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Ohio Basketball Topic
Topic: O.T. EMU To Drop 4 Sports
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rpbobcat
3/20/2018 11:50 AM
Since nobody really looks at the Ohio Olympic Sports Board,I figured I'd post this here.

Due to "Budget Restructuring" EMU announced that its dropping 4 sports:

Wrestling

Men's swimming and diving

Softball

Women's tennis
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OhioStunter
3/20/2018 11:57 AM
Ugh. This doesn't seem to be a Title IX issue since softball and tennis are going, but what an extreme to see that the NCAA is making so much money on the tournament, but DI schools still can't even fund traditional sports.
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colobobcat66
3/20/2018 12:07 PM
The raw numbers show 58 males and 25 females being dropped. Those don’t make sense to me. How can softball and women’s tennis only have 25 athletes?

Anyway, as much as we trash EMU because of fan support for their programs, they point to some meaningful numbers if you consider overall competitiveness of their athletics. The most team championships since they joined the MAC and 15! national team NCAA championships and 54 national individual NCAA champions. Good for them. That’s pretty impressive.
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OhioStunter
3/20/2018 12:17 PM
colobobcat66 wrote:expand_more
The raw numbers show 58 males and 25 females being dropped. Those don’t make sense to me. How can softball and women’s tennis only have 25 athletes?

Anyway, as much as we trash EMU because of fan support for their programs, they point to some meaningful numbers if you consider overall competitiveness of their athletics. The most team championships since they joined the MAC and 15! national team NCAA championships and 54 national individual NCAA champions. Good for them. That’s pretty impressive.
That's a really good question about 25 female athletes. At first, I wondered if it only referred to scholarship athletes, but that's not what it said.
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colobobcat66
3/20/2018 12:26 PM
OhioStunter wrote:expand_more
The raw numbers show 58 males and 25 females being dropped. Those don’t make sense to me. How can softball and women’s tennis only have 25 athletes?

Anyway, as much as we trash EMU because of fan support for their programs, they point to some meaningful numbers if you consider overall competitiveness of their athletics. The most team championships since they joined the MAC and 15! national team NCAA championships and 54 national individual NCAA champions. Good for them. That’s pretty impressive.
That's a really good question about 25 female athletes. At first, I wondered if it only referred to scholarship athletes, but that's not what it said.
I just checked Ohio’s roster and there are only 17 on the roster, so I guess it may be right for EMU if they have similar numbers.
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GoCats105
3/20/2018 12:41 PM
This made me think of EMU's Division I status. Per the NCAA:

Division I

Division I member institutions have to sponsor at least seven sports for men and seven for women (or six for men and eight for women) with two team sports for each gender. Each playing season has to be represented by each gender as well. There are contest and participant minimums for each sport, as well as scheduling criteria. For sports other than football and basketball, Division I schools must play 100 percent of the minimum number of contests against Division I opponents -- anything over the minimum number of games has to be 50 percent Division I. Men's and women's basketball teams have to play all but two games against Division I teams; for men, they must play one-third of all their contests in the home arena. Schools that have football are classified as Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) or NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA). Football Bowl Subdivision schools are usually fairly elaborate programs. Football Bowl Subdivision teams have to meet minimum attendance requirements (average 15,000 people in actual or paid attendance per home game), which must be met once in a rolling two-year period. NCAA Football Championship Subdivision teams do not need to meet minimum attendance requirements. Division I schools must meet minimum financial aid awards for their athletics program, and there are maximum financial aid awards for each sport that a Division I school cannot exceed.

http://www.ncaa.org/about/who-we-are/membership/divisiona...
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BillyTheCat
3/20/2018 12:51 PM
Softball does not have many members on a team, neither does a tennis team.
Last Edited: 3/20/2018 12:52:28 PM by BillyTheCat
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Alan Swank
3/20/2018 1:09 PM
GoCats105 wrote:expand_more
This made me think of EMU's Division I status. Per the NCAA:

Division I

Division I member institutions have to sponsor at least seven sports for men and seven for women (or six for men and eight for women) with two team sports for each gender. Each playing season has to be represented by each gender as well. There are contest and participant minimums for each sport, as well as scheduling criteria. For sports other than football and basketball, Division I schools must play 100 percent of the minimum number of contests against Division I opponents -- anything over the minimum number of games has to be 50 percent Division I. Men's and women's basketball teams have to play all but two games against Division I teams; for men, they must play one-third of all their contests in the home arena. Schools that have football are classified as Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) or NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA). Football Bowl Subdivision schools are usually fairly elaborate programs. Football Bowl Subdivision teams have to meet minimum attendance requirements (average 15,000 people in actual or paid attendance per home game), which must be met once in a rolling two-year period. NCAA Football Championship Subdivision teams do not need to meet minimum attendance requirements. Division I schools must meet minimum financial aid awards for their athletics program, and there are maximum financial aid awards for each sport that a Division I school cannot exceed.

http://www.ncaa.org/about/who-we-are/membership/divisiona...
http://www.emueagles.com
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D.A.
3/21/2018 11:01 AM
Assuming the system still works today the way it did when I was on the golf team, coaches can split scholarships, which would explain why you might have an inequity of number of actual participants, but equity in the number of scholarships eliminated by eliminating the sports they chose. I believe golf only had four or six scholarships in my day, with only one or two fulls being awarded, then a half dozen received some form of partial, and then the hackers like me received nothing but the pride of being part of the team.
Last Edited: 3/21/2018 11:02:52 AM by D.A.
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rpbobcat
3/21/2018 11:08 AM
D.A. wrote:expand_more
Assuming the system still works today the way it did when I was on the golf team, coaches can split scholarships, which would explain why you might have an inequity of number of actual participants, but equity in the number of scholarships eliminated by eliminating the sports they chose. I believe golf only had four or six scholarships in my day, with only one or two fulls being awarded, then a half dozen received some form of partial, and then the hackers like me received nothing but the pride of being part of the team.
As far as I know,you can still "split' scholarships,except in football and men's and women's basketball.
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rpbobcat
3/21/2018 6:11 PM
There's an interesting thread about this on team USA's college wrestling forums.

Teamusa.org/USA-wrestling

Apparently,EMU has had a number of issues with their athletic department funding,including missing endowment money.
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rpbobcat
3/22/2018 7:27 AM
Being a former wrestler,I've been following the EMU story on several boards.

Apparently, the EMU President has killed wrestling at several other schools (Northern State,Aberdeen and South Dakota).

The A.D. has never been at a school that has a wrestling program.

Wrestling was one of the more popular sports at the school.

A lot of people familiar with the situation at EMU are saying that,given their performance/interest,EMU should drop down to FCS in football,and restore the cut sports.
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stub
3/22/2018 11:13 AM
Our former AD, Kirby "Whole Cut" Hocutt, dumped a bunch of sports while he was here: Men's swimming and diving, men's track and field, lacrosse, and also I think tennis. One of my lacrosse students had just finished a 10 month rehab and given clearance to play as the season was about to begin, the same day " Whole Cut" dropped the sport. She was devastated. The team could have played that season but chose not to for obvious reasons.
I'm rooting against Texas Tech in the tourney.
Last Edited: 3/22/2018 11:19:08 AM by stub
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Alan Swank
3/22/2018 1:07 PM
stub wrote:expand_more
Our former AD, Kirby "Whole Cut" Hocutt, dumped a bunch of sports while he was here: Men's swimming and diving, men's track and field, lacrosse, and also I think tennis. One of my lacrosse students had just finished a 10 month rehab and given clearance to play as the season was about to begin, the same day " Whole Cut" dropped the sport. She was devastated. The team could have played that season but chose not to for obvious reasons.
I'm rooting against Texas Tech in the tourney.
So to balance the budget, he could have cut football scholarships and saved some of those sports. How do you think that would have gone over?
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colobobcat66
3/22/2018 1:28 PM
rpbobcat wrote:expand_more
Since nobody really looks at the Ohio Olympic Sports Board,I figured I'd post this here.

Due to "Budget Restructuring" EMU announced that its dropping 4 sports:

Wrestling

Men's swimming and diving

Softball

Women's tennis
So from what I can gather on the internet,
Wrestling has 9.9 maximum scholarships -can be divided
Men’s swimming and diving has 9.9- can be divided
Softball has 12-can be divided
Women’s tennis has 8-can not be divided-head count sport like BB and FB.
Looks like about 20 each to me. I had no idea tennis was a head count sport. You learn something new everyday.
Last Edited: 3/22/2018 1:29:58 PM by colobobcat66
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rpbobcat
3/22/2018 2:05 PM
colobobcat66 wrote:expand_more
Since nobody really looks at the Ohio Olympic Sports Board,I figured I'd post this here.

Due to "Budget Restructuring" EMU announced that its dropping 4 sports:

Wrestling

Men's swimming and diving

Softball

Women's tennis
So from what I can gather on the internet,
Wrestling has 9.9 maximum scholarships -can be divided
Men’s swimming and diving has 9.9- can be divided
Softball has 12-can be divided
Women’s tennis has 8-can not be divided-head count sport like BB and FB.
Looks like about 20 each to me. I had no idea tennis was a head count sport. You learn something new everyday.
College wrestling has 10 weight classes.

You would think the NCAA would use 10 scholarships.
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colobobcat66
3/22/2018 2:14 PM
rpbobcat wrote:expand_more
Since nobody really looks at the Ohio Olympic Sports Board,I figured I'd post this here.

Due to "Budget Restructuring" EMU announced that its dropping 4 sports:

Wrestling

Men's swimming and diving

Softball

Women's tennis
So from what I can gather on the internet,
Wrestling has 9.9 maximum scholarships -can be divided
Men’s swimming and diving has 9.9- can be divided
Softball has 12-can be divided
Women’s tennis has 8-can not be divided-head count sport like BB and FB.
Looks like about 20 each to me. I had no idea tennis was a head count sport. You learn something new everyday.
College wrestling has 10 weight classes.

You would think the NCAA would use 10 scholarship
We’re talking about the NCAA here, there’s always something crazy about what they do.
Last Edited: 3/22/2018 2:15:59 PM by colobobcat66
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rpbobcat
3/22/2018 3:37 PM
Someone on another board raised a question on MAC "rules".

Figured maybe someone would know.

If a MAC school like O.U. went to FCS in football,but stayed D-1 in all other sports,could they still be in the conference ?
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Recovering Journalist
3/22/2018 3:58 PM
rpbobcat wrote:expand_more
Someone on another board raised a question on MAC "rules".

Figured maybe someone would know.

If a MAC school like O.U. went to FCS in football,but stayed D-1 in all other sports,could they still be in the conference ?
Everything I've ever seen says that the MAC requires FBS participation for full membership. So I think the answer is a clear no.
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Andrew Ruck
3/22/2018 5:42 PM
Goes to show you how important the financial success of the football and men's basketball programs are to an entire athletic department. EMU obviously has very little fan interest / revenue so it stands to reason that they would have to make some more cutbacks than your average MAC school. Given the declining attendance and student apathy towards their school's sports, I fear this will be happening more and more to mid-majors.
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D.A.
3/22/2018 6:13 PM
I'd like to see the MAC be more prescriptive on which sports are required, which would create more rivalries within all sports between member schools. While I'm not opposed to affiliate members, it is very odd to me that there are a number of sports that rely heavily on affiliates to have a "MAC" sport in some of the second tier, non-revenue generating sports.
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Alan Swank
3/22/2018 9:07 PM
D.A. wrote:expand_more
I'd like to see the MAC be more prescriptive on which sports are required, which would create more rivalries within all sports between member schools. While I'm not opposed to affiliate members, it is very odd to me that there are a number of sports that rely heavily on affiliates to have a "MAC" sport in some of the second tier, non-revenue generating sports.
Interesting point. I only looked at men's sports but for these sports, the number after the sport represents the number of teams out of the 12 MAC teams that have the sport:

Soccer - 4
Swimming - 3
Tennis - 5
Track - 6

Swimming will go down to 2 once Eastern cuts their program.
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OhioCatFan
3/23/2018 12:05 AM
As L.C. has pointed out a number of times on the football forum, dropping to FCS does not save money. I don't have all the stats and examples at my fingertips, but in essence the decline in revenue is greater than what is saved on having fewer scholarships. Don't forget that under the current playoff system each G5 Conference gets $1 million per team, for up to 12 teams each year. Also, the MAC and other G5 conferences have much more in TV revenue than any FCS school.
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TWT
3/24/2018 9:50 AM
D.A. wrote:expand_more
I'd like to see the MAC be more prescriptive on which sports are required, which would create more rivalries within all sports between member schools. While I'm not opposed to affiliate members, it is very odd to me that there are a number of sports that rely heavily on affiliates to have a "MAC" sport in some of the second tier, non-revenue generating sports.
The MAC was requiring 2 sports per season. Fall was football and volleyball. Winter was Men's and Women's basketball. Spring was Baseball and Softball. These 6 sports were required for all members up until a few years ago. They decided to loosen up the requirement to only football and basketball participation required and not the Olympic sports.
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TWT
3/24/2018 9:56 AM
Alan Swank wrote:expand_more
I'd like to see the MAC be more prescriptive on which sports are required, which would create more rivalries within all sports between member schools. While I'm not opposed to affiliate members, it is very odd to me that there are a number of sports that rely heavily on affiliates to have a "MAC" sport in some of the second tier, non-revenue generating sports.
Interesting point. I only looked at men's sports but for these sports, the number after the sport represents the number of teams out of the 12 MAC teams that have the sport:

Soccer - 4
Swimming - 3
Tennis - 5
Track - 6

Swimming will go down to 2 once Eastern cuts their program.
That is fine because once D1 membership drops below 150 for these sports it starts to become a lot easier to be nationally competitive since recruits have less places to go. Hockey is a great example of this with only 60 programs. Imagine if the model was such that D1 could drop down to 200 or even 150 basketball programs.
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