12/22/24
February 12, 2011
Cal Kills Baseball to Save Women's Sports: The University of California-Berkeley has backed off its plan to kill women's lacrosse and gymnastics, deciding instead to cut men's baseball and gymnastics. The school received $12 to $13 million in pledges to save the women's programs. "It took us a long time to build up the program to be a playoff contender on a yearly basis," said baseball coach David Esquier. "To see that all come crashing down and all at once, is difficult to watch."
"The first thing that went through my mind was, 'We're dangerous. We're all mad,'" said sophomore shortstop Tony Renda.
Not the smartest thing that guy could have said.
posted by wfrazerjr at 06:18 PM on February 12, 2011
Title IX is ruining college sports. Who would have though that Women's lacrosse and gymnastics is more important than men's baseball.
posted by JohnSoCal at 11:34 AM on February 13, 2011
Title IX is ruining college sports. Who would have though that Women's lacrosse and gymnastics is more important than men's baseball.
What makes men's baseball more important than women's lacrosse & gymnastics ?
posted by tommybiden at 12:00 PM on February 13, 2011
What makes men's baseball women's lacrosse & gymnastics more important than women's lacrosse & gymnastics men's baseball and gymnastics?
posted by graymatters at 01:22 PM on February 13, 2011
Title IX is ruining college sports.
Only if your definition of college sports has a penis.
posted by rcade at 02:46 PM on February 13, 2011
Simple way to fix this -- stop fucking worrying about sports at universities and just teach.
posted by wfrazerjr at 03:43 PM on February 13, 2011
It's not Title IX, but football The rising costs of rebuilding the football stadium so it avoids a being closed for safety issues, the program had to start cutting other programs or run out of money. Part of this was a general reduction in total scholarships.
Title IX only effects the number of scholarships, which means if you can raise money, like Cal did, it's easier to keep women's sports as a balance against the 85 scholarships going to football. It's unfortunate that's the case, but if a school wants to keep football (and cut costs) they have to make these choices.
posted by jmauro2000 at 06:19 PM on February 13, 2011
JohnSoCal:
Title IX is ruining college sports
Two words: CU football.
jmauro2000:
Title IX only effects the number of scholarships, which means if you can raise money, like Cal did, it's easier to keep women's sports as a balance against the 85 scholarships going to football. It's unfortunate that's the case, but if a school wants to keep football (and cut costs) they have to make these choices.
Actually, there is a lot of weasel-room when it comes to Title IX compliance. You can balance it in dollars, but no one wants to do that, because of football. You can balance it in terms of number of participants, or number of teams...there are many ways it can be done. The last of these is the easiest way to do it, if (to put it bluntly) you want to spend the least amount of money possible on women's sports so that you can keep the lion's share of the pot for football. Apparently Cal initially chose this easiest way out, and still couldn't make the nut. Throughout the process, at Cal as elsewhere, football was an untouchable sacred cow. Blaming Title IX for the "ruining [of] college sports" is like blaming the person next to you in the bar who got punched in the head and spilled their beer on you.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 07:03 PM on February 13, 2011
Simple way to fix this -- stop fucking worrying about sports at universities and just teach.
I'm from outside the US, and I can never understand the whole concept of college sports, the scholarships and the other money that goes into it. Not to mention the insane amount of regulation and policing you need to have once you decide the whole thing has to be kept 'amateur'.
/Played university firsts football, and enjoyed every minute of my scholarship-less three years.
posted by owlhouse at 08:39 PM on February 13, 2011
Going to see this happen more often in the coming months/years.
With Title IX regulations, combined with drastic tax cuts, many state schools are going to have to make deep budget cuts. Can't make the decisions based on purely on revenue, or attendance, so some decisions are going to be tough. Though, I not sure how much revenue (probably negative) and attendance (sparse until regionals) college baseball earns.
States like California are going to be the hardest hit due to their massive budget shortfalls.