<p>Berkeley who was in the TOP 10 of the College Sports Director Cup cuts 5 sports!</p>
<ol>
<li>Baseball (Cal has had since 1892, in the 2008 NCAA baseball tournament, 10 total times, one of few teams with more then 1 CHAMPIONSHIP in baseball---not like they have no tradition. )</li>
<li>Rugby (varsity team since 1882, 25 national championships since 1980! )</li>
<li>Men's gymnastics</li>
<li>Women's gymnastics</li>
<li>Women's lacrosse</li>
</ol>
<p>Wow these cuts affect 163 of the universitys 800 student-athletes and 13 full-time coaches.The school said that its athletic department ran in the red ~$10 - 13M per year for the last several years. These cuts are to save $4M per year.
Are more cuts coming? </p>
<p>How would you feel as one of the above participants?</p>
<p>It is hard enough when coaches leave programs, what happens when colleges do?</p>
<p>Is this a sign of things to come at state schools?</p>
<p>Will all the budget issues underscore some of the hypocrisies of major college athletics? </p>
<p>Is it okay to pay millions to football and basketball coaches and keep only an x amount of sports, to satisfy the minimum requirements for Division I? What athletic department in the country could possibly break even on the rest of its sports without football and basketball?</p>
<p>How will this cut back impact zing our high school communities?</p>
<p>Were these all sports with lots of school funding in terms of scholarships?</p>
<p>It’s terrible when sports have to be cut - how is it that schools and communities everywhere are just out of cash?</p>
<p>Are they going to honor the scholarships they have already committed to? I know when certain programs were cut, they allowed the athletes to stay on, still on scholarship, but they wouldn’t (obviously) be taking on any new commitment.</p>
<p>Not very fun for the athletes, even if they do still get the money.</p>
<p>Athletic scholarships are for one year only.</p>
<p>For sports which have a “one year sit out” rule upon transferring, there are special exceptions for discontinued programs.</p>
<p>Nevetheless, it does not get much worse than this for student-athletes who believed they found the right match of his/her sport and academics.</p>
<p>Now there is yet another uncertainty injected into the recruiting process – so now you need to assess the chances of the coach who recruited the student moving on, and you need to assess the chances that the school will cut your program.</p>
<p>Interesting that Cal did not offer to keep the programs but do away with the scholarships (which would save some money) - which would have at least been doable for some of the players whose families could afford the costs.</p>
<p>stemit…even though scholarships are theoretically for one year, it is generally assumed that the athlete will remain on scholarship as long as s/he is still in good standing with the team (even an injured athlete often retains their scholarship or get it transferred to a “medical”…at least in my daughter’s sport which is gymnastics). When URI recently lost it’s gymnastics program, they honored all of the scholarship for the remainder of the athletes tenure (and this included four year scholarships for those recruited for their first season). I don’t know that Cal could afford to that as this is for five sports and many more athletes.</p>
<p>So for now this measure relates to the Berkeley campus only? Can we expect to see similar measures from the other schools in the CA state system? This will also negatively affect teams in the PAC-10, who will lose an opponent.</p>
<p>I thought I heard they were honoring the scholarships. UC Davis cut wrestling earlier this year. There are probably others, but I happen to know the UCD wrestling coach.</p>
<p>"University administrators said the cuts would affect 163 of the university’s more than 800 student-athletes and 13 full-time coaches. They vowed to honor promised scholarships to those students or help them transfer to other universities if they want to continue their athletic careers. "</p>
<p>the UC system really is broke as is the state of California. </p>
<p>the california public school system from kindergarten through the uc’s are a financial disaster with literally billions of dollars being mismanaged or wasted. and we may be seeing the beginning of the end for some of these once great institutions. </p>
<p>also, for engineering, science and a few other majors it now takes 5 years to graduate because the courses are not available. So for those students Cal is now $150,000…wow! so much for “public” education.</p>
<p>NCAA LOI’s are year by year. Conferences, schools, coaches may have standards greater than the NCAA. </p>
<p>While it would be only fair to grant these discontinues athletes a scholarship, it appears to be up to the school.</p>
<p>Whether a sport – ignoring a discontinued program – continues a non-contributing athlete’s scholarship may depend upon the number of scholarships available and funded in that sport. In baseball, with 11.7 scholarships available to be sliced into as many as 27 pieces, a program cannot give big $$ to a bench player. Also, football has a number of medical schlarships it can give to permanently injured players.</p>
<p>I have heard anectdotally that some programs will not cut a baseball players scholly as long as he remains in good standing (which is why in general these programs start players with lower percentage scholarships than other programs).</p>
<p>I know of programs which interview each player at the end of the season and tell them their new offer for the following year. That program loses huge percentages of players every year – and they are a baseball power.</p>
<p>I guess that is just another question to ask when being recruited!</p>