Will COVID-19 be the needle that finally bursts the sports bubble?

Pretty sure this year was Boise State's first season. So that went well. Will be interesting to see what happens with these cases.

 

The Triple Crown in reverse.

 

Boise State dropped what had been a pretty successful wrestling program to start baseball. So there would be nothing to gain by dropping it.

Seattle, Portland and Gonzaga are the only other non-P5 D1 teams in the PNW with baseball. None play football, so they should not have major budget issues, and Gonzaga and Portland have sunk major money into their baseball facilities in the last decade. Seattle U still has aspirations of returning to the WCC, where everyone plays baseball.

Then again, ADs often make knee-jerk reactions, like (my opinion) Furman's did. Time will tell. Baseball in Ohio is iffy, so I get Bowling Green's decision. But baseball is a perfect sport for Greenville, S.C., and with the high cost of tuition I expect the baseball and lacrosse programs were income-generators for the school at large, even with the scholarship offsets.

 

I'm surprised they're not running the thing at 5 furlongs.

 

Looks like Secretariat's stakes record time may finally be in danger...

 

The first of perhaps many examples of sports feats in 2020 that will be outliers.

 

Not sure I understand the argument. Furman is pretty selective and not very large, so I doubt that they're getting kids to come so they can play baseball & lacrosse whose spots wouldn't otherwise be taken by qualified students equally able to pay tuition. What am I missing?

 

Could be, if they find 60 students to take their place and keep enrollment at the current level. Perhaps they will, although it's probable that members of a sports team would be far more likely to return to campus this fall than other students, pretty important in a time when many schools are concerned about enrollment numbers even if the school reopens.

But the baseball and lacrosse programs probably were not losing money for the university as a whole, given the amount of tuition the athletes paid, above and beyond their scholarships. And some of the savings will be offset by the cost scholarships students who remain on campus will still receive.

Maybe it's a corrective action that should have been taken years ago. Maybe Furman's 2019-20 athletic program was unsustainable, although that conclusion seems suspect, given the history of both programs; Furman's had baseball since 1896 and lacrosse since 2014. To me, it seems like a knee-jerk reaction to what may very well prove to be a temporary income shortfall.

Assuming Furman was in Title IX compliance, it's unfortunate that one sex had to pay a disproportionate price in a time when we're all supposed to be in this together. And yes, I would feel the same if two women's programs were eliminated. I hate to see opportunities to compete be eliminated.

 

Surely they'd either put an asterisk by this year's winner or put it in a different category.
Weren't some of the early Triple Crown races run at varying distances? How did they handle those in a historical context?

 

Actually, Furman is not what you think and it's not what I thought, either.
In the Fall 2018 class, they accepted 61% of their applicants and had yield (% of admitted students who enroll) of a very low 21%. On top of that, 96% of the student body received some form of scholarship aid. The average scholarship amount was $32,000, which is about half the cost of attendance.
So the reason they fielded a men's lacrosse team, I suspect, is that they could pull in a cohort disproportionately occupied by full-paying customers. Let's say they awarded the equivalent of 10 scholarships. (The limit is 12.6). I'm guessing the players on the team had little to no need-based aid. If that's true, the group of three dozen or so men's lacrosse players collectively pays two-thirds of their COA, which is more than the average group would fork over.

 

That is surprising - I thought that its test scores were reasonably high for its peer group and that, as a result, it was more selective and could easily replace the athletes with other students who would pay as much. If the lacrosse & baseball players don't get much need-based aid and their scholarships are outweighed by the need-based aid the replacement students would get, then, no, I don't see the financial justification for eliminating those sports. I guess we should calculate a Value Above Replacement Student (VARS) for the athletes.