Cal dropping baseball

[Jack]

Sad news from Berkeley, alma mater of some 52 major leaguers including Jeff Kent, Jackie Jensen, Andy Messersmith, and Darren Lewis, with baseball falling victim to severe budget shortfalls:

rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/baseball/news?slug=kr-caldropsbsb092810

Also notable (to me, if no one else) - Cal is dropping its legendary rugby program from varsity down to club level. The Bears have dominated collegiate rugby in the US, having won 24 of the 30 Div 1 (non-NCAA) titles in the history of the sport. Most schools compete as clubs (including GU), but it is my understanding that Cal gave scholarship aid and was able to attract significant foreign talent from places like Australia and New Zealand.

[The Stig]

The latter news is a HUGE blow to college rugby. They were really the flagship program for all of college rugby, so to see them get dropped down is bad news for the whole sport in this country.

That said, I'm a bit surprised that we don't see this happen more often at state-funded schools. When times get tight for state governments (and they always seem to be tight), you'd expect things like college sports that don't pay for themselves to be the first to go.

It's also worrying from a GU perspective, although we obviously don't face the same pressures as far as justifying state funding. I imagine that all but one of our sports lose money, and even basketball doesn't really rake huge profits, as far as I'm aware. We also have more sports at the varsity level than most schools, which means more money-losing sports. With college costs starting to spiral out of control, how much longer can a situation like this be sustained?

[jgalt]

This has been rumored for quite sometime and the budget aspect of it only half the story. Their is growing sentiment that Title IX is the cause of budget short falls at major universities and Cal is the first major casualty.

here is a good article on just this www.boston.com/sports/colleges/articles/2010/09/24/college_dropouts_increase/?camp=localsearch:on:twit:hp

and if you want more you can follow Eric McErlain on twitter twitter.com/emcerlain He is a (reputable) Washington sports blogger who has been documenting this for weeks now and his feed has a number of links to good articles

There is also a paper out from the Federalist Society about Title IX, but i know many of you can guess where it goes just by knowing who is publishing it: www.fed-soc.org/publications/pubid.1926/pub_detail.asp

[hifigator]

I don't want to say much at all, since I don't want to cuss and get banned. Most know that I am a very vocal advocate of a retooling of Title IX. While I understand the underlying premise, the current structure is just absurd. If they would ever take football out of the equation, at least temporarily, under the rationale that not only does football have no comparable women's sport, but more importantly is the cash cow that allows so many other sports -- both men's and women's -- then achieving the equitable numbers desired would be no problem. But until then, we are stuck with this mess.

For those who don't know, under NCAA rules, there are 11.7 athletic scholarships per year to be divided among all the baseball players. Given there are either 24 or 25 man travel squads for most all conferences, the average scholarship is less than a half! And that doesn't even factor in the additional players who don't make the travel squad. It's just friggin pathetic. And it's a real obstacle for the lower income families. Football ... swimming ... diving ... tennis ... golf ... soccer ... etc... sure, we can give you a full ride. And don't even get me started on the now defunct Bowling team! But baseball ... we might get you almost a half scholarship. No wonder so many kids take the minor league route.

[hoya9797]

It's very rare for a college golfer to get a full ride. There are 4.5 scholarships per team and I'd say that most teams have at least 10 players. At GU, we had a minimum of 12 players each year. Of course, we were non-scholarship back then so it didn't really matter to us how many guys we carried.

[SFHoya99]

Though I agree with the general premise behind the Title IX idea, I don't know if it is necessary anymore. Would we see a huge cutting of women's programs if it disappeared? I dunno.

[HoyaTejano]

Wow, I saw Cal-Utah rugby final on tv during the summer and thought, who are these dudes, they are awesome! Actually a sadder story than baseball.

[hifigator]

Sept 28, 2010 23:17:44 GMT -5 hoya9797 said:

It's very rare for a college golfer to get a full ride. There are 4.5 scholarships per team and I'd say that most teams have at least 10 players. At GU, we had a minimum of 12 players each year. Of course, we were non-scholarship back then so it didn't really matter to us how many guys we carried.

I responded to this last night but I guess it disappeared into the Internet black hole.

I didn't know that golf also only gives partials. In that case, I feel sorry for them too. But that doesn't change my point.

Specifically in baseball, if you are trying to recruit a kid to come play baseball at your school, you are asking him to delay getting paid to play the sport for 3 years minimum. It's only 1 in hoops and 2 in football. But in baseball, if you decline the initial contract offer, then you can't be drafted again for 3 years. Of course in football and basketball, colleges serve as the mechanism for the would be professionals to hone their skills. IF the player isn't ready to go to the NBA or the NFL, then he can get more prepared in college. What baseball has to deal with however, is the minor league issue. Players can hone their skills while also getting paid. And if you are trying to recruit a kid from the innner city, or from a troubled household, a lot of times that money from an agent is simply too hard to pass up.

[theexorcist]

On rugby, from what I understand, Cal has a big supporter's group for rugby who will essentially make up the difference of what the university could pay (the goal is to make it self-sustaining by 2014). Given that there's no NCAA competition, this actually seems a good use of dollars.

On Title IX - they're cutting women's lax. Will be interesting to see if that sticks.

[jgalt]

Sept 29, 2010 0:00:40 GMT -5 SFHoya99 said:

Though I agree with the general premise behind the Title IX idea, I don't know if it is necessary anymore. Would we see a huge cutting of women's programs if it disappeared? I dunno.

It would be interesting to see. There probably would be a cutting of programs as most (all?) women's sports lose money, but I bet there will be an equal number of programs cut over the next decade because of budgets constraints due to Title IX. The difference I guess would be that if you want to cut a women's program under Title IX, essentially you have to cut a mens program too, which is a pretty terrible system.

If the spirit of Title IX is to survive there has to be a better way of measuring schools' efforts to give girls an opportunity.

[DFW HOYA]

Underreported in this story are the considerable deficits Cal is running in atheltics, which are aggravated by the Memorial Stadium renovations, the legal battle agaisnt the tree-huggers which delayed the project, and the loss in revenue by moving games out of 72,000 seat Memorial Stadium and into 41,000 seat Pac Bell...um, AT&T Park during the renovation. (Never mind that the Oakland Coliseum was closer and held many more fans, but the two sides could not cut a deal).

Also of note: the expectation that Cal Rugby will be "self funded" going forward. I think a lot of I-A schools will look at this funding model in the future, essentially expecting its minor sports (read= not football or basketball) to be mostly or entirely supported by donor contributions moving forward.

[hifigator]

DFW, while I think that makes perfect sense, there is a strong sentiment against such endowed practices. The argument is that that would give the haves a tremendous advantage over the havenots. I can't really deny that point, even though I still like the idea of letting the market work things out.