MetroMizzy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 1:55 pm
Roundball wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 12:06 pm
MetroMizzy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:37 am
FurmAlum wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:38 pm
Wow Metro M. That makes way too much sense! You ought to send a copy of that to every member of the BOT and save the last copy and shove it up Pres. Davis's ass.
That's exactly how sports other than football and basketball were funded in the 60's and 70's. I was not recruited anywhere but I wanted to play golf,so I came to Furman for the academics and because it had one of best golf courses in the country right on campus and walk-ons were welcome. They didn't have a lot of scholarship money for golf, maybe 1 1/2 split up between 4-5 players. Nobody had anywhere close to a full ride. We had a 6 round qualifying tournament to see who made the team and I bet there were 40-50 guys trying out for about 10-12 spots. And there were some damn good players too.
We won the SoCon three times, went to the NCAA's twice, and were ranked 17th in the nation one year while I was there. We had one player that qualified for the U.S. Open while he was still at Furman, one that won the South Carolina State Amateur, and one that after Furman won the Carolina's Amateur and later was a U.S. Senior Open qualifiee and won multiple Senior State Amateurs There also was a player that graduated right before I came that was runner-up at the U.S. Amateur and played in the 1974 and 1975 Masters.
Bottom line we were able to compete without a lot of scholarship money. I know things have changed but not necessarily for the better. Sports has somehow gotten too expensive. Hell, the women won the national championship with no scholarship money.
I bet there were more baseball players paying their own way than there were players on scholarship. You're right, that was more than a business decision. If it was a business decision it was a poor one.
Awesome stories FA!
Terrible business decision which is why i say it wasn't a business decision. It just doesn't make sense. I sent that article to the people that need to have it. It's just so much easier to tweak the program before you drop it all together and the administration could have done that if it truly was a business decision.
Also ED blocked me on twitter. I said NOTHING inappropriate to her. She is weak.
If she blocked you, it was either inappropriate or harassement.
It wasn't either. She just wanted me to stop tweeting her everyday. It might have been because of the email my Mom sent her which was neither inappropriate nor harassment but it was certainly a number of things she didn't want to hear. And you know, it's 2020 and if you have a different opinion than someone that not allowed anymore.
I did read the article posted by MetroMizzy July 7 at 10:46 AM. The article does not persuade me, at all, that Furman's decision to drop baseball and men's lacrosse was wrong.
The article focuses on public colleges, including Central Michigan, Akron, and Western Kentucky.
The article is written by Eben Novy-Williams in Sportico. Novy-Williams appears to lean heavily on the very fine work of Andy Schwartz. Mr. Schwartz is called an economist, and he has had professional positions called "economist", but I see no evidence that academic credentials are as an economist.
Novy-Williams' article title is "
Maybe Colleges Should Be Adding Sports, Not Dropping Them". He does not say "definitely", he says "maybe". And he does not say "every college", he says "colleges".
The one economics professor who is quoted in the article, Brian Goff of Western Kentucky University, says things that do not support the idea that every college that drops specific sports is making mistakes. Professor Goff says, “While I’m not a big fan of cutting programs based on flawed accounting,
there are likely programs, particularly those with very low or zero revenues, and non-trivial coaches’ salaries and expenses,
that it might make some sense to reorganize them as club sports that enlist volunteer coaches and travel on a narrower geographic basis.” That does not support the apparent assertion, by whomever, that "colleges that drop sports are making a financial mistake."
The decision at Furman to drop baseball and men's lacrosse is a business decision, but it is not totally a business decision and it is definitely not totally a financial decision. It is also an academic decision. It is also a university management decision. And I am not, by any means, conceding that if it were a business and financial decision (which is was only in part), that the wrong decision was made.
I pointed out that the colleges highlighted in the article and its statistics are public colleges. As public colleges, those institutions have, probably, much lower costs of attendance than Furman and many, many other private colleges. So even if the mathematical arguments of the article are valid for 3 public colleges, they most likely are not at all valid for Furman.
Several UFFP/gopaladins.com posters seem to believe that Furman could have kept baseball and men's lacrosse and everything would be fine. Everything was not fine and would not be fine going forward. Yes, Furman did have several baseball scholarships and several men's lacrosse scholarships to divide up. Yes, players on the 2 teams did, presumably, pay for the difference between the cost of their Furman tuition, fees, living expenses and the amount of scholarship received, if any. I expect that there were numerous players on both teams who had to pay the full amount to attend Furman, and there were also numerous players who had to pay a large portion of the full amount.
"Think Your Kid's Soccer League Is Too Expensive? Here's Which Youth Sports Cost the Most (And Least)" is the title of an article by Prachi Bhardwaj published in Money.com (money.com/youth-sports-cost/) on 8/30/2019. There are numerous other articles available that give similar information. The point is that it costs families significant amounts of money for their children to play sports throughout their elementary and middle and high school years. Many families cannot afford that. The students who can afford to attend Furman without a full academic scholarship are probably students whose families were able to afford baseball and lacrosse while their children were growing up. Probably there are some students whose families scrimp and scrape to let their children play these sports in high school, but if the children are not good enough to get a baseball or lacrosse scholarship to Furman, they are probably not going to be able to go to Furman and walk on. They cannot afford it. If the children are good enough to get a baseball or lacrosse scholarship to Furman, they are very likely to have other good choices as well, including ones where the net cost-of-attendance is not going to be as high.
Students from lower income families are not going to be the players who would come to Furman and walk on in baseball or in lacrosse. The socio-economic demographics of the teams are not going to be very diverse, and it also seems doubtful that the racial demographics of the teams are going to add much to diversity at Furman. The athletic quality of the players are not necessarily going to be the very highest. These are good reasons to not latch onto the the idea that Furman should have baseball and men's lacrosse in order to bring in more revenue for the school. It is not just about revenue for the school.
The article mentioned above by Bhardwaj compares the costs to families for children to participate in specific sports. As the title alludes, soccer is one of the less expensive sports. Baseball is not one of the less expensive, although it is not the most expensive either; but the article does indicate a fairly high financial burden to families to allow their children to continue playing baseball through high school, whether for sheer enjoyment or in hopes of getting a college scholarship (fewer than 1 in 5 who have that hope succeed in getting a scholarship). Actually, the article indicates that only one men's sport at Furman, namely tennis, has a higher cost to families than lacrosse does and only tennis and lacrosse have a higher cost to families than baseball does.
