Too Many Sports?

[AustinHoya03]

GU competes in 11 Men's Varsity sports (baseball, basketball, crew, football, golf, lacrosse, sailing, soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, and track). GU competes in 12 Women's Varsity sports (basketball, crew, field hockey, golf, lacrosse, sailing, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, track, and volleyball). That's 23 sports overall, a lot for a private school with around 6,500 undergraduates.

Compare GU with some big state schools, and you'll find the University of Michigan has 26 varsity programs, UCLA has 22, and Texas has 16. Compared to other Catholic schools in the Big East, GU is an athletics juggernaut, behind only Notre Dame (24 varsity sports). Villanova comes close to GU at 22 sports. PC has 17. St. Johns has 16. SHU has 15. DePaul has 13. Marquette has 12.

So, since all of us complain about funding for athletics, might the solution be the scaling down of the athletics program by, say, five sports? For example, ax some non-revenue sports like baseball, softball, and field hockey and use that money to attract/retain coaches for the revenue sports. Or update facilities. Would that be a good idea? Would that alienate students and alumni? Would axing certain sports conflict with Georgetown's mission? Would axing sports have a negative effect on the type of students GU can attract?

My first reaction is that I am personally not in favor of axing any sport at GU. I have never met the guy, but based on his actions and the comments of others I assume Bernard Muir is of this mindset as well. In fact, it seems his goal is making Hoya athletic teams competitive in all 23 sports. But can that be done with an administration that is strapped for cash and has pressing academic needs? Is there a looming battle over sports at Georgetown on the horizon?

As much as I hate to say it, the status quo does not guarantee the future success of Georgetown athletics. GU sports lack funding across the board, and at times that lack of funding has translated in less-than-stellar on-field results. It does seem like some change needs to be made. The solution could be as simple as increased focus on alumni giving by the athletics dept, or it could be as drastic as cutting a few sports here and there.

So what do you think? Should Mr. Muir and the administration streamline Georgetown athletics? Should the administration allocate more funding for athletics at the expense of academics? Is some nifty fundraising needed, and quick?

[CAHoya07]

NO. Absolutely not. Cutting sports would definitely alienate students and alumni in those sports, conflict with Georgetown's mission of cultivating the total person, and have a negative effect on attracting students that participate in those sports. We all know that our athletic department, hell our entire school is cash-strapped, but this is not a solution and would produce 10x more hurt than help. We should be proud of the variety of sports that we offer. Focus should be on increased alumni giving and better facilities, and one can't exist without the other.

My sister is coming here next year for softball, and doing something like this would alienate her and thousands other like her who have a gift in a sport and at the same time equally value a quality education. It just would send the wrong message.

What we should focused on, and what Muir seems to be doing, is like you said, making Gtown competitive in 23 sports. It will take time, effort, and money, but just watch - it can and will happen.

[Nevada Hoya]

Some people consider cross country a separate sport (although some of the same athletes do XC and track), so that would be 25, if you count it that way (to say nothing of indoor and outdoor track).

[JimmyHoya]

Then again, it's kinda hard for schools such as Texas, UCLA, Michigan, etc. to have sports like sailing, crew, lacrosse, etc. because they simply impossible (unless there's a few rivers I missed in Michigan, Texas, etc.) or those sports simply aren't popular in those neighborhoods.

[hoya01]

I agree with CA that we shouldn't cut any sports. Albeit a small way to increase revenue, there are some sports like men's lacrosse that could probably charge a nominal fee for admission without losing many spectators at the home games. I imagine many other sports would lose spectators.

Personally, I think we need to do a better job of licensing and selling our merchandise. If you look at other schools, they offer and I suspect sell much more in apparel, jerseys, etc. online than Georgetown does.

[Oh My!]

While none of these institutions was ranked in the March 14 polls (see collegesailing.org), all of them are Regular Members of the Intercollegiate Sailing Association. I've personally seen Michigan & Texas compete at the National Championships. Texas, in fact, hosted the 2005 National Championship regattas (yes, there are 3 separate regattas) on Lake Travis in Austin. Michigan, in fact, hosted the 2003 National Championship regattas on Lake St. Clair in Grosse Point, MI.

[DFW HOYA]

A broad based sports program is a considerable asset for Georgetown, and aligns it closer with its aspirational peers than those Division I schools that aim for the bare minimum.

Harvard, for example, doesn't need to sponsor 43 intercollegiate sports, but understands that a broad based program pays institutional dividends far in excess of annual costs.

[AustinHoya03]

dfw said:

A broad based sports program is a considerable asset for Georgetown, and aligns it closer with its aspirational peers than those Division I schools that aim for the bare minimum.

Harvard, for example, doesn't need to sponsor 43 intercollegiate sports, but understands that a broad based program pays institutional dividends far in excess of annual costs.

Good point, DFW, and I agree completely that a broad based sports program is a considerable asset, but are the Ivys the best comparison? I could very well be wrong, but I assume costs are less for most Ivy sports than for most Big East sports. For example, I'm sure one of our main competitors for students, Penn, spent way less on its basketball team than GU this season. It's easier to have more sports if cost per sport is relatively low. How much does Dartmouth rugby cost its University? Here are the numbers for some of our non-Ivy competitors that compete mainly in BCS leagues. The evidence shows your point is still highly valid when comparing GU to these schools instead of the Ivys.

Duke: 24 varsity sports
Stanford: 31
Northwestern: 18
Notre Dame: 24
Vanderbilt: 15

Average: 22.4

[AustinHoya03]

jimmyhoya said:

Then again, it's kinda hard for schools such as Texas, UCLA, Michigan, etc. to have sports like sailing, crew, lacrosse, etc. because they simply impossible (unless there's a few rivers I missed in Michigan, Texas, etc.) or those sports simply aren't popular in those neighborhoods.

You missed the Colorado river, which flows through downtown Austin and is the home to UT's rowing teams.

Fun fact for the day: The Colorado river which flows through the Grand Canyon isn't the original. That river, which also flows through Grand Junction, Colorado, as well as the Grand Valley, was originally named the Grand River, until some congressmen from CO decided to change it. Hence the Grand Canyon isn't named for its majestic views, but rather the original name of the river that flows through it. The original Colorado River flows from New Mexico to the Gulf.

[Jack]

Vandy just cut men's soccer to add women's swimming for Title IX reasons and because the SEC (unbelievably) does not have men's soccer. They are a strange case in general because they do not have an athletic department distinct from other student activities.

In principle I agree with DFW, a broad base of sports is probably a good thing and it is certainly prevalent among the Ivies, but there are certainly costs associated with it that go well beyond the financial. Even at Harvard, their coaches recruit student-athletes for those 41 sports and get students admitted to a finite number of spaces over other student with better academic qualifications. Of course the ski team at TWGU is probably smarter than the football team at Penn St. on average, but they still get some special treatment in the admissions process, and what benefit accrues to Harvard as a result?

The most extreme examples of these ambiguous priorities are at places like Williams College, elite small liberal arts schools that are intensely competitive in over 20 sports and yet have just over 2000 students, meaning that probably 1/3 of their student body is a varsity athlete and many of them were recruited and given special consideration in admissions as well. Williams is very proud of its athletic tradition and it means a great deal to their alumni that they beat Amherst in everything from football to squash, but what else are they losing out on.

At Georgetown, we are faced with the quandary of a big athletic program that has significant costs in both money and opportunity, and aside from basketball and maybe football and lacrosse, extremely limited benefit coming to the student body at large. It is great that our track program is successful and produces an occasional Olympic athlete to carry the blue and gray banner, but with no track on campus and no spectator interest in the sport even if the facilities were there, why do we need such a big and costly track program? Even worse things could be said about the relatively unsuccessful and also out of sight baseball program.

Before Nevada and reformation come to my doorstep with torches, I am not advocating cutting any sports, but I also don't think the answer is as simple as the supporters of smaller sports at Georgetown makes it out to be. Just because CAHoya's sister would not be coming but for softball next year does not mean we need a team- trust me when I say there were at least 1000 other students who would love to have her spot.

[AustinHoya03]

cahoya07 said:

NO. Absolutely not. Cutting sports would definitely alienate students and alumni in those sports, conflict with Georgetown's mission of cultivating the total person, and have a negative effect on attracting students that participate in those sports. We all know that our athletic department, hell our entire school is cash-strapped, but this is not a solution and would produce 10x more hurt than help. We should be proud of the variety of sports that we offer. Focus should be on increased alumni giving and better facilities, and one can't exist without the other.

My sister is coming here next year for softball, and doing something like this would alienate her and thousands other like her who have a gift in a sport and at the same time equally value a quality education. It just would send the wrong message.

What we should focused on, and what Muir seems to be doing, is like you said, making Gtown competitive in 23 sports. It will take time, effort, and money, but just watch - it can and will happen.

Like I said above, I don't want to cut sports either. But I don't know if "it can and will happen" without a serious commitment from the administration to things like facilities. I do not have numbers (maybe DFW or others have something?) but I would guess that the vast majority of alumni giving to GU does not go to athletics. There would have to be a major initiative to raise enough money from alumni to build new facilities -- we're having enough trouble getting cash for the MSF. It just seems to me that at the current pace creating and maintaining a competitive team in every sport will prove to be a difficult acheivement.

Re: alienating alumni and prospective students, I'm not so sure it would have the far-reaching effect you say it would. For an example of a successful D-I sports program dropping a team, click here:

conferenceusa.collegesports.com/sports/m-soccer/spec-rel/020703aaa.html

Of course, the counterpoint is that I know a guy who played soccer for TCU and he has pretty much disowned his alma mater.

I think we agree we would not like to see any sports dropped at GU, but there may come a time, perhaps in the near future, when the cash-strapped administration starts discussing how it can save money on athletics, and dropping a few teams may be an option.

[DFW HOYA]

These topics are alweays interesting. But, of course the same could be said for why Georgetown needs a psychology major, or a PhD program in Pharmacology, or, as Nick Timairos of the HOYA even suggested, why GU even needs a business school.

The short answer to a longer question is that these are needed because they are considered of value by the school, and are cultivated with some level of institutional and/or alumni support. Frank Rienzo has long contended that those sports with an active constituency are those which will survive at Georgetown. In a larger sense, that applies to all facets of the Univesity hierarchy.

Dropping a sport doesn't change the strategic direction of a program any more than dropping a major. Not having a psychology or accounting major doesn't solve the big picture anymore than not having a tennis team would solve the big picutre in athletics.

Clearly, if this was a crisis, you would have seen a move towards a visibly deemphasized basketball program as a means of reducing budgets and expectations. That clearly is not the path in play. A rising tide in basketball lifts a lot of boats, and with it, the strength of fundraising across the board. Athletics already accounts for 10% of all Annual Fund gifts, and that can only grow with measured and measurable support.

It's like of like the argument I once heard that Georgetown would be a better school if there were only 4,000 instead of 6,000+ students. No housing shortages, lower student-faculty ratios, much stronger admissions numbers...but it doesn't make financial sense.

[AustinHoya03]

Jack, could a big athletics program could be a boon to admissions offices as well? For example, say there's an applicant from NoVa who is an extremely strong applicant and wants to play field hockey in college. If she's talented enough to play she might choose Georgetown, which offers the sport, over Vanderbilt or Rice, which don't. Most applicants to GU have played and excelled in high school sports, so I would guess scenarios like this are not all that uncommon. Perhaps the "talented soccer player uses her uncommon athletic talent to gain admission to GU despite below average SAT score and horrific essay" scenarios are more common, but I would think a big sports program has to attract a few students who might go elsewhere.

[Cambridge]

UCLA just cut their swimming program. They were perenially a top 10 swimming program for the last 50 years. For many years, it was the only sport producing top quality athletes at their school. It produced numerous olympians. Do you know how many alumni they have alienated?

[TigerHoya]

Clemson added women's rowing for Title IX reasons a few years ago (cheaper than softball.) I hear women's golf is next if they add anymore sports

Presbyterian College (also here in S.C.) is looking at moving to DI/I-AA from D-II and they're adding both lax teams and women's golf.

Lacrosse is starting to make inroads around here besides at PC. Limestone has been in the D-III (or is it D-II) Final 4 a few years and schools in Greenville County have added lax at the insistence of a former superintendent (a retired Army officer whose son played lax elsewhere before they moved here.) The SC HS League has it as one of their sports now and the other bigger teams are in the Charleston/Beaufort/Hilton Head area.

Football is what causes the title IX issues at D-I schools as long as scholarship matching between the sexes is the standard.

[Nevada Hoya]

Jack, I am sending baseline journal to hunt you out.

[AustinHoya03]

Just curious: has GU dropped any sports or majors in the last 25 years? I can't remember any from 1999-present.

[hoya4ever]

Majors--biochemistry and neurobiology were dropped but i think the concentrations are still there.

[TigerHoya]

Wrestling was dropped wasn't it?

As it has been most places.

At least one SEC school with men's soccer plays soccer in C-USA now.