Brown Downgrading Varsity Sports to Club Status

Athletic Recruits
81

Reprinting these comments from above:

“Women athletes still do struggle for equality in general,but in a sport like volleyball , for instance, they have had far more options than talented men at the collegiate level for quite awhile. Do you think that is lousy?”

“Soccer too.”

I’d just like to address these comments because it is tiring seeing successful women’s sports taking the fall every time a men’s sport gets cut. The problem with men’s sports being cut is not Title IX; it is football. Last time I looked, years ago, there were about 14 women’s soccer scholarships for every 11.2 men’s soccer scholarships (not Ivy League of course). This difference is pretty negligible, though I admit that I don’t remember the exact numbers. Since there are no scholarships for Ivy League soccer, there is no reason to complain about women’s soccer anyway. But why don’t men’s soccer and volleyball teams elsewhere complain about the 125 scholarships allowed for men’s football in comparison with their own sports. So I count 89 men on the Brown football roster, with 14 coaches, so why is society still pointing a finger at women’s volleyball, women’s soccer or at any women’s sport at all? Women’s volleyball puts 6 on the court at a time with a couple of coaches on the sideline. A large part of Brown’s financial resources and athletic admission slots are going to football, a game played with a large roster of male players. This creates an imbalance not at all the creation of female athletes.

82

I also want to mention that the Pres’s letters were extremely well written. But what has been written does not reflect the reality of what occurred.

  • promise of "providing academic and personal advising and support for our student-athletes during this transition". The only advising has been (1) access to the very same advisors that every Brown student has access to for any reason at any time, (2) access to a special advisor to help students transfer to another school (but deadlines have passed for next year anyway).
  • transition teams to club status. Not all teams are being transitioned. Some teams being transitioned already have clubs, so some students on the clubs will either get less play time or no longer be on the club as the presumably better former team members become club members
  • in another email there were statements that Brown would try to transition the coaches of the various teams. This hasn't been done for all coaches. Our coach of a couple of decades only received 3 (THREE) WEEKS notice that she would be without a job (loss of income AND need to replace health insurance). That's a pretty terrible way to treat your valued employee of decades.
  • promise of virtual meetings to hear from the Pres or Director of Athletics. These meetings are being conducted by the Director of Athletics, who has blown off at least one team's meeting so far.

My question, what’s the hurry? Why not give people real notice and let people have a real opportunity to make other plans.

83

Glad at least men’s track and field and cross country were reinstated. The whole thing seemed unfortunate in how it was initially handled. Too bad there wasn’t able to be some kind of transition time from varsity to club built in for some of the other teams.

In terms of volleyball, the differences between number of men and women’s teams is just a statement of fact . I certainly have no issue with women in volleyball. A son’s fiancee was, in fact, a 4 year varsity volleyball athlete at a Patriot League school!

84

NCAA Division 1 Football teams are allowed up to 85 scholarships (63 for FCS), not 125.

Additionally, at many schools, revenue from football pays for the rest of the entire athletic budget. Almost every other sport (outside of men’s basketball) loses money.

And it’s by far the most popular sport in America, not just in college athletics.

You’re not going to get much sympathy for your arguments.

85

I think the argument is that when colleges want to beef up their football team, they start looking at their whole athletic program. Since they have to keep within the Title IX boundaries, at Brown they have to have 53% women athletes. That means that if they want to add to football, but not add to women’s sports, they have to disproportionately cut men’s sports. This negative situation is being further exacerbated by the fact that Brown doesn’t want to spend any more money on athletics, so not only are they cutting other men’s sports to add athletes to the football program, but they are cutting women sports too, thereby necessitating even greater cuts to the non-football men’s teams.

I don’t know what magic wand Brown is going to use to keep the men’s field, track & cross country while cutting the other, predominantly women’s teams, and still stay in compliance with Title IX. My takeaway from Paxon’s most recent email is that they will manage to do that this year (so presumably they won’t add as many football players this year as they intended to?), but they are going to have to make additional changes next year in order to stay in compliance and get the additional football players they want.

The whole roll-out was really ill conceived, including the fact that the announcement was made after the transfer deadline had passed, and also Brown has incoming Freshmen recruits for some of those cut sports. Imagine being a recruitable athlete and finding out after you’ve committed and too late to go somewhere else that your sport is cut?! Not cool. Also not cool, how they didn’t give better notice to their coaches. Also not cool, how they are making this change in the middle of all the upheaval going on with the students because of Covid.

86

And yet, the President’s email tries to put a positive spin on these decisions being made in the midst of the Covid crisis- preserving eligibility, transfer ability. Go figure.

87

Re: soccer, it is not really the scholarships I was thinking of, it is that there are 344 D1 women’s soccer programs and only 206 men’s programs. There are simply many, many more D1 roster spots for women, let alone also more money. As the other poster said, it is just a fact. Furthermore, there are approx. 394,000 girls playing high school soccer, and 459,000 boys playing.

I’m a feminist and I’m not complaining about it, just acknowledging that it is easier for women to play D1 soccer than it is for men.

88

Men’s volleyball is even more lopsided than soccer. There are only 23 Division 1 programs in the country, 300 + women’s programs. It is what it is and has been like that for years. Many Men’s club teams are very competitive at the schools that do not have varsity teams.

89

Can’t transfer if the deadline has already passed.

90

So D1 football has 105 roster spots and can give up to 85 full scholarships at a D1 (non-Ivy school). Not 125 roster spots. Does that substantially change the discussion? Also just because someone proclaims football to be the most popular sport does not make it so. More people of both sexes play soccer and many more people run than play football.

In fact when you look at those 85 admission spots at each Ivy school taken up by football, though those students are not receiving “athletic” scholarships, many of them will be receiving FA…and taking a spot from another that might have otherwise received admission and FA. A member of my extended family attended Brown with FA while playing football for 4 years. Football can be great, admitted. However, when we discuss changes to the athletic program, can’t we discuss football? Why is that impossible to do? It is easier to blame women’s sports, true. But that is not being honest.

Instead of pointing to the difference between men’s and women’s soccer, let’s at least take a look at how football contributes to this imbalance. Obviously the reason there are differences in the number of college athletes playing women’s vs. men’s soccer is owing to the amount of men playing football. Football was nearly the founding intercollegiate sport (crew in 1852 and football in 1869). Much time has passed. Does this still make sense? I sure don’t think Rutgers needed 85 players and 14 coaches to win that game in 1869.

91

D1 allows 105 rostered football players, of whom 85 can be “counters”, before the first game in a given season or the first week of classes, whichever is earliest. Once the season/classes start there are no actual roster limits (the 85 limit still applies), although most schools keep somewhere around 100-110. The Ivy, largely because of the absence of red shirts, is permitted 120 rostered players, virtually all of whom will be provided support through admissions. When my son was playing, most Ivy schools were either at or very close to that 120 limit. The general rule in the Ivy is that each school supports 30 recruits a year, which is far and away the largest pool of supported likely letter recruits in the Ivy.

Both sides of this debate are unarguably true fwiw. Football is far and away the most popular sport in the US, at both the pro and college level. If somehow proof of this were needed, a simple glance at the TV deals the major conferences and Notre Dame have for football, not to mention the attendance statistics anywhere in D1 (probably the lower divisions too) make this obvious. Sports Illustrated estimated that cancelling this upcoming season would cause a loss of some 4 billion in revenue. There is no other sport, or collection of sports, in the US that approaches anything like that level of popularity. Most if not all of the fixed costs associated with having any type of athletic program (trainers, weight rooms, equipment staff, a stadium, practice space) are either borne or off set by the revenue from football. In other words D1 football allows college athletic departments to function as they are currently structured, regardless of whether the sport itself “makes money” under a particular college’s accounting policy.

On the other hand, football severely bends the curve towards women’s sports in every other sport, and there are plenty of male tennis players, track athletes and soccer players who simply do not have the same opportunities to play their sport in college that exists for their female counterparts.

92

I guess it depends on your definition of “popularity.” If it is all about the cash that the sport is worth on the professional level, then football is king. Is that the basis upon which we should operate sports at the college level? I don’t think so. I also don’t think bringing up the revenue from the college bowl league is very helpful since the Ivies do not participate.

I cannot find a real recent list, but when I looked up statistics it was clear that soccer had over 2x the youth participants as tackle football. I was surprised to see that basketball and baseball were well over even that figure. So if our schools are there to supply opportunities to our youth, they would in fact be well spent supporting those sports over football. Tennis, which was mentioned by someone above, has more youth participation than football as well.

I just think we need to acknowledge that Brown’s decision about its athletic department revolve around maintaining the status quo for football over all other male and female sports. Title IX usually gets the blame and that is profoundly disingenuous. When Northwestern eliminated its men’s and women’s T&F program years ago, one of the first things they did was rip up the track in its football stadium to make that decision irreversible. They eventually brought back NU women’s XC but not track. They still lack a track and the women’s XC team needs to drive to a different county to train. And nothing can demonstrate what is going on here today better than the image of that NU track being torn up back in the day. Football was and is literally displacing other sports. Women and Title IX were blamed then. And remember how the wrestlers complained about the women too? I am glad the T&F program is saved and I wonder how Brown will work that out.

P.S., if Brown ever gets a TV deal like ND…

93

It’s all about the money. It’s not about participation trophies or medals. ESPN and the Ivy League signed a 10-year agreement.

Football and basketball help promote and televise the other sports, where there would be less viewers.

http://www.ivyleaguenetwork.com/

https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/04/ivy-league-espn-10-year-media-deal-penn-athletics-basketball-football

94

Folks interested in digging deeper on participation rates among youth and HS might be interested in the annual NFHS report (for HS) and the Aspen Institute data (for youth):

https://www.nfhs.org/media/1020412/2018-19_participation_survey.pdf
https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/youth-sports-facts/participation-rates

Football has the highest participation rates among HS boys and is second among all HS sports only to track and field (boys and girls combined).

Data on youth sports prior to HS just aren’t as reliable but the Aspen Institute is probably the best source. Ideally these are ages where kids are sampling multiple sports and not yet specializing.

95

The stats I was using were also from the Aspen Institute, but were were for youth, defined as ages 6-12 and are not ideal.

https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/youth-sports-facts/participation-rates

However, taking data from these two age groups it appears as though boys get funneled into football from other sports at the high school level and it makes sense that this would continue into college. There is both interest and money in the sport. I would not argue against football existing as a college sport. I think a debate may be had related to the size of rosters and coaching staff. I am not sure that football should be the foundation of college athletic leagues. I object to administrators and others citing women’s sports as a problem when objectively it is the size of football that governs things. I find it particularly troublesome that the 53% female student population was cited as a reason for some of these changes. If there are more women going to the school, then there should be more access to athletic opportunities for them.

96

Boys do not tend to get “funnelled” into football unless the parent or child wants that. It (and wrestling) were the only sports that I just did not want my sons to get into so we just avoided those sports(no offense to those that gravitated to those sports) . Both sons were very tall (and athletic) so tried out lots of sports and settled on the ones they liked best.

Football is not going anywhere any time soon. I enjoy watching it myself . Brown seems like they could have handled their concerns better.

97

And any “funnelling” into sports seems to be influenced by factors like money . Some of the more niche sports are heavily associated with money/opportunity. Brown may be wanting to move more to continuing to embrace diversity(racial, socioeconomic, first gen, etc.- a good thing), but sounds like some of the teams, students, coaches, recruits, families , alumni, were blindsided by all of this. I wonder how future recruits and their parents will view Brown recruiting going forward for awhile.

98

I don’t think it is fair to say that women’s sports are a “problem”, nor do I think that is what is going on here. That said, it is undeniable that Title IX means, in the main, that the cost of maintaining a men’s sport at the varsity level is not just the cost of that sport, but a roughly equal cost to provide roughly equal female varsity opportunities. The converse would of course also be true, except we never get to that because football is so large that schools are almost always looking for ways to off set it on the women’s side. It would be interesting to know if those schools who maintain a D1 athletic program without football run in to similar issues or how their athletic departments are structured.

Football is just different than most sports. It requires far larger roster sizes, both because of the number of participants in any given contest and because of the very physical nature of the game. It also, even at the Ivy level, draws much more spectator interest than any other sport, which requires a different standard for facilities, support staff, etc. Is it necessary for colleges to make that investment? I don’t know. I do know that sponsoring a football program makes it easier for schools to absorb the cost of running a variety of other athletic programs. And that is leaving aside whether football effects general alumni donation levels, etc.

Which leads to another point which may be at play here that is independent of Title IX. When my son played, most if not all of the “soft” expense of running a program in the Ivy was absorbed by “Friends of” groups. If I remember correctly, the league charter barred the school from paying the costs associated with recruiting. All of that is handled by the various booster groups. In addition, pre and post game meals on the road, “snacks” after lifts and practices, some equipment like gloves, knee braces, etc, some of the “bling” like back packs, their travel sweats, championship rings, etc. and a bunch of other stuff, was paid for by the boosters, not the school. It may be that the sports on the block at Brown did not generate sufficient booster participation to adequately support the teams, and the school felt, either because of Title IX or because of its own institutional vision, that it was better to cut them than run them on a shoestring or redirect funding from other sources.

99

Maybe add female walk ons to existing sports? That’s the only way I think they can get there. If they add 10 female swimmers to the team from the general student population it gets them numbers and the only thing they have to do is add 2 slow(er) lanes in practice and buy 10 more suits.

100

I’m confident Brown will be able to figure this out and not be in violation of TitleIX.

Here are the TitleIX requirements, schools don’t have to have proportional M/W athletic participation as compared to M/W enrollment, there are other ways to fulfill TitleIX requirements.

Per the NCAA, schools have to meet all three of the below, but only one of the three tests in #1 must be met.

The eleven provisions are:

http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/inclusion/title-ix-frequently-asked-questions

If you look here, you can see the number of Brown athletes by sport: https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/institution/details

There are 880 unduplicated athletes, 443 are W (50.7%).

We won’t be able to figure out the exact situation, because there are 139 athletes (61M, 78W) playing more than one sport (and that’s not impacted by TNFXC which is reported as one number).

So we don’t know in what sports that overlap is, but some female athletes who participated in a sport that was eliminated may still be on another team.

Regardless, it seems likely Brown likely fulfills both the 2nd and 3rd tests needed to satisfy the first requirement of TitleX, listed above, and might fulfill the first because the number breakdown does look ‘substantially proportional’ to me, assuming that some of the 71 women in the eliminated sports play a second sport, and adding in the W sailors, which looks to be around 20.

Again, I am confident their TitleIX person has a good handle on this.