Reports: Minnesota Crookston, St. Cloud State to drop football

[MplsGopher]

Morris also has had, from the very beginning, a unique mission to serve the Native American community. It serves them well in a smaller school where they can have a strong presence and identity. I think that is something worth preserving as a small part of the University's mission. I believe any Native Americans can go there tuition-free, which is the least we can do for those people.

Did not know that, thank you!

 

[RodentRampage]

The UMAC and the NCIS aren’t the same division so that combo wouldn’t work

one is d3 and and one is d2

Then they'd have to change divisions. The new conference could be D-II, D-III or NAIA.

 

[RodentRampage]

I don't think this is correct, but if you have links to it I would stand corrected.

As far as I know, St Paul is the HQ for all things related to ag research and the extension. https://extension.umn.edu/about-extension/contact-us

Crookston has a regional office, but so do 14 other cities. (as far as the extension goes)

UMC began its existence as the Northwest School of Agriculture. I grew up about half an hour from Crookston, we always thought of UMC as the ag school. Crookston does have the Agriculture and Natural Resources Department, and I don't think that any of the other universities in the state (besides the Saint Paul campus, of course) have anything like that.

Agriculture and Natural Resources Department | University of Minnesota Crookston

www.crk.umn.edu

I did a little more looking and other schools in the state offer agriculture degrees, but Crookston's is more extensive. Mankato State offers a degree in Agricultural Sciences, while Crookston offers 11 ag degrees

• Agricultural Business
• Agricultural Communication
• Agricultural Education
• Agricultural Systems Management
• Agronomy
• Animal Science
• Environmental Sciences
• Equine Science
• Golf & Turf Management
• Horticulture
• Natural Resources

 

[Gophs24]

St John's gonna load up on talent.
Meanwhile more participation trophy soccer players get a crack at playing for St Cloud State.

Will be interesting to see how many they are able to snag.
The Johnnies will be losing a lot on the defensive side of the ball. All 3 LB's. 4 of there top 5 DL. 1 CB & 1 Safety.
And on offense they clearly lose Erdman and then 3 O-lineman I think.
They are pretty loaded at the WR & RB position. but as a Johnnies fan im hoping that at least a few guys will venture the short distance from St. Cloud to St. Joe

 

[GoForGold]

If you go way way back there was a Minnesota A&M in St. Paul that eventually merged with the U, so that's how agriculture became a part of the U's mission and why campuses like Crookston exist. (I'm a history nut, along with being a Gopher nut, so that's how I know these things.) I don't know if Minnesota A&M had football team. Maybe some other history buff knows that.

 

[RodentRampage]

If you go way way back there was a Minnesota A&M in St. Paul that eventually merged with the U, so that's how agriculture became a part of the U's mission and why campuses like Crookston exist. (I'm a history nut, along with being a Gopher nut, so that's how I know these things.) I don't know if Minnesota A&M had football team. Maybe some other history buff knows that.

I don't think they ever had football, but the first intercollegiate basketball game was between Minnesota A&M and Hamline.

The first intercollegiate basketball game was played on Feb. 9, 1895

What might have been the first-ever college basketball game was played Feb. 9, 1895, between host Hamline University and the Minnesota State School of Agriculture in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Ray Kaighn, who organized the contest as Hamline's athletic director, learned the game from James...

www.ncaa.com

There are other schools that claim to be the birthplace of college basketball, but those were against YMCA teams.

In the early days of college basketball universities commonly scheduled games against local YMCA programs. Geneva College of Pennsylvania, which has adopted the "birthplace of college basketball" title, recorded its first game against the Brighton YMCA on April 8, 1893. Vanderbilt can also make a case as the first. The school played a game two months earlier on Feb. 7, 1893, against a local Nashville YMCA team.
But the contest between Hamline and Minnesota A&M 121 years ago is the first college basketball recorded between two universities. A year after Minnesota won, the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago were the first to play an intercollegiate game using five-man lineups.

 

[Swede]

Did they even have scholarships? They were so poorly funded.


How in the world does Morris still have football? Better question: why are Crookston and Morris (still) a part of the U of Minnesota?? It should just be Twin Cities, Duluth, and Rochester, in my opinion. The most important areas in the state.

Land Grant University. Ag mission. Not a lot of farming going on on University Ave. If you don't think ag is important to this state you should educate yourself. I do agree that there is redundancy in having campuses at both sites (and previously at waseca).

 

[Panthadad2]

Will be interesting to see how many they are able to snag.
The Johnnies will be losing a lot on the defensive side of the ball. All 3 LB's. 4 of there top 5 DL. 1 CB & 1 Safety.
And on offense they clearly lose Erdman and then 3 O-lineman I think.
They are pretty loaded at the WR & RB position. but as a Johnnies fan im hoping that at least a few guys will venture the short distance from St. Cloud to St. Joe

St. Cloud has significantly more Wisconsin players on its roster than Minnesota - probably because there's almost no D2 in Wisconsin. I'm not sure there will be much of a natural base of SCSU players for St. Johns to recruit from.

 

[Swede]

Do you think there's any chance St Cloud might try to follow Omaha's path?

I've heard the same question in Summit league circles. Keeping baseball and adding soccer align well with most summit schools. That said, it will still take an pretty heavy financial commitment to make that jump and unless there are some wealthy Huskies willing to pay the freight it's hard to see SCSU being able to fund the jump given the athletic department and school as a whole being in economic shambles.

 

[Swede]

This is it. Even if football breaks even at SCSU, cutting football allows you to cut football and the cost of 5-6 female sports.

I highly doubt fb comes anywhere near breaking even. 56 season ticket holders and attendance of less than 1000 per game. FB is only a revenue sport at the FBS level and even there it isn't necessarily. A few years ago an intrepid newspaper examined college athletic finances and even at a school like NDSU, funding 63 scholarships, playing in front of 18,000 people and winning championships, FB loses money.

 

[MplsGopher]

UMC began its existence as the Northwest School of Agriculture. I grew up about half an hour from Crookston, we always thought of UMC as the ag school. Crookston does have the Agriculture and Natural Resources Department, and I don't think that any of the other universities in the state (besides the Saint Paul campus, of course) have anything like that.

Agriculture and Natural Resources Department | University of Minnesota Crookston

www.crk.umn.edu

I did a little more looking and other schools in the state offer agriculture degrees, but Crookston's is more extensive. Mankato State offers a degree in Agricultural Sciences, while Crookston offers 11 ag degrees

• Agricultural Business
• Agricultural Communication
• Agricultural Education
• Agricultural Systems Management
• Agronomy
• Animal Science
• Environmental Sciences
• Equine Science
• Golf & Turf Management
• Horticulture
• Natural Resources

Thank you for the reply! I think that is plenty enough to say I was wrong about Crookston. Clearly, at least as far as undergrad degrees go, it looks like you can do just about everything there that you can in St Paul, so long as you don't care about research per se.

I guess my point and thinking overall was simply that if the U decided to cast off Crookston and Morris -- which I highly doubt anyone is ever going to propose -- then the full offering of Ag degrees, research, and extension could (continue to) be run out of St Paul. But anyway ...

 

[RodentRampage]

Thank you for the reply! I think that is plenty enough to say I was wrong about Crookston. Clearly, at least as far as undergrad degrees go, it looks like you can do just about everything there that you can in St Paul, so long as you don't care about research per se.

I guess my point and thinking overall was simply that if the U decided to cast off Crookston and Morris -- which I highly doubt anyone is ever going to propose -- then the full offering of Ag degrees, research, and extension could (continue to) be run out of St Paul. But anyway ...

Or you could close the Saint Paul campus and put all the ag programs in Crookston.

 

[MplsGopher]

Land Grant University. Ag mission. Not a lot of farming going on on University Ave. If you don't think ag is important to this state you should educate yourself. I do agree that there is redundancy in having campuses at both sites (and previously at waseca).

100% disagree that Crookston was a land-grant university. At least in terms of the 1862 Morrill Act.
Sure, it started as an Ag school. I don't deny that.

As far as I know, money from that sale of granted land went to UMN, Minneapolis campus. http://landgrant150.umn.edu/background.html#timeline

I would like to know the timeline of when Minnesota A&M (St Paul) and UMN merged. Based on the basketball link posted above, it seems to be not until at least the 1890's.

Also note, this link says that the original 1862 money went to an Ag school in Glencoe (wonder if any remnant of that is still around??) in 1865, but that the money was later returned to UMN in 1868: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_land-grant_universities#Minnesota

If you can prove me wrong here, always happy to stand corrected!

Not a lot of farming going on on University Ave. If you don't think ag is important to this state you should educate yourself. I do agree that there is redundancy in having campuses at both sites (and previously at waseca).

Quite a lot of farming going on in St Paul, at the research farming fields and greehouses.

Take a look for yourself on Google maps, at all the fields north and south of Larpenteur (between Cleveland and Snelling).


And of course, absurdly so, agriculture is vital to Minnesota's economy. I never suggested otherwise.

 

[MplsGopher]

Or you could close the Saint Paul campus and put all the ag programs in Crookston.

But why? Ag research can be very collaborative with other science fields. Much better for Ag researchers to be closely located with those research professors on the Mpls campus. That would be a terrible decision, in my opinion.

 

[Swede]

100% disagree that Crookston was a land-grant university. At least in terms of the 1862 Morrill Act.
Sure, it started as an Ag school. I don't deny that.

As far as I know, money from that sale of granted land went to UMN, Minneapolis campus. http://landgrant150.umn.edu/background.html#timeline

I would like to know the timeline of when Minnesota A&M (St Paul) and UMN merged. Based on the basketball link posted above, it seems to be not until at least the 1890's.

Also note, this link says that the original 1862 money went to an Ag school in Glencoe (wonder if any remnant of that is still around??) in 1865, but that the money was later returned to UMN in 1868: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_land-grant_universities#Minnesota

If you can prove me wrong here, always happy to stand corrected!

The University itself is the land Grant University, not a particular campus. I won't pretend I know the precise relationship between the various campuses of the University, but when one of the primary purposes of a land grant institution is agriculture related, it doesn't make much sense to confine it's campuses to Urban areas.

 

[MplsGopher]

I've heard the same question in Summit league circles. Keeping baseball and adding soccer align well with most summit schools. That said, it will still take an pretty heavy financial commitment to make that jump and unless there are some wealthy Huskies willing to pay the freight it's hard to see SCSU being able to fund the jump given the athletic department and school as a whole being in economic shambles.

I'm not sure how Omaha is doing financially, but for whatever reason they thought it would be better to have DI hockey and be in the Summit League for other sports.

 

[MplsGopher]

The University itself is the land Grant University, not a particular campus. I won't pretend I know the precise relationship between the various campuses of the University, but when one of the primary purposes of a land grant institution is agriculture related, it doesn't make much sense to confine it's campuses to Urban areas.

I expanded my answer, I think that should help answer your question.

Also, I'm certain that the U does farming research all throughout the state, at many U owned properties. For example, the extension has regional offices at 15 cities (including Crookston). None of these would go away, simply because Crookston University was no longer part of the U system.

 

[Panthadad2]

I highly doubt fb comes anywhere near breaking even. 56 season ticket holders and attendance of less than 1000 per game. FB is only a revenue sport at the FBS level and even there it isn't necessarily. A few years ago an intrepid newspaper examined college athletic finances and even at a school like NDSU, funding 63 scholarships, playing in front of 18,000 people and winning championships, FB loses money.

The thing is, there are about 115 football and golf athletes but the school is only paying about 20 scholarships (per the SC Times), so around a net 95 students are paying their way at roughly $15,000 per year. That revenue will be gone because I'm guessing most of those students will either leave or won't be replaced after they leave. It sounds to me like the school is digging itself a bigger hole.

 

[MplsGopher]

I highly doubt fb comes anywhere near breaking even. 56 season ticket holders and attendance of less than 1000 per game. FB is only a revenue sport at the FBS level and even there it isn't necessarily. A few years ago an intrepid newspaper examined college athletic finances and even at a school like NDSU, funding 63 scholarships, playing in front of 18,000 people and winning championships, FB loses money.

That statement has to be taken with a HUGE grain of salt.

Because college athletics financing is a bigtime smoke & mirrors show. Colleges have no incentive to make it look like they're profiting from athletics. They do what they can do to make the balance sheet appear that they're just breaking even.

It all depends how you want to define what different sources of money belong to what, and what different sources of costs belong to what.

At NDSU, it looks like it's breaking even, because football is really paying the bills for the entire athletic dept.

 

[GoForGold]

I don't think they ever had football, but the first intercollegiate basketball game was between Minnesota A&M and Hamline.

The first intercollegiate basketball game was played on Feb. 9, 1895

What might have been the first-ever college basketball game was played Feb. 9, 1895, between host Hamline University and the Minnesota State School of Agriculture in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Ray Kaighn, who organized the contest as Hamline's athletic director, learned the game from James...

www.ncaa.com

There are other schools that claim to be the birthplace of college basketball, but those were against YMCA teams.

Interesting, I didn't know that, other than Hamline having a long basketball history. I highly doubt A&M had a football team, at least anything very organized. I've looked at Gopher football scores from way back then many times and I don't recall seeing a game against A&M. You'd assume the schools would have played each other.

 

[MplsGopher]

The thing is, there are about 115 football and golf athletes but the school is only paying about 20 scholarships (per the SC Times), so around a net 95 students are paying their way at roughly $15,000 per year. That revenue will be gone because I'm guessing most of those students will either leave or won't be replaced after they leave. It sounds to me like the school is digging itself a bigger hole.

Right but there are also significant costs that will go away. Coaching salaries, equipment that has to constantly be renewed (uniforms, pads, helmets, balls, etc.), recruiting budgets, team travel budgets,etc.

Would be interesting to see an honest analysis. But you still might be right anyway, assuming those 95 athletes leave and aren't replaced by other students.

 

[Gophs24]

St. Cloud has significantly more Wisconsin players on its roster than Minnesota - probably because there's almost no D2 in Wisconsin. I'm not sure there will be much of a natural base of SCSU players for St. Johns to recruit from.

agreed....but there will still be some of those Wisconsin kids who have put roots in central MN who wont want to leave as well. Im sure there aren't going to be 20 kids lining up to go to St. Johns but it certainly is a good opportunity for St. Johns to make their pitch

 

[A_Slab_of_Bacon]

The thing is, there are about 115 football and golf athletes but the school is only paying about 20 scholarships (per the SC Times), so around a net 95 students are paying their way at roughly $15,000 per year. That revenue will be gone because I'm guessing most of those students will either leave or won't be replaced after they leave. It sounds to me like the school is digging itself a bigger hole.

I'm not sure about "won't be replaced", as for overall attendance that's a whole other ball of wax that I don't think athletics really adds to or is used in the calculation.

The only schools that I've ever heard of that talk about bringing in athletes to pump up actually student numbers are old HBCU who are struggling just to exist.... otherwise coaches facilities, travel, equipment, athletic administration, those are all costs any other student doesn't have associated with them like atheletes do.

 

[Panthadad2]

I'm not sure about "won't be replaced", as for overall attendance that's a whole other ball of wax that I don't think athletics really adds to or is used in the calculation.

The only schools that I've ever heard of that talk about bringing in athletes to pump up actually student numbers are old HBCU who are struggling just to exist.... otherwise coaches facilities, travel, equipment, athletic administration, those are all costs any other student doesn't have associated with them like atheletes do.

The whole D3 athletics model is built on recruiting athletes for revenue. That factor bleeds into D2 too, but the model works better with higher tuition schools versus lower tuition like St. Cloud.

https://www.sbnation.com/longform/2013/10/1/4786810/diii-football-revolution

 

[Swede]

That statement has to be taken with a HUGE grain of salt.

Because college athletics financing is a bigtime smoke & mirrors show. Colleges have no incentive to make it look like they're profiting from athletics. They do what they can do to make the balance sheet appear that they're just breaking even.

It all depends how you want to define what different sources of money belong to what, and what different sources of costs belong to what.

At NDSU, it looks like it's breaking even, because football is really paying the bills for the entire athletic dept.

The report looked specifically at revenue sports. Income and expense is not a difficult concept. What was just difficult to track, though, were things like apparel licensing. In NDSU's case, the football team sells a lot of sweatshirts but that doesn't appear as football revenue. UND hockey was another "revenue" sport whose expenses exceeded income.

 

[RodentRampage]

The report looked specifically at revenue sports. Income and expense is not a difficult concept. What was just difficult to track, though, were things like apparel licensing. In NDSU's case, the football team sells a lot of sweatshirts but that doesn't appear as football revenue. UND hockey was another "revenue" sport whose expenses exceeded income.

There's also the value to name recognition that sports provide, which can be harder to measure.

 

[A_Slab_of_Bacon]

There's also the value to name recognition that sports provide, which can be harder to measure.

Probably hard to get much value out of that name if nobody goes to games ... or if the recognition is that they suck...

 

[MplsGopher]

The report looked specifically at revenue sports. Income and expense is not a difficult concept. What was just difficult to track, though, were things like apparel licensing. In NDSU's case, the football team sells a lot of sweatshirts but that doesn't appear as football revenue. UND hockey was another "revenue" sport whose expenses exceeded income.

Of course it's not a difficult concept ... unless you want it to be difficult. It depends how you define "income" for Football. Which streams of revenue are fair and honest to attribute to football as income, and the same for expenses? You can make all sorts of different arguments.

 

[RodentRampage]

Probably hard to get much value out of that name if nobody goes to games ... or if the recognition is that they suck...

I'm sure Crookston football didn't add much value to UMC's reputation as a school, it might even have helped create a negative perception. But a decent sports program does make people perceive a school in a better light.

 

[A_Slab_of_Bacon]

I'm sure Crookston football didn't add much value to UMC's reputation as a school, it might even have helped create a negative perception. But a decent sports program does make people perceive a school in a better light.

Even if you're good "perceived in a better light" ... I'm not sure that really gets you anything.