A recommendation to cut men’s track and field, men’s gymnastics, and men’s tennis programs at the University of Minnesota will go to a vote of the school’s Board of Regents next Friday, according to Rachel Blount of the Start Tribune.
The resolution to be voted on was presented to the Board the day after athletics director Mark Coyle announced that the school would be cutting 3 sports. Coyle blamed financial shortfalls exacerbated by the pandemic and Title IX compliance as the reasons for cutting 3 men’s sports.
A simple majority of the 12-member board is needed to eliminate the 3 sports. A 6-6 vote will fail the resolution and save the programs.
Blount has also reported that in addition to the 3 men’s sports that are being cut, the school also plans to have a total of 98 fewer athletes on its “non-revenue” teams next season: 41 fewer female athletes in addition to 57 men cut by the elimination of 3 sports.
Blount tells SwimSwam that according to data that the Star Tribune obtained from the athletic department, both men’s and women’s swimming & diving teams are expected to have smaller rosters in 2021-2022. The men are projected at 35 athletes this season and 32 next season, while the women are projected at 33 this season and 30 in 2021-202.
Blount also says that there isn’t any talk of eliminating either program at this time.
A more dramatic example projects the women’s cross country roster to drop from 34 athletes this season to 20 next season.
A spokesperson for the Minnesota swimming & diving program said in response to an inquiry that they “haven’t heard anything,” accompanied by a reminder that the program cuts are still pending Board of Regents’ approval.
A different spokesperson that Blount spoke with at the school, however, says that the athletic department communicated to head coaches of the impacted women’s sports about the cuts, though it was unclear what, exactly, was communicated.
Dropping the men’s programs put the ratio of female student athletes to male student athletes at 59% to 41%. With a student body undergraduate enrollment of 54% women and 46% men, that means that women’s rosters had to be shrunk (or men’s rosters expanded) to maintain Title IX compliance.
I collegiate sports is about the athlete ?
The best place to save $$$ would be to cut back on the administrative staff (far too many) and their staff positions.
Three Men’s teams cut. Just as we’ve seen at Iowa (3 men, 1 women) and UConn (3 men, 1 women), “Gender equity” is looking real funny in the light these days.
It sure feels like the cuts at UCLA years ago when male Olympians with stellar GPA’s and national and conference titles in multiple sports were eliminated to balance the budget. The budget was dominated by basketball and football hiring and firings which even stymied the growth of all programs there. I hope brave, principled leaders at these institutions step up and support the sports that keep their graduation rates at higher levels and produce stellar, accomplished citizens that give back to their institutions. We need more of that.
Yea and we really believe it when the AD says “There are not any discussions about dropping either swimming program at this time”. Hope he has some swamp land for sale! ADs ALL have had these discussions with CFOs and other bean counters on their campus.
How about this as a compromise? Allow revenue-generating Football and Basketball to continue to play their traditional schedules (conference games and non-conference), but completely restructure and rename the conferences, regionally, for non-revenue generating sports (but of course, keeping them in their respective Division classes). This would cut down on the travel associated costs for non-revenue generating sports, create some new and interesting rivalries that would be easier (and cheaper) for a lot of parents and fans to attend, and – just maybe – eliminate the need to cut teams due to “costs”. We need to start thinking outside the box!
Would it surprise you to learn that football players, coaches and trainers at pac-12 schools are put up in $200/night+ hotels the night before home football games? Allegedly to create “team bonding” but it’s really so the coaches can monitor and keep track of their athletes. These are for home games.
Football spends more on their “home game” travel/meals than a men’s and women’s swim team spends actually traveling. The problem isn’t non-revenue generating sports traveling out of state for competitions. The problem is what the ncaa and division 1 schools athletic departments’ have continually allowed for their 110 person roster.
Side note: the pac-12 football team that played in the Rose Bowl each year usually stayed at… Read more »
In this COVID year, university of Texas puts up one per room
I should have made it clear that my suggestion assumes that nothing will be done in the immediate future to address the inequities you cite and the obvious reasons. It will take a sea change to end those. And yes, it is disgusting. Hoping for the best… and trying to think of ways to prevent the worst.
The article talks about “roster size cuts” – rather than scholarship numbers. Does the NCAA now impose roster size limits? I am familiar with scholarship limits, but never heard of roster size limits. If a team/sport can accommodate (with coaches and facilities) far more students in a sport, why should it matter? Obviously there are travel team limits, championship meet/contest team limits/entry limits, but if a coach in a sport – swimming or track for example (but rowing is another obvious one) is willing to have a team of 40, 50, 60, 80, 100 members (with equal opportunity to so participate by non scholarship athletes for both sexes) for practices, why does that matter? These limits don’t make any sense.
They’re not NCAA-imposed limits, they’re school-imposed limits. This is done for reasons of Title IX balancing, budget reasons, and sometimes for “manageability” reasons. More student-athletes can strain the administrative workload, like tutors or compliance.
This was actually brought up in the Star Tribune article as it relates to the cross country team:
In 2004, when then-AD Joel Maturi was considering eliminating sports, Wilson increased his cross-country roster by 30 to raise the proportion of women athletes to the proper level.
“It cost a few thousand dollars,” Wilson said. “Some of those women went on to become All-Americans, like Gabe [Anderson] Grunewald.”
Cross country is one of the cheapest sports to have, especially true in the variable costs for each additional… Read more »
There’s a $/athlete number for each sport, relating to travel, equipment, academic support, nutritional support etc. By trimming the # of athletes, the sport’s budget can go down correspondingly. That’s savings outside of scholarship, or championship meet limits.
Well don’t provide the “academic/nutrition” support for all – just the scholarship athletes. Although I date myself, when I swam our team had no scholarship swimmers, no one needed tutors (yet team GPA usually was above 3.5), and we did fine feeding ourselves. Swim suits, sweat suits, running Shirts and pants, shoes are very inexpensive. And with travel team limits, travel costs are fixed and do not increase once you exceed the travel squad limit. Swimming, track and a few others are exceedingly cheap in terms of marginal cost (coaching, pool time, travel cost) being fixed – so why have a roster limit? A 50 meter pool swum side to side as a 25 yard pool can accomadate about 25… Read more »
Would it make sense to say please carry more out of state athletes so that the cost of tuition is higher? I have to think an in state or out of state student athlete pays for itself with the cost of the school/housing, am I wrong in thinking that? Or is there just a big disconnect between athletic dept and admissions/enrollment etc…
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Maybe actions like this will finally make people think about going back to the drawing board for Title IX. There needs to be some fine tuning on this law, after all it is almost 50 years old. Things are just slightly different these days you know?
I will never understand people that immediately downvote / scoff at the idea of a nuanced discussion about tweaking title IX.
Unintended consequences of a very necessary 50 year old law are robbing kids of opportunities…that should be concerning to everyone and cause for discussion about small changes.
Given that there’s not an infinite amount of money, do you know what’s going to happen if they soften the standards on Title IX?
Women’s sports are going to be cut.
I don’t see any scenario where it’s better than a zero-sum game.
I am not in favor of cutting sports, but frankly some spots have to be trimmed. You can’t objectively look at how things have changed and call this equitable. Programs are going to unbelievable lengths to fill spots for female athletes to the point where we have athletes playing NCAA sports that are not even what I would consider competent athletes. Perfect example is of a golf tournament currently occurring some of the female golfers cannot even break 100 over 18 holes. One golfer in particular is currently 103 over par for the tournament in her most recent round she was 40 over for a score of 112. That is ridiculous. One of my daughters is an avid golfer and it… Read more »
The problem isn’t title IX, the problem is the insane resources given to Football. Honestly, even after reduction of the varsity squad size, colleges have 30 more players on their roster than a pro team. And the power five coaches push for larger squads so they can keep talent on their bench instead of allowing them to play at smaller programs where they might upset the big boys. Hegemony in action!
Also, we are just not going to address that while female sports participation in high school is up over 1,000% since title IX (a good thing of course), male sports participation has actually declined when compared to population growth (significantly). When you factor that females make up almost 60% of college students now we will just sit by while any male sport other than football and basketball is essentially teed up to get cut pretty much at any time.
The problem isn’t title IX, the problem is the insane resources given to Football. Honestly, even after reduction of the varsity squad size, colleges have 30 more players on their roster than a pro team. And the power five coaches push for larger squads so they can keep talent on their bench instead of allowing them to play at smaller programs where they might upset the big boys. Hegemony in action!
I agree with this. To me, the only permanent solution to the Title IX problem is to reduce what’s given to football.
It’s not that I believe we’re anywhere closer to making this happen (maybe it will one day if the concussion research drives more people out of youth football), but it’s not that “men’s sports suffer under Title IX,” it’s that “men’s sports that aren’t football suffer under Title IX.” Title IX was created to address gender inequalities, not sport-by-sport inequalities, and I’m not sure there’s ever going to be political will to address sport-by-sport inequalities (for starters, because “swimmers” are not a protected class by the US Constitution).
I’d love to see athletics departments find a way to… Read more »
Don’t just throw away your umbrella because you aren’t getting wet when it is raining. Are these really different days, or is Title IX actually doing exactly what it is supposed to do? Women’s participation in sports has skyrocketed at the high school and college level since this started. But if you start whittling away at the law, it just makes it easy to ignore the desired impact as well.
Did I say throw away? No, I said back to the drawing board…as in this thing needs to be tweaked. Male participation in high school sports increasing 22% percent since 1972 while the population increased 56% in that same time is a MAJOR issue. Obviously, this decline cannot be pinned completely on Title IX, but with this huge of a decrease, it absolutely has a major impact. This has moved beyond equity in sports for females to punitive towards males, especially in non revenue sports. Failure to accept this shows lack of objectivity and an issue grasping basic mathematics.
I don’t think they are mandated by Title IX to cut the women’s spots, but the rules allow them to do so, and stay in compliance. they just wouldn’t be able to drop more than 41 women and stay in compliance with the ratios. correct?
From the article: Dropping the men’s programs put the ratio of female student athletes to male student athletes at 59% to 41%. With a student body undergraduate enrollment of 54% women and 46% men, that means that women’s rosters *had to be shrunk (or men’s rosters expanded)* to maintain Title IX compliance.