BSC pulls plug on men’s basketball, baseball

From the Birmingham News website:

BSC pulls plug on men’s basketball, baseball

Birmingham-Southern College will announce later today it will not field a men’s basketball or baseball team for next season.

The Big South Conference has agreed to BSC’s request to pull out of the Division I league in those two sports because of the loss of most — if not all — of its players after the school’s board of trustees voted to move to non-scholarship Division III athletics.

BSC might also suspend volleyball depending on whether coach Tonya Charland’s six freshman signees decide to join the team.

Baseball coach Brian Shoop and his staff left BSC on Monday to take over at UAB. Several Birmingham-Southern baseball players are expected to transfer to UAB and others have offers at other colleges.

Men’s basketball coach Duane Reboul said all of his players have been offered opportunities to play elsewhere and for the moment only senior-to-be Bucky McMillan has said he plans to stay at BSC.

“I think with the tradition of our athletic program, basketball in particular, I think the right decision has been made to cancel the season next year,” Reboul said.

“This is a chance for us to move forward and prepare for Division III and a year to, pretty much, find out how to recruit Division III players, talk to Division III coaches and just regroup.”

 

That's a shock. Why the downward move? Money?

 

Just got a similar e-mail from the Big South, Bubba. It's certainly interesting how Birmingham went about this. It seems a whole lot of people down there are really pissed about the turn of events.

Too bad. BSC's baseball team was pretty competitive (won Big South regular-season title), and so was men's hoops. The rest of the Big South won't miss the long road trip, but they'll miss the competitiveness BSC brought.

EDIT: Javafellow ... yes, money. They were bleeding red at DI and the school's board of trustees voted several weeks back to move down. They'll be able to field a football team in DIII, where they couldn't afford to do so in DI.

 

I'm just glad this isn't Big Sky Conference. If it was, I'd be a very busy boy today.

 

That's a shame. But there are way too many NAIA schools masquerading as NCAA D-I in a blatant grab at the brass ring.

 

Sounds like they'll seriously be out of compliance with Title IX if this happens. (just kidding, Cadet! Sort of, anyway).

 

One thing that hasn't helped -- Richard Scrushy, who is the president of BSC's board and the guy the baseball field is named after -- is still in the midst of a legal fight over his responsibility $2.7 billion accounting fraud scandal at the company he founded, HealthSouth. (He's already been found innocent on criminal charges.) But paying for the civil charges is taking money out of the pocketbook that was making BSC aspire to the big-time.

 

So here's a thought/question/concept: Is this an isolated case, or will a lot of the smaller colleges that leapt to D1 in an attempt to get a piece of the basketball pie consider similar moves?

 

that's sad - I grew up an hour away from Birmingham and a guy I went to high school with set all kinds of records there, helping them win their last NAIA crown and into their first NCAA regionals appearance.

It's not surprising, though, since it's only a school of 1300. It should have stayed NAIA

 

They will if they are hemorrhaging money.

 

I would think that more than a few are.

 

I think it's isolated. Some schools that had no business being DI (think Morris Brown) dropped sports altogether rather than move down. I don't know how the hell Savannah State stays DI. BSC's a different sort of case. It's a battle between academia and athletics there, and academia is winning.