U cuts men's tennis, gymnastics and track and field

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BilldGopher said:
Who's next?

Men's Sports remaining:
Baseball; Basketball; Cross Country; Football; Golf; Hockey; Swim & Dive; Wrestling

Women's Sports:
Basketball; Cross Country; Golf; Gymnastics; Hockey; Rowing; Soccer; Softball; Swim & Dive; Tennis; Track & Field; Volleyball

Not progress but unavoidable.
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Men’s might have well just cut XC, swimming, and golf. The rest are untouchable.

Women’s you can’t really cut any of them, at that point, without letting whole facilities go to waste. Plus Title IX so dominated by football.
 

Gymnastics has declining attendance I believe and is slowly going down everywhere. The facility here stinks to the point I wouldn't call it a facility.
 

BleedGopher said:
The thing is, the U still has women's sports of these three so the U still has to maintain the facilities for each. If they had cut women's as well, and repurposed the facilities (and sold the tennis facility to a private owner) then it would make more sense.

Sad day.

Go Gophers!!
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They may break even on Baseline. I play tennis there and it's booked pretty solid as are most indoor facilities here (except summer).
 

They should cut golf. It's not even a real sport. I say that half jokingly.
 




Is the Les Bolstad Golf Course a real estate gold mine? Just saying.
 

Title IX is great, but the Regents or
Government should fund all the women's sports, not the men's football and basketball programs.
 




Plato said:
Title Nine guaranteed women equal opportunity in all phases of the educational system including athletics.
I am sure there are cultures that does not happen where you would be more comfortable.
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Before the cuts, the only sports with men's teams but no women's teams were football, baseball, and wrestling. Between those three sports, there is exactly 1 women's NCAA D1 program. Now, after the cuts, that remains true and there are 5 different women's sports where there are many D1 programs but the U won't have a team.

Title IX is great in theory. Colleges getting federal funding shouldn't discriminate on the basis of sex. Unfortunately, the U is doing just that to stay compliant. Once this is implemented, there will be male gymnastics, tennis, track and field, volleyball, rowing, and soccer athletes who will be prohibited from playing for the U because of their sex. If you flip the sexes it seems like the exact type of situation Title IX aimed to prevent.
 

In 2002 it was announced in April the Minnesota would cut men's golf. That went over like a turd in a punchbowl, former players were very upset because they felt like they could have fundraised whatever dollars were necessary for the program to continue. So what did the team do? They became National Champions just six weeks after being declared dead in the water. Cant cut the program of a national champion!

The golf program has some notable alumni and support the program. No need to cut golf, it has plenty of support.

If only there were a few sports that generated revenue on the women's side of the equation.
 


HoustonTXGopher said:
In 2002 it was announced in April the Minnesota would cut men's golf. That went over like a turd in a punchbowl, former players were very upset because they felt like they could have fundraised whatever dollars were necessary for the program to continue. So what did the team do? They became National Champions just six weeks after being declared dead in the water. Cant cut the program of a national champion!

The golf program has some notable alumni and support the program. No need to cut golf, it has plenty of support.

If only there were a few sports that generated revenue on the women's side of the equation.
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Van Rooyen is having a nice career.

This is just a sad day.
 



Plato said:
These young men and women are collateral damage from a lost war against a pandemic virus that has disrupted our society as bad as WW2 did.
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Awesome idea to strangle and suffocate the country, and continue to do so... brilliant...
 

HoustonTXGopher said:
In 2002 it was announced in April the Minnesota would cut men's golf. That went over like a turd in a punchbowl, former players were very upset because they felt like they could have fundraised whatever dollars were necessary for the program to continue. So what did the team do? They became National Champions just six weeks after being declared dead in the water. Cant cut the program of a national champion!

The golf program has some notable alumni and support the program. No need to cut golf, it has plenty of support.

If only there were a few sports that generated revenue on the women's side of the equation.
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It’s not a business it’s an institution of higher learning that also plays sports. It should not matter whether you make money or lose money. You are supposed to give opportunities to young men and women to succeed both in the classroom and their sport. You wanna get rid of sports fine, but please tell me how cutting 2 million now and 2.7 million in the future solves a projected 75 million shortfall. Seems likes there will have to be some more sports to go and sports that cost money.
 

From the Parkinglot said:
It’s not a business it’s an institution of higher learning that also plays sports. It should not matter whether you make money or lose money. You are supposed to give opportunities to young men and women to succeed both in the classroom and their sport. You wanna get rid of sports fine, but please tell me how cutting 2 million now and 2.7 million in the future solves a projected 75 million shortfall. Seems likes there will have to be some more sports to go and sports that cost money.
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Hmm, you sure about that? It's not only a business, it's a thriving business. The revenues trumped the greater good years ago.
 




HoustonTXGopher said:
In 2002 it was announced in April the Minnesota would cut men's golf. That went over like a turd in a punchbowl, former players were very upset because they felt like they could have fundraised whatever dollars were necessary for the program to continue. So what did the team do? They became National Champions just six weeks after being declared dead in the water. Cant cut the program of a national champion!

The golf program has some notable alumni and support the program. No need to cut golf, it has plenty of support.

If only there were a few sports that generated revenue on the women's side of the equation.
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I was at the peak of my golf hobby back around 2002 and I remember there being some pretty active private U of M fundraising ($5, 10 dollars for closest to the pin on the par 3s) at Deer Run, and some other SW metro course I used to go to around that time.

The sad reality is that COVID will likely have killed zero (statistically) DI/ Power 5 football players, yet thousands of people including golfers, gymnasts, track people, and so many more will have had their lives destroyed. Sure the Big Ten athletes will go elsewhere, ad someone below them will get bumped and lose their world.

All bullshit
 


Tommyboy said:
I do not get it, 130 million dollar budget and they cut all the sports that have high end students that contribute to the University for 2 million? The students from these sports on the most part are excellent, clean cut students. Cut these salaries of these over priced coaches and allow these students to participate. Last year SCSU cut their football team and most of these kids left.
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You have me except ‘clean cut’. What is that supposed to mean?
 

Without all of the wording this comes down to an economical issue that the fear and handcuffing of COVID has caused. We would not be at this point if...

if masks work why shut down businesses, if they don’t work why are we wearing them. sooo...let fans in the door and get on with life.
There are titleIX issues but it is merely a money issue in the end.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
What kinda margins are we talking about here?
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Obviously an education model is different than a business model, but many of these sports are somewhat self sufficient if you added the tuition dollars back into the equation. As stated, many of the mens non revenue sports get just a fraction of the scholarships they truly need to make whole of the student athlete in tennis, track, golf etc....So, many of these kids are only getting a partial scholarship or none at all to pay for being part of collegiate athletics. Yes, I know they get great facilities and travel, but they are not a complete liability to the University of Minnesota.
 

HoustonTXGopher said:
Obviously an education model is different than a business model, but many of these sports are somewhat self sufficient if you added the tuition dollars back into the equation. As stated, many of the mens non revenue sports get just a fraction of the scholarships they truly need to make whole of the student athlete in tennis, track, golf etc....So, many of these kids are only getting a partial scholarship or none at all to pay for being part of collegiate athletics. Yes, I know they get great facilities and travel, but they are not a complete liability to the University of Minnesota.
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I'm not convinced that " It's not only a business, it's a thriving business. " makes any sense with that post...


I'm also not sure tuition dollars actually pays for everything you think it does...
 

There’s nothing wrong with club teams. The school can even still support them, somewhat. They can label themselves Gophers, buy their own Gopher branded gear, etc. They can look and feel every bit of a varsity team, just without the direct financial support of the athletic dept.

Iowa and Minnesota (for now) will join Maryland and NW at the bottom of the Big Ten with 8 men’s varsity teams. The rest have 10-14 men’s teams (only counting sports sponsored by the conf).

That’s probably more than anything why they didn’t do further cuts, even though it makes zero sense to cut the ones they did yet keep XC, golf, and swimming. They didn’t want to be the first school to dip below 8.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
I'm not convinced that " It's not only a business, it's a thriving business. " makes any sense with that post...


I'm also not sure tuition dollars actually pays for everything you think it does...
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Maybe.....but the U has so much money its mind blowing! That is not debatable. Typically at the Power Five level, an athletic budget is only 3-6 percent of the overall budget.
 

HoustonTXGopher said:
Maybe.....but the U has so much money its mind blowing! That is not debatable. Typically at the Power Five level, an athletic budget is only 3-6 percent of the overall budget.
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It's not debatable, but it's also an empty statement.....

Having money doesn't really indicate what you should do with it / don't make decisions on how you spend it.
 

Good thing they just finished the new track and field facilities.
 

MplsGopher said:
There’s nothing wrong with club teams. The school can even still support them, somewhat. They can label themselves Gophers, buy their own Gopher branded gear, etc. They can look and feel every bit of a varsity team, just without the direct financial support of the athletic dept.

Iowa and Minnesota (for now) will join Maryland and NW at the bottom of the Big Ten with 8 men’s varsity teams. The rest have 10-14 men’s teams (only counting sports sponsored by the conf).

That’s probably more than anything why they didn’t do further cuts, even though it makes zero sense to cut the ones they did yet keep XC, golf, and swimming. They didn’t want to be the first school to dip below 8.
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Not really? Club teams get a pitiful amount of funding (I was in one), generally not enough to even cover uniforms. The students would have to fund their own travel to any meets they attended as well, which could be a non-starter. Not to mention, they also would then likely need to begin paying to replace any equipment they use.

On top of that they have to share field time with every other club team or PE class that uses the same field. And, since they would be a new club, they would be last on the pecking order when signing up for practice time.

For a sport to go from varsity -> club is not feasible.
 

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