Digetydog wrote:... Essentially, we would be left with intramural sports and club teams.
Ah, the good ol days when athletes played a sport for the love of the sport. When a scholarship was all that was needed because they understood the meaning of an education. When staying close to home and playing for the local school. When playing and representing your school was the great reward.
Before the BIG money, TV contracts, exposure and greed became the major factors in college sports.
BB#2 wrote:Thats the most [deleted] arguement I have ever heard. You all hate TCU but lets try to compare them to us for a second. They had a soccer team and dropped them to add to the football and baseball budgets. Their baseball program sucked for a long time but of my long time friends that played soccer at TCU told me once the soccer program was dropped the baseball team improved dramatically. He said the mens soccer program cost the athletic department $300,000 a year and they only had 3.5 scholly's a year, how many do we have? 17/18? Thats a lot of money to spend on a program that produces zero revenue and that America doesn't give two [deleted] about soccer unless their 8 year old kid is playing. Seriously, I'll watch UEFA and Champions league everyone in a while but its not ever going to be big in America.
Also the whole softball comes with baseball thing is the dumbest thing I've heard in a while. Rice doesn't have softballteam but they have a badass baseball team.
Drop the soccer team and you don't have to add any womens sports so baseball can step right in.
Dropping TCU's (club-level) soccer team "to add to the football and baseball budgets" would have amounted to new shoelaces. They spent nothing on soccer, and it showed on the field.
"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses."
...
"Hit it."
When you suck at two sports, you cut one in hopes of only sucking a little less in the other. It worked for TCU. A long time ago, we made the commitment to soccer and its paid off well. Two final four appearances, a couple of elite a visits and #1 rankings several times. In baseball we would be just another team in Texas and a sucky one at that. Let's just keep it up in soccer where we have a statewide monopoly.
Only D1 soccer program in the Texas...Top 5 talent-rich state, Top 5 talent rich city...zero championships...zero runner-ups...zero excuses. I don't know about "paid off", not saying the program should be cut but SMU men's soccer is and has HUGELY under-achieved.
SMUer wrote:Only D1 soccer program in the Texas...Top 5 talent-rich state, Top 5 talent rich city...zero championships...zero runner-ups...zero excuses. I don't know about "paid off", not saying the program should be cut but SMU men's soccer is and has HUGELY under-achieved.
Track has the trophies to prove it! Soccer has greatly underperformed. 2 final fours while being the only team in the state is ok, but not great.
The numbers bear it out. Since the advent of Title IX, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, the number of girls playing high school sports has grown more than tenfold, from 294,000 in 1971 to nearly 3.2 million last year.
But this welcome transformation has come at a serious cost for many female athletes. Title IX has inflicted significant collateral damage, including increased health risks for the players, a drop in the number of women coaches, and increased exposure to sexual abuse.
And
Of special concern for girls is damage to their anterior cruciate ligament, or A.C.L., the tiny muscle in the knee that connects the two halves of the leg. Female athletes are four or five times more likely than male athletes to have A.C.L tears, says Dr. William Levine, the director of sports medicine at Columbia University and the head physician for its varsity teams.
As Dr. Levine explains, once girls begin to menstruate, they become more "quadricep-dependent" than males, and that thick slug of muscle in the middle of the thigh then works against the A.C.L., sometimes causing tears. "Female athletes jump and land in a more erect posture, which puts increased stress on their A.C.L," he says.
I'm sure that goes well when explaining injuries to women
They should know better than to use such scientific language in an article like that.
SMU's first president, Robert S. Hyer, selected Harvard Crimson and Yale Blue as SMU's colors to symbolize SMU's high academic standards. We are one of the few Universities to have school colors with real meaning...and we just blow them off.
- Embrace the Big East by "making SMU Top 25 in everything we (currently) do" (Steve O.) - Invest in current teams by renovating Moody quickly before BE BB starts, replace Perkins Natatorium (please), enhance Westcott and build Indoor Practice Facility for FB. - Add Lacrosse for Men and Women. As with Soccer, SMU would be the only varsity, Div. 1 LAX team in Texas in a sport that is wildly embraced by our new BE conference mates and media markets. Nearest LAX teams would be in Colorado (AFA, Denver) and Louisville. Still, a great Mens/Womens sport to rebrand SMU as truly a BE school. - Bring back Men's T&F and CC. Great tradition at SMU with past success, especially in Field events for Men.
- Embrace the Big East by "making SMU Top 25 in everything we (currently) do" (Steve O.) - Invest in current teams by renovating Moody quickly before BE BB starts, replace Perkins Natatorium (please), enhance Westcott and build Indoor Practice Facility for FB. - Add Lacrosse for Men and Women. As with Soccer, SMU would be the only varsity, Div. 1 LAX team in Texas in a sport that is wildly embraced by our new BE conference mates and media markets. Nearest LAX teams would be in Colorado (AFA, Denver) and Louisville. Still, a great Mens/Womens sport to rebrand SMU as truly a BE school. - Bring back Men's T&F and CC. Great tradition at SMU with past success, especially in Field events for Men.
I had heard that the IPF and OPF were both going where Westcott is today. Westcott would be moved to the current OPF. If so, I hope the new Westcott is a true stadium with locker rooms and concessions.
- Embrace the Big East by "making SMU Top 25 in everything we (currently) do" (Steve O.) - Invest in current teams by renovating Moody quickly before BE BB starts, replace Perkins Natatorium (please), enhance Westcott and build Indoor Practice Facility for FB. - Add Lacrosse for Men and Women. As with Soccer, SMU would be the only varsity, Div. 1 LAX team in Texas in a sport that is wildly embraced by our new BE conference mates and media markets. Nearest LAX teams would be in Colorado (AFA, Denver) and Louisville. Still, a great Mens/Womens sport to rebrand SMU as truly a BE school. - Bring back Men's T&F and CC. Great tradition at SMU with past success, especially in Field events for Men.
Varsity lacrosse is a monumentally bad idea. In addition to the high cost of travel to conference games, they wouldn't have a competitive program withing 300 miles of them to play or scrimmage against. Frankly, I think our future Big East friends wouldn't want us on their schedule b/c of their travel costs.
