Both men's and women's swimming were cut.

http://www.collegeswimming.com/news/2011/nov/08/maryland-axed/

Another victim of agenda and avarice.

The ruling by the NCAA recently to up the cost of scholarships will only accelerate this process unfortunately.

The arms race in facilities and coaching/high-end administrative contracts has to end before this will ever stop.

The bottom line is every weekend half the nation's college football teams lose. Until they start rewarding coaches that actually do their jobs -- and not ALL of them hoping they will -- this won't change. And the ones that give raises in this economic climate for simply doing what they are paid to do are even stupider.

Very sad news, and they have great facilities as well (with the exception of platform diving)

Is a spending cap on universities the answer, or perhaps a spending cap just on Football programs?

Seeing as football drives the bus though, I doubt either would ever really happen....

It is disappointing.

The football arms race is a disease that continues unchecked. There is just no conceivable reason that the NCAA, college presidents, and athletic directors can think what's happening is good.

I love Aggie football, but the game wouldn't suffer if 25% of all the money spent was cut.


[This message has been edited by SpicewoodAg (edited 11/9/2011 8:45a).]

This is the kind of crap I'm talking about:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/terrapins-insider/post/former-maryland-coach-gary-williams-to-earn-400000-annual-salary-in-new-role/2011/08/23/gIQAmIndZJ_blog.htm

This guy did a fantastic job as bb coach and made money by the truckload for it -- but he retired. Now instead of being philanthropic with his time and money he's saddling up to an empty money trough for more. I don't blame him completely though. He's being enabled by others.

The question is is he worth more than a few teams worth of kids that might eventually make a positive contribution to society other than simply entertaining it like Williams did? I say hell no.

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The football arms race is a disease that continues unchecked.

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Where do you think the money comes from to pay for swimming? Football and Basketball are the only reason swimming ever existed at Maryland. Putting a cap on revenue-generating sports is not the answer. When those sports cease to be as profitable, there isn't enough budget to subsidize other sports. If you cut spending on the sports that make money, you make even less money and you win even less which means less donations. People pay big-time money to watch big-time football and hoops. If you put a cap on it, it's not as if all of the "extra money" can be put into other sports...because there won't be any "extra money".

It's sad that these programs get cut, but no one owes it to anyone to have swim teams and you can't make people care about swimming (or tennis, or soccer, etc.) - if enough people cared about swimming this wouldn't happen.

As a soccer and tennis fan I understand that in America these sports are like photos of your kids. It's great to love them and be proud of them and show them to anyone who will pretend to care but the truth is that most other people would rather be watching football.

[This message has been edited by Harry Dunne (edited 11/9/2011 5:22p).]

@Harry Completely agree. It is unfortunate but the reality is noone cares and I can't see a reason for anyone to care.

Wish things like this didn't happen and there was unlimited funding for sports like Swimming just because of the great opportunity it is for the student-athletes but that just isn't the way the world works. Feel bad for those athletes

Harry Dunne,

The problem is not with Maryland's football program. It is instead the spending by schools like Texas, Ohio State, Alabama, and even A&M. The "haves" are driving up the cost of fielding a competitive football team. When Texas generates $95M per year in football revenue, they have essentially limitless resources to spend. Poor Texas Tech, or Baylor, or TCU, or Rice, have to spend a disproportionate amount of money on football. That leaves less for other sports.

Unless Maryland can suddenly and dramatically raise revenues, their only choice is to cut sports.

Texas is the exreme example since they generate $145M in total revenue each year in the athletic department. $95M is from football.

I think to continue on this course will result ultimately in a steady deterioration of non-revenue sports in college.

Hard to argue that Maryland spends too much on anything - they spend less per student athlete than any other school in the ACC, and it's not even close.

The problem isn't the football spending. It's the $2 million buyout they had to pay to the defending ACC Coach of the Year. That's the kind of thing that does these programs in.

Harry you have a good argument but it has a hole. Division II and III schools are ADDING swimming programs. Division I schools are hemorraghing them. Explain to me how the DII and DIII teams are able to do this while the schools with tens of millions of dollars more can't even keep what they already have afloat? A lot of these programs survived the Great Depression, World War II, etc. and they can't survive now? Give me a break.

Also apparently there are 41 people in the Maryland athletic dept with athletic director, assistant athletic director or associate athletic director in their title. FORTY ONE! This is the crap that is killing college athletics.

...and don't get me started on Maryland's crappy football uniforms. Good lord. You'd think 41 athletic directors would find a way to not f that up.

[This message has been edited by Look Out Below (edited 11/9/2011 10:56p).]

Look Out Below:

I have to I agree with you about too many ex-coaches, cousins of the AD, and other "lifers" on athletic department staffs who don't do much of anything but pick up a paycheck...and agreed again about Maryland's hideous uniforms.

As far as this goes...

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Explain to me how the DII and DIII teams are able to do this while the schools with tens of millions of dollars more can't even keep what they already have afloat?

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I worked in compliance for several years so I feel I have a pretty good perspective and well-informed opinion on this.

D3 teams don't have scholarships. They are like club teams, basically. They only travel regionally, pay coaches very little (usually the coach is part-time and teaches classes as well)...it's basically a group of kids that wants to keep playing their sport a few more years. It's pure amateur athletics. D2 teams for the most part are only a step above that. The operating budget for D2 olympic sports is usually between $50-100k per year (by contrast A&M mens and womens tennis team's budgets are about $1 million per...you can find all of this info online pretty easily). The reason D2 and D3 teams can add swimming is because it's inexpensive for them to do so and they don't have to spend a million per year to be competitive.

For Maryland to field men's and women's swimming means paying substantial coaches salaries, lots of scholarships, equipment, travel (which is not cheap with a big team like swimming)...not to mention the huge expense of maintaining a competition pool. A D3 team is paying a coach $15k per year to coach both mens and womens, athletes are paying for a lot of their own expenses, helping fund-raise, competing much less often. They're basically getting a speedo and some goggles, having a meet with area schools at the rec center, and getting a diet coke and a subway 6" afterwards. Maryland is spending six figures per kid per year and paying head coaches six figures plus a couple of assistants on each side. flying all across the country. It's an entirely different ballgame.

It's not that Maryland can't keep swimming afloat - they could easily do it. Yes there's the business with paying off the basketball coach, but what it comes down to is that they don't want to take money away from football and basketball do keep swimming going...and rightfully so - swimming does nothing but lose money every year while football and basketball make money.

The harsh reality is that's a business - if you have a branch that's losing money, you close it. If you have a branch that's making money, you invest more money into it. You don't take money away from the profitable branch to save the dying branch simply out of sentimentality. Why does Maryland owe it to anyone to keep swimming alive?

Spicewood Ag's post is right on. Title IX will save women's athletics but the future of many mens non-revenue sports is bleak...and while that's too bad, again - it is a result of people caring more about football and basketball than about other sports. Again - if the masses cared about swimming, this wouldn't happen and it's hard for a swimming fanatic to see this, but in general people don't care about swimming. No one is driving their family 3 hours there and back and spending 100 bucks a seat to go watch an NCAA swim meet. It's not reasonable to expect a struggling athletic department to subsidize a sport that doesn't generate revenue or substantial interest.

[This message has been edited by Harry Dunne (edited 11/10/2011 12:41a).]

P.s. - Now with this new $2,000 "spending money" increase in scholarships the divide is going to get even bigger since only the BCS conferences are going to be able to afford it...and even in those conferences you're going to see a lot of programs cut sports like swimming just to be able to pay their football and basketball players the extra $2k (which adds up when you consider a big school might have 500 athlets x $2k).

I think everyone has agreed that swimming is not football or basketball and never will be a huge spectator sport, however, swimming and other olympic sports are relevent and interesting venues. Where else can you see national and world records broken? Swimming does not get promoted very well and most people do not understand the conditioning involved in swimming at this level. Colleges are charged with supporting student athletes that will graduate into productive people. If the debate is simply economics, look at our education system as a whole and get rid of the beaurocrats. I hope A&M does not have 41 associate athletic directors. In closing, look at how well the US has done in the Olympics with men's and women's swimming. Most of those medals were generated at a college swimming pool.

I don't think of college athletics as a private capitalistic business. I think it of it as the opportunity to compete in sports while receiving an education. The fact that that has gotten off track is what is killing everything else.

Coaches that aren't any smarter than you or I are getting paid king's ransoms. Kids that can barely read at a junior high level are 'getting' college educations. Compare the GPA's of the teams getting cut to the GPA's of the ones 'driving the bus'. Our priorities are getting so f'd up that we now have people willing to look past a serial child rapist to protect the golden goose. When does it stop?

At some point, something other than money has to matter.

You would hope so but money drives everything nowadays. The student-athlete has became the athlete----------------------------------------------------------student. I am fully expecting many more Men's swimming programs to go under in the next couple of years. The thing that surprised me with Maryland is that it was both Men's and Women's.

You guys make a lot of really good points.

Universities are educational institutions and college athletics started off as simply a way to keep kids fit and teach them some life lessons while they were getting their degree...and I think that's generally true for D2 and D3. The problem with D1 is that it has gotten to be big business and in big business there is simply no point where "something other than money has got to matter".

It's a good point you make, about college swimming being where many of our Olympians are developed (track too). I think the problem is that a lot of people seem to want universities to keep subsidizing our swimming and track olympic development programs although these schools aren't really getting much in return.

If not for the money coming in from these revenue sports, all of the olympic sports at the D1 level would look more like D2. The only reason the Oly sports exist in the fashion which they do (with the $1 mil budgets) is BECAUSE of basketball & football.

It's crazy to think that schools should spend LESS money on the sports that are making them money and MORE money on olympic sports. Why!?!?! The USOC and the governing bodies of these sports are the entities that should be spending the money on them.

All these years of big budgets for olympic sports has given their fans a sense of entitlement and its useless to debate the merits of one particular sport over another but fan support does the talking.

You can't force schools to take money from football and pump money into swimming any more than you can force McDonalds to take money away from Big Macs and put it more into garden salads. Salads might be the only thing I can eat at McDonalds but there are millions of lardbutts around the country who keep on mowing cheeseburgers and so until that changes, cheeseburgers it is.

I don't think anyone is saying they should take money away from the two big sports to give it to the others. They are saying the opposite -- quit taking from the have-nots to give even more to the haves.

The USOC etc. etc. doesn't even begin to have enough money to fund these sports at the collegiate level -- and these sports have a LOT less of a sense of entitlement than the big boys. Trust me on this one. That's why the lion's share of problems in collegiate athletics come from the sports that make all the money. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I hate to keep harping on Penn State but it certainly is Exhibit A. The amount of cheating, paying players, and fraudulent entrance into universities combined with entire academic educational experiences is beyond rampant...and it's because of all the things you mentioned.

Again, it goes back to are you running a private, money-making business or a college athletic program. They are two separate things. It's got to be about more than money and popularity.

[This message has been edited by Look Out Below (edited 11/10/2011 2:16p).]

I don't really understand what you're saying. By the "have nots" do you mean universities or olympic sports?

Olympic sports

Where we're disagreeing then is that I don't think the "have-nots" have anything to be taken away from them. I mean, anything they had in the first place they are being "given" by football.

As a D1 athletic department you ARE running a money-making business. You might not like the truth, but to look at it any other way is not realistic. When you have 8-figure budgets, it's no longer just "the opportunity to compete in sports while getting an education".

Another thing to consider is how much of a university's prestige is tied to football and basketball, and that success in those two typically results in larger enrollments and even increased academic ratings. Swimming and tennis don't do that for a school.

You're a purist - I get that and appreciate it, but as someone that has worked in D1 college athletics and understands pretty well I think your viewpoint fails to consider the other side, which is that an athletic department like Maryland NEEDS to have success in football and basketball in order to stay afloat and the best way to have success in those two is to devote most of your resources to them. Lots of kids go to Maryland because of football and basketball. Lots of kids go there for academics. Lots of folks donate lots of money because of those things. Obviously in academics its the school's mission to do well but just from a practical and financial standpoint there is a very clear purpose to doing as well as possible in all of them.

No one goes to Maryland for swimming except for swimmers. There's not one non-swimming kid that enrolls there because of their swim team...and obviously not that many alums donate money directly to swimming because if there were, swimming would not have been cut.

Harry Dunne - You are reiterating the current state of affairs. I think it is accurate. It is also unfortunate. The NCAA has let it get to this state because they have been seduced by the money in football and basketball.

Stanford doesn't spend nearly as much money on athletics as Texas does. Yet they field twice as many sports, excels in most of them, and does it without whoring out to football. My opinion would be unpopular on the football board, but I would be perfectly happy with 10-2 or 9-3 football seasons with other sports teams like Stanford's. Their academic position far exceeds A&M.

I don't know U of Maryland very well except for their rep for basketball. I used to live in Northern Va through 11th grade. Their academics are strong. I agree no one chose Maryland for its swim team. But a fair number of students probably chose Maryland because it is (was?) a well rounded school that ISN'T dominated by big money sports culture. That speaks better to education+sports than what is going on at the Jones' of the world.

Great article hitting around what the points I was trying to make:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/stewart_mandel/11/11/penn-state-joe-paterno-culture/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

quote:

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Stanford doesn't spend nearly as much money on athletics as Texas does. Yet they field twice as many sports, excels in most of them, and does it without whoring out to football. My opinion would be unpopular on the football board, but I would be perfectly happy with 10-2 or 9-3 football seasons with other sports teams like Stanford's. Their academic position far exceeds A&M

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well said Spice

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Yet they field twice as many sports, excels in most of them, and does it without whoring out to football.

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Stanford is in the unique position of being the "Harvard of the West". They excel at Olympic sports because a great number of their student athletes are (smartly) choosing the school for the strength of the degree that they will earn.
A couple of years ago Stanford had to cut 21 athletic staff and reduce the department by over 10% and cut their operating budget $5 mil. They didn't cut sports, but a lot of sports had to raise their own money...which they could do because it's Stanford and their alums have deep pockets. Fencing had to raise $250,000. I'm sure other sports were in similar positions.

I see your point and we could go back and forth all day - there is no right and wrong, we both just have valid but differing opinions. My poin is that it is BECAUSE (and not in spite of) Stanford's academic position that they do not have to "***** themselves out" to football.

I hate to keep trumpeting that I worked in athletics like that gives me some secret insight that you guys don't have but I do think that I have a more realistic perspective...we can all complain and understand how unfair it is what is being done to small businesses in our country right now but the small business owner is the one with real perspective. It's easy to take the moral high ground on this subject and in theory you're right - it's obviously more noble and right to keep college athletics pure...and not raise taxes, and not socialize medicine, and it's really easy to make idealistic arguments against those things as long as you're not the one tasked with keeping an athletic department afloat. Had I not worked in athletics I think I would agree with you. The problem is that its just not realistic...I do hear what you're saying and appreciate possibly the first intelligent argument ever on Texags to not result in butthurt and namecalling...so on that note I'm all tapped out on this topic. Dunne out.

p.s. - the *****s are because for some reason you can write whoring but not wh ore

Totally agree with your points and respect your opinion as well. It's been a good discussion.

Several of the folks posting here, including myself, have worked at or had a very personal stake in collegiate athletics also so it's not necessarily that there are things you see that we don't.

I think it's more some of us have seen what some of the money goes to (i.e. not keeping things 'afloat' but lavishing it on the already well-off for frivolous high-dollar things that aren't the difference between being competitive and not being competitive). I promise you I could come up with myriad ;-) examples just from my own personal experiences.

One thing I will say about Paterno, for all his moral negligence regarding this awful child rape situation, is that -- from a financial standpoint -- he stayed loyal to Penn State for the right reasons and didn't hold them up for a higher salary every time he did something right. That sure as hell doesn't happen here.

Harry - I respect your view.

I just think college sports is growing train wreck. It saddens me to see what $$$$ is doing to it all. I contend it doesn't have to be this way. But the powers that be are uninterested in change.

My perpesctive includes my role as a parent of a college athlete, and one about to be.

I do know that if I were a billionaire, I would not give any university money for athletics that could go to football or basketball. It would go only to non-revenue sports.