also means if you have an athlete with great academics they will be more highly recruited since they will raise the index for the group. In other words, the better your academics the less strong of an athlete you must be to be supported. The better your athletics, the lower your academic scores can be (although there are limitations to the index- each established individually by the school with a bottem line established by the Ivy League). It is almost impossible to get a clear answer to how many recruitment spots are open because of this system. Bottom line, you want Ivy, the better your child’s academic scores are the more likely they will be recruited.</p>
<p>I think Brown is friendly towards athletes.
I know of at least one poster on the boards who had some bad luck with the OV process and was scrambing…this athlete got into Brown with a LL…(athletic)
without ever stepping foot on the campus for an OV/hadn’t been with the coach yet.</p>
<p>So I have a hard time thinking of Brown as unfriendly to athletes…in a global sense.</p>
<p>If the cuts go through, the fencing teams, men’s wrestling and women’s ski teams are going to have to go to club status for funding. Correct? It would seem the bigger decision will be for athletes who took LLs and committed to attend…If they can’t play their sport, did they have a backup plan? (other apps? or are they happy at Brown without their sport?)</p>
<p>A couple of years ago Johns Hopkins eliminated rowing altogether–no club status…and students were scrambling to go toher places.</p>
<p>Another option is for the specific sports to become self funded as Cornell is further considering. They have a few sports that are already self funded including baseball. When I first read this Brown article I did think of the Yale situation that riverrunner posted. It is interesting to see how the different schools operate all within the same conference.</p>
<p>[Athletics</a> Department Launches Initiative for Self-Funded Teams | The Cornell Daily Sun](<a href=“http://cornellsun.com/section/sports/content/2011/03/31/athletics-department-launches-initiative-self-funded-teams]Athletics”>http://cornellsun.com/section/sports/content/2011/03/31/athletics-department-launches-initiative-self-funded-teams)</p>
<p>I will be the first to admit that I know absolutely nothing about the performance of Brown’s wrestling, fencing, and ski teams, but I would imagine that the teams that are cut are ones that are not “winning”, or not visible in a positive way, for the University. I can’t imagine that any university without serious $ issues would cut highly performing/highly nationally ranked teams.</p>
<p>There are multiple issues going on here:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Money - Brown has the 3rd largest number of athletic teams, but the smallest athletics budget in the Ivies. They want to take the resources they have and be more meaningful in the varsity sports they support. Their intention is to maintain or expand the resources they expend to a fewer number of varsity sports. Brown’s endowment is 1/8 to 1/10 the size of Harvards. It simply cannot keep up with the spending of HYP and maybe Columbis and Penn. Even Cornell, without a massive endownment, but with a much larger student body, pays its coaches the Ivy League high. Brown pays the Ivy League low. Even facilities are an issue.</p></li>
<li><p>Gender - Brown is under a Title IX consent decree since the mid 1990s. There is a reason that their men’s basketball team had 12-13 players this past season versus 20+ at Penn and Cornell. The men’s wrestling program has 28 males. There is no women’s wrestling team. The women’s ski team (no men’s ski team) is much smaller (nine members) than the wrestling team. This male positive is offset by 8 or 10 more women slots than men on the fencing teams. It still still yields 10-12 more male slots that can be redeployed to other sports to ease the Title IX pressure that is constraining roster sizes.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Being good at what you choose to do - Brown seems to want to focus its varsity sports on sports that all of the Ivies play. Fewer sports that they will bring more focus to. I suspect that fencing, skiing, and maybe wrestling will be offered on a club basis, but without the higher costs associated with varsity competition.</p>
<ul>
<li>Admission slots - There seems to be a significant body of opinion in favor of reducing the number athletic admission slots from 225 to 195. Only half of these are coming from the dropped teams. The reality of all of the Ivies is rapidly increasing competition for available admission slots. Brown had 31,000 applicants this year and accepted 8.7%. It’s not that athletes are valued less, but the spots are prized more.</li>
</ul>
<p>This is tough on the athletes on these teams that are currently competing or are in the admission process. These decisions are still in process. One hopes that President Simmons and the Brown Corporation deal with the students in mid process fairly.</p>
<p>bballdad: ^^^Thank you for your very informative post - helps to clearly explain the logic and motivation behind this move.</p>
<p>bballdad - based on these circumstances, I can better understand the moves Brown is making. Brown had the lowest revenue total among Ivys based on 2009 figures around $15.1M. There is a 5 school cluster in the $17-19M athletic revenue range. Significantly more is Penn at $30.3M and Yale at $36.4M for 2009 revenue. This is not a level playing field and I’m curious about the Yale $36.4M in light of riverrunners Yale article. </p>
<p>It would appear that Yale is leader of the pack in Ivy athletic revenue yet they made some significant policy changes proactively which I find refreshing in academia. In addition, where are they getting all of this money…</p>
<p>[UP</a> CLOSE | How have budget cuts hurt us? (and could we have cut differently?) | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/19/close-how-have-budget-cuts-hurt-us-and-could-we-ha/]UP”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/19/close-how-have-budget-cuts-hurt-us-and-could-we-ha/)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/feb/03/yale-could-consider-cuts-to-aid/[/url]”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/feb/03/yale-could-consider-cuts-to-aid/</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/15/prizes-still-under-review/[/url]”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/15/prizes-still-under-review/</a></p>
<p>I find all of the numbers listed for income, endowements etc quite confusing given the economic climate at many of these schools</p>
<p>Re post 12 and Fenw South …</p>
<p>Remember that in odd years [a la 2009] Yale hosts the Harv football game, and this event produces major revenue.
It’s not unusual for Y to draw 50,000 for this game; at $40 a ticket [students pay less, public pays $50, I believe] you’re realizing $2,000,000. This is before concessions, parking, etc.</p>