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New York Times Writer Advocates the University of Colroado Drop Football

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by LanceyHoward, Apr 18, 2019.

  1. Pilot

    Pilot Well-Known Member

    Living in Colorado, I think CU is definitely one school that could get away with this right now. At least in my corner of the state (admittedly very heavy on transplants) CU as an athletics entity has almost no footprint.

    I think sports is a lot more central to the experience of students and to personal identification for alum at most other P5 schools. In 11 years living here, I know one avid CU fan and maybe 100 CU grads?
     
    garrow likes this.
  2. Pilot

    Pilot Well-Known Member

    Like all things that could easily change with a few sustained years of FB or MBB success, though. It’s easy to say now when both programs are bad-to-average.
     
    HanSenSE likes this.
  3. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    They'd get kicked out of the Pac-12.
     
  4. Pilot

    Pilot Well-Known Member

    Not saying I think it will happen. I’m saying if CU football didn’t exist in Saturdays, the uproar wouldn’t be Earth shattering, as it would most other places in the country. I’m sure there’d be some, but to me, it has a lot better reputation as an academic institution and that’s what most people I know treasure about it.
     
  5. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    To some extent your academic reputation is based on your peer group. Interesting to see what would happen to CU's academic reputation if the peer group became Gonzaga, Santa Clara, Portland and UOP instead of Cal, Stanford and Washington, three of the finest public schools in the country, and Stanford.

    CU football was pretty darn important under Chuck Fairbanks, McCartney, Barnett and Neuheisel.

    Of course, CU's not gonna drop football, but as someone said earlier in this thread, it's something for the faculty pipe and ascot crowd to talk about while they're getting baked on weed and drinking overpriced wine.
     
    Neutral Corner and Pilot like this.
  6. MileHigh

    MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

    Having lived here for 15 years and coming to Colorado for more than 40, I agree with this.
     
  7. TrooperBari

    TrooperBari Well-Known Member

    While there is a fair bit of research into whether on-field success translates into more donations, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of data on whether universities that eliminate football see a corresponding drop in donations. The likes of Hofstra, Cal State Northridge, and Nebraska-Omaha don't garner a great deal of attention, apparently. Like others here I don't see Colorado dropping football any time soon -- institutional inertia and risk aversion are mighty forces to overcome -- but it would make for a fascinating study.

    https://are.berkeley.edu/~mlanderson/pdf/Anderson College Sports.pdf
    https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/162rosen.pdf

    It is interesting to see the variance between athletic donations and overall donations. Of the top 20 overall donation recipients from FY 2015, only three -- Washington (13th), Michigan (18th), and Notre Dame (19th) -- were also among the top 10 in athletic fund-raising that same year. Would Johns Hopkins, Chicago, MIT, and NYU be better or worse off if they tried to live the big-time athletics dream (no disrespect to JHU lacrosse, of course)?
     
  8. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    Invalid comparison. UAB didn't "get rid" of football, UAB haters on the UA Board of Trustees did. UAB President Ray Watts got the credit/blame, but he was the fall guy, in exchange for which he is the 15th highest paid public university president in the US and still employed while roundly detested. Primary actor was Paul Bryant, Jr. and BoT members Joe Espy and Fess St. John carried big buckets of his water.

    UAB people were joyous when St. John was recently named permanent Chancellor of the UA System.
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2019
  9. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    As to dropping football, most conferences require it for membership. Certainly all of the P5 do. If you do drop football, you'd better have a plan in place or your MBB and other sports will be looking for a soft landing several steps down the pyramid.
     
  10. Smallpotatoes

    Smallpotatoes Well-Known Member

    "Play intramurals, brother!"
     
  11. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    Wasn't that one of the major issues with UAB when it dropped football? That they might get kicked out of Conference USA because it was a requirement to have a football team?
     
  12. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    No Rae Carruth on that list?
     
    CD Boogie likes this.
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