A new and better FBS thread

[bisonaudit]

St Francis of the NEC announced they are ending all 19 of their Division I athletic programs.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...m/11510364002/

I expect more to come if schools are required to pay athletes. This will have a lot of unintended consequences.

Yep, they folded up their athletic department because they can’t afford to pay athletes that that are not paying. That makes sense.

[Hammerhead]

One could argue that a college with 2,600 students has no business being in Division I.

St Francis of the NEC announced they are ending all 19 of their Division I athletic programs.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...m/11510364002/

I expect more to come if schools are required to pay athletes. This will have a lot of unintended consequences.

[ByeSonBusiness]

One could argue that a college with 2,600 students has no business being in Division I.

Tulsa and Holy Cross are very small as well.

[BigHorns]

Yep, they folded up their athletic department because they can’t afford to pay athletes that that are not paying. That makes sense.

It just shows how little "profit" many of the D1 programs make. If you raise expenses further, more will fold.

Sounds easy to say "just pay the football players, screw everyone else", but title IX will make that impossible. As soon as one team is paid, all the others will demand equity.

[NDSU_grad]

Yep, they folded up their athletic department because they can’t afford to pay athletes that that are not paying. That makes sense.

That’s a silly take. They’ll save millions in coaching salaries, travel costs, and athletic department support staff.

[bisonaudit]

It just shows how little "profit" many of the D1 programs make. If you raise expenses further, more will fold.

Sounds easy to say "just pay the football players, screw everyone else", but title IX will make that impossible. As soon as one team is paid, all the others will demand equity.

Tiny private school folds dept. + gender politics + what do you mean pay people for their work = the sky is falling.

[The_Sicatoka]

A school dropping athletics completely? Good.

As much as we've been programmed to believe athletics is "co-curricular" at all levels, it's becoming more and more hogwash. School is school; sport is sport. "Student-athlete" is somewhere between misnomer and oxymoron.

Want little Johnny or Janey to be a star athlete? Two words: Canadian model -> private clubs not normally affiliated with academic institutions, and when they are they are private academic institutions. Mom and Dad should be paying for all, full price, of their offspring's athletic endeavors. We are socializing the cost of sports at public institutions across the tax base. Why is a fixed income retiree paying for HS athletics? For the school, yes; athletics, no.

And I'd pull athletics out of all universities. Communities would still support what is important to them. Grand Forks would likely have a Western Hockey League franchise. Fargo would likely have a football team in some new league. But sports that can't generate the funds to play would disappear, and so what. That's the free market. Why are we socializing the costs of sports that have little broad interest and can't self-sustain at the gate.

St. Francis dropped 19 sports and an athletic department? I'd say they took an honest look at themselves, realized they are a university first, and prioritized.

[BigLakeBison]

A school dropping athletics completely? Good.

As much as we've been programmed to believe athletics is "co-curricular" at all levels, it's becoming more and more hogwash. School is school; sport is sport. "Student-athlete" is somewhere between misnomer and oxymoron.

Want little Johnny or Janey to be a star athlete? Two words: Canadian model -> private clubs not normally affiliated with academic institutions, and when they are they are private academic institutions. Mom and Dad should be paying for all, full price, of their offspring's athletic endeavors. We are socializing the cost of sports at public institutions across the tax base. Why is a fixed income retiree paying for HS athletics? For the school, yes; athletics, no.

And I'd pull athletics out of all universities. Communities would still support what is important to them. Grand Forks would likely have a Western Hockey League franchise. Fargo would likely have a football team in some new league. But sports that can't generate the funds to play would disappear, and so what. That's the free market. Why are we socializing the costs of sports that have little broad interest and can't self-sustain at the gate.

St. Francis dropped 19 sports and an athletic department? I'd say they took an honest look at themselves, realized they are a university first, and prioritized.

There is definitely some truth to what you speak. From a devil's advocate standpoint, do we exclude a large number of kids from athletics and all the positives if we were to go this route? There are a number of kids that would never have the opportunity to be involved in athletics if funding was solely left up to their parents. It's sadly unfortunate but it's 100% true. There are definitely some warts with how youth, high school and college athletics are run in this country but sometimes the kids that benefit the most from involvement in athletics are likely the ones that would be left out of a system that you describe above.

[The_Sicatoka]

There is definitely some truth to what you speak. From a devil's advocate standpoint, do we exclude a large number of kids from athletics and all the positives if we were to go this route? There are a number of kids that would never have the opportunity to be involved in athletics if funding was solely left up to their parents. It's sadly unfortunate but it's 100% true. There are definitely some warts with how youth, high school and college athletics are run in this country but sometimes the kids that benefit the most from involvement in athletics are likely the ones that would be left out of a system that you describe above.

The operators of private sports clubs would find a way to get talent in their programs.

As far as "positives", there are other mechanisms to get kids those same positives without the costs of athletics. We've been programmed to believe that it has to be athletics. I learned just as much about hard work, tenacity, responsibility, leadership, commitment, working on the farm or at a job during HS as I did wearing a hockey jersey.*

*Before you say it: club team. Paid my own way, or worked, or begged for private donations, for gear, travel, etc.

[bisonaudit]

A school dropping athletics completely? Good.

As much as we've been programmed to believe athletics is "co-curricular" at all levels, it's becoming more and more hogwash. School is school; sport is sport. "Student-athlete" is somewhere between misnomer and oxymoron.

Want little Johnny or Janey to be a star athlete? Two words: Canadian model -> private clubs not normally affiliated with academic institutions, and when they are they are private academic institutions. Mom and Dad should be paying for all, full price, of their offspring's athletic endeavors. We are socializing the cost of sports at public institutions across the tax base. Why is a fixed income retiree paying for HS athletics? For the school, yes; athletics, no.

And I'd pull athletics out of all universities. Communities would still support what is important to them. Grand Forks would likely have a Western Hockey League franchise. Fargo would likely have a football team in some new league. But sports that can't generate the funds to play would disappear, and so what. That's the free market. Why are we socializing the costs of sports that have little broad interest and can't self-sustain at the gate.

St. Francis dropped 19 sports and an athletic department? I'd say they took an honest look at themselves, realized they are a university first, and prioritized.

Yeah, that’s not how the system in Canada works. They have school teams. They have community center teams. And they have club teams.