Crawfish - Other BE Sports

[GoldenWarrior11]

Big East Men's Soccer has had fifteen bids in the four seasons since reorganizing. Men's Lacrosse has had Denver win a National Championship, an NCAA Runner Up, and Marquette has made the tournament each of the past two years. UConn has won two national championships in Field Hockey in this formation of the Big East. Providence won a national championship in Women's Cross Country in 2013.

I'd say our other sports are doing just fine...

[FriarJ]

I would say the other sports are marginally important. It's mostly for alumni. We could be absolutely great at all other sports and terrible at basketball and we would be in a completely different monetary situation and level of respect than we are. Nobody cares about anything outside of Football and Men's basketball outside of message board loonies and our success in those other sports has NOTHING to do with how we are perceived as a conference.

[ArmyVet]

I would say the other sports are marginally important. It's mostly for alumni. We could be absolutely great at all other sports and terrible at basketball and we would be in a completely different monetary situation and level of respect than we are. Nobody cares about anything outside of Football and Men's basketball outside of message board loonies and our success in those other sports has NOTHING to do with how we are perceived as a conference.

You are all closer to this than I am, but do you think alumni really care about any of these sports? If they did, wouldn't they attend?

I know there are NCAA rules on the minimum # of scholarships and they have to be even for Title IX, but why not just give the required number of scholarships in:
MBB/WBB
MSOC/WSOC
VB/baseball or lacrosse

Virtually no one attends sports other than these.

[sciencejay]

Big East Men's Soccer has had fifteen bids in the four seasons since reorganizing. Men's Lacrosse has had Denver win a National Championship, an NCAA Runner Up, and Marquette has made the tournament each of the past two years. UConn has won two national championships in Field Hockey in this formation of the Big East. Providence won a national championship in Women's Cross Country in 2013.

I'd say our other sports are doing just fine...

Women's vb has had 2-3 teams in the NCAA tourney each of the four years after realignment--and CU made the elite 8 in 2016.

I would say the other sports are marginally important. It's mostly for alumni. We could be absolutely great at all other sports and terrible at basketball and we would be in a completely different monetary situation and level of respect than we are. Nobody cares about anything outside of Football and Men's basketball outside of message board loonies and our success in those other sports has NOTHING to do with how we are perceived as a conference.

This is why this is such an interesting topic. Do we reassess college athletics and elevate the revenue-generating sports (FBS FB and MBB only for all schools with a few exceptions) over the non-revenue sports? Do we demote them to secondary status--club status? That flies in the face of the traditional role of athletics in college--certainly in the face of the purpose of the NCAA. What about Title IX? No NCAA women's sport generates the kind of revenue that FBS FB and MBB do--Nebraska volleyball is the ONLY volleyball program in the nation that runs in the black--not Penn St., Wisconsin, Texas, UCLA, Stanford, Hawaii (all very well-supported, successful programs)--only NU (with 8000+ average attendance). I would imagine UConn WBB runs in the black as well, but few other women's programs do nationwide. So do many/most women's sports get demoted to club status? Not unless all men's sports (other than FB and MBB) get demoted. You need a lot of female scholarships to account for 85 football scholarships.

But we are in interesting financial times overall. Gonzaga is a great add to the conference but for the travel costs of the non-revenue sports. And you either have a seat at the table of power in collegiate athletics or you don't. Football money drives the ship overall which puts us in a disadvantaged position going forward at best. BEast ADs have very difficult decisions coming up as they try to maintain excellence in MBB in the face of (potentially) declining media rights dollars (if our next deal doesn't pay as well as Fox is paying for the current one). It will be interesting which programs get jettisoned in the context of Title IX compliance. You can't just bag women's crew to save a few bucks.

[sciencejay]

I would say the other sports are marginally important. It's mostly for alumni. We could be absolutely great at all other sports and terrible at basketball and we would be in a completely different monetary situation and level of respect than we are. Nobody cares about anything outside of Football and Men's basketball outside of message board loonies and our success in those other sports has NOTHING to do with how we are perceived as a conference.

You are all closer to this than I am, but do you think alumni really care about any of these sports? If they did, wouldn't they attend?

I know there are NCAA rules on the minimum # of scholarships and they have to be even for Title IX, but why not just give the required number of scholarships in:
MBB/WBB
MSOC/WSOC
VB/baseball or lacrosse

Virtually no one attends sports other than these.

I don't disagree with you AV, but then collegiate athletics would truly be businesses and not havens of amateur athletics. I prefer the amateur student athlete model (while acknowledging that's not the case in FB and MBB) because it helps to expand the number and kind of student who has access to a college education. This is an argument akin to arguments to get rid of liberal arts classes/requirements in universities. For the most part, those curricula do not benefit revenue-generating (job-creating) industries. Are they important in and of themselves and so should be retained? The way things work, not a single collegiate female gymnast would make the US olympic team (olympians are mostly much younger than college age and are training at private facilities rather than through the school system). But that collegiate sport provides an outlet of competition and development for a group of young women. Do we bag it because it is a money loser?

[ArmyVet]

I would say the other sports are marginally important. It's mostly for alumni. We could be absolutely great at all other sports and terrible at basketball and we would be in a completely different monetary situation and level of respect than we are. Nobody cares about anything outside of Football and Men's basketball outside of message board loonies and our success in those other sports has NOTHING to do with how we are perceived as a conference.

You are all closer to this than I am, but do you think alumni really care about any of these sports? If they did, wouldn't they attend?

I know there are NCAA rules on the minimum # of scholarships and they have to be even for Title IX, but why not just give the required number of scholarships in:
MBB/WBB
MSOC/WSOC
VB/baseball or lacrosse

Virtually no one attends sports other than these.

I don't disagree with you AV, but then collegiate athletics would truly be businesses and not havens of amateur athletics. I prefer the amateur student athlete model (while acknowledging that's not the case in FB and MBB) because it helps to expand the number and kind of student who has access to a college education. This is an argument akin to arguments to get rid of liberal arts classes/requirements in universities. For the most part, those curricula do not benefit revenue-generating (job-creating) industries. Are they important in and of themselves and so should be retained? The way things work, not a single collegiate female gymnast would make the US olympic team (olympians are mostly much younger than college age and are training at private facilities rather than through the school system). But that collegiate sport provides an outlet of competition and development for a group of young women. Do we bag it because it is a money loser?

I don't know if any Big East schools field a gymnastics team, but having it be a club sport if such an environment existed would be fine with me. My premise is that the Big East fields teams in many sports that are not remotely competitive and are a huge drain on very limited resources and that the league should focus only on those where they can be competitive.

[gtmoBlue]

In order to maintain NCAA Div 1 status every such school has to field at least 14? sports. The number of scholies per sport is mandated, however the mix of sports is up to the school. This situation is between the school and the NCAA, the conferences are not involved, unless the school falls from Div 1.

Example: Creighton has 14 sports, 6 - Mens and 8 Womens sports. With so few sports CU can never compete for the NACDA Learfield Sports Directors' Cup, formerly the Sears Cup (Top Athletic School Award).
Stanford by contrast has about 30 sports. The Cardinal have won the NACDA Cup for 22 straight years.

[notkirkcameron]

I would say the other sports are marginally important. It's mostly for alumni. We could be absolutely great at all other sports and terrible at basketball and we would be in a completely different monetary situation and level of respect than we are. Nobody cares about anything outside of Football and Men's basketball outside of message board loonies and our success in those other sports has NOTHING to do with how we are perceived as a conference.

This is the most cogent post on this topic.

For example, DePaul has historically powerful teams in Women's BBall and Softball. Yet, these successes don't matter much to anyone beyond a few diehards. Now, if DePaul made the NCAA Tournament a few years in a row in Men's Basketball, you'd see a totally different dynamic not just across DePaul's alumni base, but the City of Chicago as a whole.

[gosports1]

Without implying a split down the road, isn't it important to prop up the 'power narrative' by remaining competitive in "other sports not named mens basketball"?

No

This is so wrong.

The conference needs to cultivate an image that its more like the major conferences than not.

When Delaware poaches sitting Big East coaches that's a head-scratcher.

If you look up and down the standings of the other sports (many of the ones mentioned are revenue producing in good leagues)... and you don't see the BE initials... that's bad.

It looks small-time to lose any conference coach to a Delaware.

se is Georgetown grad. maybe she feels more at home/comfortable in the mid atlantic region? where did she grow up?

[FriarJ]

I would say the other sports are marginally important. It's mostly for alumni. We could be absolutely great at all other sports and terrible at basketball and we would be in a completely different monetary situation and level of respect than we are. Nobody cares about anything outside of Football and Men's basketball outside of message board loonies and our success in those other sports has NOTHING to do with how we are perceived as a conference.

You are all closer to this than I am, but do you think alumni really care about any of these sports? If they did, wouldn't they attend?

I know there are NCAA rules on the minimum # of scholarships and they have to be even for Title IX, but why not just give the required number of scholarships in:
MBB/WBB
MSOC/WSOC
VB/baseball or lacrosse

Virtually no one attends sports other than these.

I was just assuming that if they are important even marginally its just to alumni and I should have added only alumni that played those sports. In the end they are not important to our stature as a conference at all.