CAL (UC Berkeley) cuts 5 intercollegiate teams
 

Sad. I heard this on the news this morning.
Mens and women's Gymnastics
Rugby
Lacrosse
Mens baseball

Huffington Post
Cal to Cut Five Intercollegiate Teams
http://www.dailycal.org/article/1105...llegiate_teams

San Jose Mercurey News
http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula...nclick_check=1


SF Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MNL21FKPBF.DTL


google results
http://news.google.com/news/story?pz...cApvuSSKuBiDoM

I'm not a huge fan of baseball, but wow. I can't think of a "major school" (for lack of a better term) cutting that sport.

Well, due to Title IX, they have to cut men's sports much more quickly than women's. I'm not surprised they cut 80% men's. It's becoming a HUGE collegiate problem.

"Radical Homosexual Agenda"

Now that's a new one.

^^^ Wrong thread?

LOL

Lane Swwwweeeeervvvveee

***Holding on hard to the wheel***

Wow. You know times are tough when a D1 school is cutting sports programs.

Title IX requires equal opportunity. Odds are they had more men's sports than women's.

And how is this 80%?

Out of 5 teams cut, 4 are men's. 4/5 = 80/100 = 80%.

Women's lacrosse was cut, not men's.

Numbers wise it was about 72% men, however the rugby team is now a club team, it wasn't removed altogether so those 61 men are still around just out of the Title IX count. (It's privately funded.)

Yes, I understand that the state of California is undergoing financial difficulties. My state certainly is and all but a handful of states are in the same situation.

However, I suspect that the endowment of the University of California at Berkeley is large enough to pay the bills for all five teams as well as to help lower tuition, increase staff salaries, etc.

My point is that colleges and universities are constantly raising money. Most often, it seems that the funds raised are earmarked to enlarge endowments. Colleges and universities are engaged in a contest of "my endowment is larger than your endowment." Some university endowments are bigger than the gross national product of a small first world nation.

I would love to see a college or university dip into the endowment -- yes, even the principal/principle --to keep tuition rates low, to pay staff members a decent salary, to improve student services, etc.

Unfortunately, Title IX doesn't necessarily mean the number of sports. It means the number of PARTICIPANTS in sports. And the football team, with a hundred players, skews the numbers significantly. Since there is no women's sport that has THAT many people on the team, schools usually need to cut men's teams to make sure that they don't disobey Title IX.

If football was not counted, it wouldn't be an issue, but it is.

Here's a little article for more info:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=4326021

I'm aware of how it works, they shuffled rugby to club sports and then cut two women's sports and two men's sports entirely and about an equal number of male and female athletes. The shuffling was more about Title IX and the others were about money.

And I really have little sympathy for schools who complain about Title IX. I get that football's the money maker, but schools also do fine without it if it's such a "burden." If they'd been funding women's sports in the first place it wouldn't have been an issue. Fielding a women's rugby or even *gasp* football team would honestly solve a lot of their problems and a school that advertised for it might even succeed if they didn't fall into the "make it sexy" trap.

Ultimately college should be about the academics.

I go to Cal. This is quite sad, but to be honest, it's 'bout time they did this.

Sure, there's an endowment, but because of Cal's status as a public school, it's extermely difficult to just shift around those funds. Then, as an academic institution, it begs the question: why should money even be spent on intercollegiate athletics at all?

Now, I'd be really surprised if they went as far as cutting football, but if they did do that, I'd honestly have to say: yeah, it sucks, but priorities are important.

Forcing a women's football team into existence is simply paying a "fine" of sorts to bring about another insanely expensive non-revenue sport. There's no mechanism (other teams/conferences, etc.) in most cases to support it anyway - it's throwing good money after bad. (Note that this is why baseball is often on the chopping block - it's only 12ish scholarships, but it's an exceptionally expensive 12 - lots of travel, bats/equipment, facilities management, long season, etc.)

It's clearly important to protect equal opportunity for both genders. It's also clear that revenue sports and non-revenue teams operate under a completely different reality, and likely should be treated differently in nearly every respect.

Football and basketball (for both genders) are big business - to an extent not even imagined when Title IX was designed and implemented. I'm not sure there is a better solution, but it seems like it's worth looking.

I'm not saying forcing it, I'm saying there could actually be interest out there that's not being explored. It's not going to make money though. Particularly since girls seem to be able to play in JFL leagues on occasion, in high school even more rarely and in college? Lets go with basically never.

They shouldn't be big business IMO. College athletes are basically money makers for schools but are prohibited from accepting any money themselves. They're used. And the percentage that play professionally is small. (And women's basketball doesn't bring in near the money men's does. More than other sports, yes, but the fact that it's an issue at all tells us priorities are skewed to shit.)

College is for the academics. Sports are awesome things, extra-cirriculars are awesome things, but when college become all about sports, or sororities, or Chess Club... something's gone wrong. And as a student from a school that didn't have a football team and hasn't for something like 40 years, I think that schools that would like to complain about Title IX can somehow manage to work things out.

Right, and I agree that there can be more done to help here. But most schools have a club team, and the interest level doesn't really support a move up (at least not to justify the cost).

Also, I don't believe there are explicit rules against female players - schools have had female kickers, IIRC. Obviously there are de facto barriers for women though (as well as realistic ones - the size disparity at the D1 football level would be pretty unreal).

Yes, college athletes are exploited in revenue sports - they generate more money for the school than their scholarships + perks account for, and I do think athletes should control their likeness and possibly earn money for play (uniformly; not based on performance or booster dollars or whatever).

However, the athletes do receive significant benefits (including lowered admissions standards, access to academic and personal aid, etc.) and the disparity is really a football problem. Big-time football brings a host of positive things to the school - income (most BCS schools pay for their other sports at the football till), prestige (there is a direct correlation between successful teams and increases in applicants), school spirit (= eventual donations), etc. Additionally, universities offer a host of opportunities that go beyond the classroom - football is simply an extension of the same mentality that produces glee clubs, a cappella groups and fraternities.

Since colleges have decided they need to provide an all-encompassing experience for students, it makes sense to maximize the opportunities that come with it - that means making a shitload of money from a quality big-conference football team, too. It's not poor management of priorities - it's smart management of resources (donor dollars are certainly a resource, as are ticket dollars, etc.).

It's not that colleges are all about sports - it's that college sports are all about the revenue brought in by a select few sports (particularly football).

I don't think the rest of the school is affected by the baseball team being cut - Berkley is still Berkley. And of course the schools can work it out - by cutting baseball.

But if college athletics are essentially funded by football, and football inflates scholarship numbers for men by a huge number (literally 7+ baseball teams), then it might be worth considering how we consider "opportunity" in the context of scholarships in light of return on that investment.

That's what he said.

Yes, I was being sarcastic