New York Times Writer Advocates the University of Colroado Drop Football

[LanceyHoward]

As a alumnus I wish they would. Besides the dangers to players the athletic program loses lots of money and to many academic compromises are made.

I love football but I don's see much of a benefit to the university from their athletic program.



At Colorado, a Breach in Football’s Wall

 

[micropolitan guy]

Not gonna happen, of course, but I suppose if Colorado would be happy in the WAC or the WCC they could drop football.

 

[Chef2]

I heard they don't care for colroed people up there.

 

[Batman]

Might as well, since the rest of the Pac-12 seems to have dropped football already.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

Alumni and curmudgeon Murray Chass wrote a similar piece about Pitt last year.

Op-ed: Pitt alumnus, former New York Times sports writer says time’s up for Pitt football - The Pitt News

 

[exmediahack]

Being a Colorado football player may be the safest Power 5 gig outside of Mount Oread.

Never have to play in a conference championship game. Rep as a soft program. Generally don’t have to play after Christmas.

Not exactly Bama or Georgia, which plays 12, the SEC and one or two games in the playoff.

 

[CD Boogie]

But they have such a proud history of producing all-time greats...

And they'll always have Kordell to Westbrook.

 

[outofplace]

Alumni and curmudgeon Murray Chass wrote a similar piece about Pitt last year.

Op-ed: Pitt alumnus, former New York Times sports writer says time’s up for Pitt football - The Pitt News

He glazed right over the time in between editorials when Pitt had a strong program and even won a national championship.

Let's be clear about this. Some time in the 1950s, Chass wrote that the Pitt football program was so embarrassing that it should drop to a lower division. I do wonder if he was standing by that point about 20 years later when the Panthers won a national championship in 1976.

 

[playthrough]

Easy argument to make given football's brutality but not so much when considering alumni that speak with their wallets. It's far from a matter of "the team stinks and loses X dollars." Look at UAB, which got rid of football and then brought it back because the outcry was so great.

 

[swingline]

**** Colorado and their fifth down. While I'm at it, **** Bill McCartney.

 

[poindexter]

So the University of Colroado's football team is gone.

What about the University of Colorado?

 

[Alma]

Easy argument to make given football's brutality but not so much when considering alumni that speak with their wallets.

Lots of things are brutal.

The NYT likes this issue, mostly. You win hosannas at the right cocktail parties with the right intellectuals.

 

[Pilot]

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?

 

[Pilot]

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.

 

[Alma]

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.

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

 

[Pilot]

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

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.

 

[micropolitan guy]

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.

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.

 

[MileHigh]

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?

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

 

[TrooperBari]

Easy argument to make given football's brutality but not so much when considering alumni that speak with their wallets. It's far from a matter of "the team stinks and loses X dollars." Look at UAB, which got rid of football and then brought it back because the outcry was so great.

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)?

 

[Neutral Corner]

Easy argument to make given football's brutality but not so much when considering alumni that speak with their wallets. It's far from a matter of "the team stinks and loses X dollars." Look at UAB, which got rid of football and then brought it back because the outcry was so great.

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.