(09-03-2020 04:20 PM)Tribe32 Wrote: ..... Now, here's my big Bold question. Now that we cut our sports teams by seven, when are we going to see a 25% reduction in the Athletic Department staff? ....
Various thoughts, some in concert with previous comments:
-- I knew this had to be coming soon when I read that Stanford dropped about 7 or so sports. If a super-rich P5 school can drop sports then it would be easier for W&M to justify (and Huge apparently has professional ties to people at Stanford; useful for consulting).
-- The timing of it. 4:00 on Thursday. I'm surprised that it wasn't 4:00 on the Friday before the Labor Day weekend. Maybe the powers that be wanted to be off on Friday, and so they did it today. Also, if they were sincere about helping the (limited) number of scholarship athletes to successfully transfer, then why didn't they announce this a month ago to enable them to transfer BEFORE the academic school year started?
-- They said the decision was "final". Of course, if every alum (especially the big money donors) called to complain and threatened to pull all current and future donations -- then I surmise that the decision might not be quite as final as they say.
-- I agree with the question about Men's and Women's Golf. Those programs make no money and don't even win. At least Men's and Women's Swimming win CAA championships, and Men's Gymnastics has always been very competitive. I have heard for many years that the Gymnastics teams are fully funded from endowments (dating from the 1980's, which was when several other sports were cut at W&M). I think the Athletic Department covered themselves on that count by including this statement in their list of things that they took into account: "Number of competing programs in the mid-Atlantic region'. There are only about 21 or 23 schools that compete in gymnastics nationwide -- and Navy (and maybe Penn State?) are the only ones that come immediately to mind in our region. But so what?; it has always been that way and how is that a reason for abolishing a self-sustaining program? Another one of those things supposedly taken into account was "proven success". Well, for Gymnastics and Swimming, that was a box that was certainly checked off.
-- Another one of the things supposedly taken into account was "building community". This announcement does not build community, it tears down community. A course that Huge has wanted to take for several years and which she realized that the pandemic gave her the perfect cover for it.
-- Lastly, re the $3.2M deficit cited for '20-'21: how much of that deficit is tied to the $3.1M that W&M is paying Tony Shaver not to coach?