Fellow Alumni Golfers Brian Mount and Bill Malchano have alerted me to the abrupt elimination of the Men's and Women's Track programs, and the Men's Cross Country program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Brian went to William and Mary, a fellow school in the Colonial Athletic Conference. Bill lives in Wilmington.
Apparently, the school will keep only Women's Cross Country and add a Sand Volleyball program to come to compliance with Title IX. Yeah, you read that right. Track and Field is being replaced in its entirety at a Division I school by Sand Volleyball.
And I doubt this will be the last we hear of similar "decisions". And you all know I don't consider sand volleyball a sport.
This is like watching the Hindenburg go down in flames.
ReplyDelete"Oh the humanity".
Let it not be forgotten that Miami of Ohio added Women's In Line Skating to come into Title IX compliance after dropping a couple of men's sports. As there were almost no venues for this sport in the US of A the team had competitions in Europe. Take that, men's wrestling. The only marginal benefit to eliminating track in someway (and this is going to ruffle feathers) is if indoor track got dropped, it would save people from having to peak twice for both indoor and outdoor, and then have nothing left for summer competition. nuff said.
They had actually dropped Men's Indoor Track last year, but allowed all the athletes to compete as individuals in meets. That's like having your cake and eating it too. The athletes assumed all the costs. Now they are really sh*t-canned and can't compete as individuals anymore.
ReplyDeleteAt some point, even the Power 5 conference teams will have to face these kinds of decisions. The NCAA's days of having a free labor pool (subsidized tuition/room & board, notwithstanding) are over and only those schools with consistently good (12-2, 13-1, or 14-0) over long periods of time will be able to afford sponsoring 30 or so sports.
ReplyDeleteI haven't done all kinds of research, but I'll wager there are a few schools in the Power 5 who don't have men's track.
LTM