College and the demographics cliff

Hyper-organized youth sports will drive down participant numbers over time because kids are in essence given the signal that, if you're not at level X by the time you're age X, you may as well not start because you'll be behind.

Exceptions are made, of course, in football, where a giant kid can start playing at 17, have few bad habits, and turn out just fine. But there's an impression that, if you haven't pitched by a certain age, you could be 6-3, 200 in HS, and you won't be able to do it. (Which is ludicrous.)

 

And daring to play two sports is heading the way of the dodo.

Birmingham has become the de facto sports medicine capital of America. The number of teen boys coming through with repetitive use injuries, especially baseball, is obscene.

 

They better not mess with Slippery Rock.

 

Or Lock Haven!

 

Texas has the reverse problem. The big universities (UT and A&M) are bursting at the seams and have capped admissions, and lots of top students from Texas are ending up having to go out of state to places like OU, Arkansas and Okie State.

 

Lock Haven, Bloomsburg and Mansfield are now part of Commonwealth University.

Integration of Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, Mansfield universities complete

I interviewed for an alumni association gig six or seven years ago, and this was already being discussed then.

 

Georgia was something of a trendsetter last decade in that, merging nine schools into nine others to reduce administrative expenses. But all the locations stayed open. I think in years to come not all campus locations are going to be safe. And when you think about what some of these obscure colleges mean to the economy of places like Livingston, Ala., Morehead, Ky. or Athens, W. Va., it could be a death sentence.

 

It worked out like this.

Lock Haven and Mansfield are now run out of Bloomsburg as Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania - Mansfield and Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania - Lock Haven.

Clarion and Edinboro are now run out of California (Pa.) as PennWest-Clarion and PennWest-Edinboro.

All four schools maintain their unique extracurricular and athletic identities. But the two new entities, Commonwealth University and PennWest, are run with singular accreditations. The other four are now really "branch campuses," but don't try to tell them that.

Incidentally -- Notre Dame is no more.

 

John Carroll University, practically right next door to Notre Dame College in suburban Cleveland, recently announced it is leaving its sports conference (which includes Mount Union). Rumor is they are leaving because some of the schools are going broke, not because they can’t beat Mount in football. Crosstown rival Baldwin-Wallace faces a $20 million deficit. Marietta College is cutting a few dozen jobs and phasing out 10 academic programs. Who knows what will shake out at some of the other small schools.

 

Isn’t A&M being made to expand pretty regularly to handle ever-growing enrollment? Seems like I’ve seen some Aggies vetching online to that effect.

 

One private school in Michigan, Finlandia, closed about a year ago and several others are teetering, including Concordia University.

Two of the Concordias - in Wisconsin and Ann Arbor - have a combined governing board, and the universities are running a combined $9 million deficit. There's been a lot of talk on the Ann Arbor campus recently about what could happen, including selling buildings, cutting staff , separating the two schools' governance or eventually closing, though it will remain open through the 2024-25 school year. Selling buildings will be a challenge on such a small campus.

The Ann Arbor campus added several sports, including football, in the last several years in a successful attempt to increase enrollment, but I wonder how much of that effort is draining the university's overall budget. The football team has had a successful run, including a win over NCAA Division II Wayne State (of Detroit) in 2023, but at what cost? It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out.

Public universities in the state also have taken major hits, namely Eastern Michigan (my alma mater), Central Michigan and Michigan-Flint.

Both of my kids graduated from the local community college debt free. They had the grades to get into four-year schools, but didn't want to be saddled with student loans that help pay for things they don't care about, like football teams.

 

RIP Birmingham-Southern College.

https://www.cbs42.com/news/local/birmingham-southern-college-closing-its-doors-may-31/

For those of you that have ever covered games at Legion Field, this is the private school with the fenced off campus just west of the stadium. That’s a ton of soon to be vacant property in an already depressed part of town.