Sad: Maryland Commission Recommends Terps Cut Seven Teams
by Ben Broman on Nov 14, 2011 7:22 PM EST
in Other Maryland Athletics
Email
PrintWell, the commission delegated with saving Maryland's athletic department from financial disaster has come out with its 26-page report. Among other recommendations, it suggests cutting seven teams: men's cross country, men's track, men's and women's swimming and diving, men's tennis, women's acrobatics and tumbling (i.e., competitive cheer), and women's water polo.
Obviously sucks to have to do this, but really, Maryland doesn't have any other choice but to make major changes, and that includes cutting sports. It's terrible, but it's where we are. Can't just ignore it.
Important to note that these are recommendations; nothing has gotten to Kevin Anderson or Wallace Loh, and they're making the final call. The Sun says Loh's call "is expected within the next couple of weeks."
Notably absent is baseball, which was the most controversial sport likely to be up on the chopping block. It looks like the athletic department is going to make a long-term dedication to making the baseball program viable. It's certainly huge at many other schools, but it hasn't had momentum in College Park in years. Better hope Erik Bakich is in this for the long haul.
Seeing men's track and field is a bit of a surprise; track coach Andrew Valmon is actually slated to be the USA Olympics coach, which is likely some great PR, and it has a fair amount of tradition at Maryland, though that's historical more than recent. Of course, everyone has their own sports.
The news that swimming was going down leaked out last week, and there's now a "Save UMD Swimming" movement. Expect them to pop up from each of the sports that might go down. Hey, it worked for Cal baseball.
I'll look the rest and see if there's anything of note.
59 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
It's a finer point
But does UA cut their licensing deal since they’ll only be exclusively supplying uniforms to 20 teams instead of 27? Or does the contract state it’s that amount per the 5 year term and nothing changes if less teams are fielded?
"A new era has dawned in Maryland Athletics..."
it probably just saves them money too
HELLO HELLO MR WILPON... BUY THAT MANSION. WE DONT NEED A CONDO.
Hopefully the future will be better than expected
The Commission believes that the Comcast Center, Byrd Stadium and other athletic venues are viable locations that can be used to enhance revenue as well as provide venues for student entertainment. An infrastructure should be put in place to maximize the use of these facilities as venues for concerts and other large scale meetings and performances. The Commission recommends that ICA work with appropriate parties to consider this option.
Concerts at Comcast! Rock on.
I found it interesting that the report said:
[regarding athletes per trainer] In a recent poll by ICA staff, it was determined that the University ranks 79th out of 131 BCS (Bowl Championship Series) schools.
I thought there were only 120 BCS schools …?
This reminds me of how much I really, really wish there was a football playoff in place. Part of the reason is simply money. A football playoff could give so much more money to every school that has an FBS team. It wouldn’t solve Maryland’s budget problems, but it would help.
What would also help the Terps is creating a consistent winning football tradition. Hopefully in the future …
Assumption is the mother of all @#%-ups.
my source in the athletic department said they are close to landing a big name for the first concert at Comcast
the problem is that Comcast isnt set up for concerts yet and the school wants to make sure they are gonna pack the house if they are gonna make Comcast concert-friendly
by bloodwatermission on Nov 14, 2011 9:48 PM EST up reply actions
They used to have concerts at Ritchie Coliseum
During my era Jane’s Addiction, Alice in Chains, Danzig, Sonic Youth Blues Travelers, Primus, etc all played there. Those big concrete walls didn’t provide the best acoustics…however, the shows were small and the bands played there before really blowing up.
Memories
I remember those concerts in Ritchie. The place was nasty but the shows were awesome. Would be great for students to have shows on campus again.
Starship
I recall seeing Jefferson Starship at Ritchie, and I recall hearing that Elvis played at Cole at some point. I think they should be able to draw some decents bands to perform on campus…
by longerthanu on Nov 15, 2011 12:21 PM EST up reply actions
The swim teams are getting some serious support
They have a facebook group for it and they’re currently compiling support from swim programs all over the country who have made pictures and videos showing their support for saving the Terps. It’s actually pretty cool. I think they plan to put it all together and give it to Loh, but I don’t know if that’s really going to make any difference. But they’re really putting in an impressive effort.
Videos and pictures aren't going to do anything
Unless they can generate like $5mil. And I highly doubt UMD swimming has that sort of earning power.
Yeah I know
But their efforts are admirable.
making a large facebook group is the easiest thing to do in the world
i doubt 3/4 of the people in that group actually care, as may show in any fundraising efforts… bring about the sad truth that if you dont make money, you dont last… unless i guess you play your games at comcast or byrd haha
by Turgeonator on Nov 14, 2011 10:59 PM EST up reply actions
I wasn't really talking about the facebook group itself
And more about what’s in it. i.e. Pictures from dozens of schools all around the country showing support. Again, it’s not money, but they don’t really have that option so they’re doing what they can right now. I personally think it’s really cool how so many swim teams from all over are making signs and stuff and giving the Terps support.
had to be done
glad they are getting rid of cheer, but I can’t understand why they are getting rid of only men’s tennis and track and not women’s too. If it is because of Title IX thats so stupid, they are forcing the athletic department to lose millions just to play football.
I agree
Especially with men’s track, there’s no way just cutting men’s track is going to save the athletic department any money. The women’s team is still going to use the facilities, and the men’s and women’s track teams basically travel to all the same meets anyway, so it’s not going to save on any transportation costs.
There's the cost of scholarships + the impact of Title IX
If you’re keeping football, basketball, lacrosse, soccer, and wrestling, the only other choices to cut are golf, TF/XC, and baseball. They decided to keep baseball, and I guess TF/XC were more expensive than golf.
Yeah, I get why it was done
I just mean that, really, cutting men’s xc and track will not really in significant way help the current financial situation, and Title IX is retarded. A few thousand dollars here and there won’t do too much.
Mens Track...
Plus, shouldn’t we be encouraging our football players to run track. Definitely seemed to help in the past with the sprinters.
Baseball
Ben, you are the only person that I saw saying baseball was on the chopping block. Whether we suck at it or not, baseball is an important sport in the ACC.
by Terpentine on Nov 14, 2011 9:04 PM EST via mobile reply actions
According to who, is it relevent?
Not to me, nor any other Maryland student. Our team is consistently terrible, has no support, and uses a lot of money (between scholarships, transportation/away housing, coaching, and facilities). Cutting Baseball could save Track and Field and possibly men’s tennis, which are much cheaper.
Also, we could use the baseball field’s land for something MUCH more useful. We don’t need a baseball field in the middle of campus.
by kryptonianjorel on Nov 14, 2011 11:18 PM EST up reply actions
Well
We don’t need a giant football/lax practice field in the middle of campus that makes walking straight across impossible either, but that exists.
But back to your main point. Cutting baseball would cause a lot more of an uproar than cutting tennis, swimming, etc. You may think no one cares, but opinions would be coming out of the woodwork if baseball were cut. Even though it’s not big on this campus, it is a major sport in this country. Most people probably don’t even know if our team is any good or not, so their reaction would probably be like “What? How can we cut such a big sport?” Plus there has to be a lot more supporters, especially outside supporters, for the baseball team than say the men’s tennis team. I don’t think this one comes down to whether we’re any good at it or not. I think it comes down to the popularity of the sport and it’s presence in the ACC.
I do not disagree entirely
The football/lax/soccer practice fields should be moved as well, but we’re not cutting those programs ATM, so they’re not pertinent to the argument. IF we were considering cutting baseball, we could use the field and practice area for something better.
Maybe country wide, cutting baseball causes an uproar, but how big/how long of one? Sure, it could be a big talking point on ESPN, but for a few days at most, and then everyone would forget about it. UMD baseball hasn’t been relevant for…well, I have no idea if they were ever relevant…
Baseball is no longer America’s past time; Nobody I know from this area watches baseball. My only friends who do are from up north, whose teams are the Yankees and the Red Sox, who are consistently strong teams (helps maintain interest). With teams like the O’s and the Nats, nobody in the area really cares for baseball anymore, since the teams have been terrible for years upon years.
Unless the supporters of UMD baseball are also donors, its hard to care about what they have to say; if they want to keep UMD baseball alive so badly, they should donate to the cause.
I guess I’m being too hard on baseball because I can’t stand it, but I’d rather we keep a few cheap sports that nobody cares about, than 1 expensive sport that nobody cares about
by kryptonianjorel on Nov 15, 2011 12:07 AM EST up reply actions
Just because "you and your friends" don't watch baseball
doesn’t make it not one of the three most popular sports in this country. I’d rather keep baseball (a sport with a small following) than womens’ water polo (a sport with literally no following).
A) I have no reason to believe anyone would care more about cutting baseball than they would care about cutting tennis or swimming
Seriously, what’s the argument there besides “it’s popular”? It’s popular nationally. Not in College Park. Maryland baseball doesn’t have a large following. There are baseball fans at Maryland who aren’t fans of Maryland baseball. They’d just continue rooting for the O’s and Nats. That people have no idea whether the team is good or not should be telling.
B) I think you’d probably be surprised about the big-money donors. When it comes to sports that don’t produce a lot of pros – which includes baseball for Maryland – the big donors are the ones who played the sport and then made an independent fortune in another field. Baseball does have a huge donor in Bob Smith, but he earned his money in the business world. I don’t think Eric Milton and Brett Cecil (more or less our only pros) are big UMD donors. The reason baseball has Smith, instead of tennis or track, has nothing to do with the sports they played.
C) I do think your last sentence holds some measure of truth. Baseball is popular. They think that, if Bakich is here for the long haul and leads us back to relevancy, baseball will be able to get on TV enough and draw a big enough crowd to actually produce a fair amount of revenue. That’s true, but it’s still a gamble. I hope they’re right, because if they’re not, the money from cutting baseball and selling the stadium probably could’ve saved two other programs.
About your point C
Could KA have been thinking along those lines when he hired Edsall and Turgeon (moreso Turgeon’s assistant coaches)? Obviously every AD wants their teams to win, but when it comes to paying the premium we did for the basketball assistants, is it because KA is gambling that we’ll get Top 5 recruiting classes every year and that we become a powerhouse again
by kryptonianjorel on Nov 15, 2011 12:22 AM EST up reply actions
Not sure basketball is actually a gamble
Baseball was a gamble because they haven’t been successful in years, just about ever. There’s no base or precedent for success. He’s trying to build something out of nothing. That isn’t true for basketball – frankly, Maryland basketball should be a top 15 powerhouse type and there’s a much greater chance of that happening.
Basketball isn’t a gamble; it’s a necessity. If you’re going to have a successful athletic dept. at UMD, you simply have to have top-notch basketball.
I guess I'm overrating baseball in this area
I’m from New York (not NYC), baseball is huge there (though not college) – and not just the Yankees. The Mets suck and break their fans hearts every year but there’s tons of Mets fans and followers all over. But it should be understood that while it’s easy for me to overrate the sport, at the same time it’s just as easy for people from here to underrate it then.
And, krptonianjorel, I would not be so quick to say it is no longer America’s past time. This area doesn’t speak for others. Baseball is pretty darn big in parts of this country. I’ll say this – in New York (and I’m not even talking about the city, though it holds true there too) I see WAY more baseball jerseys than football ones, though of course football is very popular too. Here, complete opposite. But again, that’s different regions.
I may be underrating it.
I’ve got no hard facts to say that baseball is dead, just opinion and trends I see amongst those I know. Its hard to argue that Baseball hasn’t declined in the past 60 years though. I have no statistical evidence to back this assumption, but I’d be willing to believe that there are more people watching the 17 week+playoffs of the NFL than the 150+ game season of MLB. Hell, even this past year game 7 of the World Series had only 25 million viewers, compared to 111 million watching the Super Bowl (I don’t think all 7 games totaled more than the SB’s 1 game, and that’s counting a lot of repeat watchers)
I think America has moved on to football, and left baseball as a sport of an older generation
by kryptonianjorel on Nov 15, 2011 12:41 AM EST up reply actions
Baseball and Football are really difficult to compare that way
1) Baseball is different than football in that football games are just once a week. The whole week is spent building up to the games, and there’s an entire day dedicated to the NFL. It’s a much bigger deal if you miss your team’s football game on TV than if you miss half of your teams’ baseball games. Whatever night of the week, theres’ ALWAYS a baseball game on to watch during the season, and 90% of the time your team is on. It is very easy to just watch a game or two a week and read up on the others in the paper when you get a chance, and consider yourself a pretty dedicated fan. Baseball games don’t have the build-up football games do since they’re pretty much just continuous. Football is a sport where all the game spotlight comes on the sport at once. Baseball is not.
2) For many people, baseball is a sport they enjoy more in person. Some find it boring on TV. That doesn’t mean they don’t like the sport. A lot of teams do really well with attendance. Almost half the teams filled 70% of the stadium on average over the course of the season. That’s over 81 home games. Not 8 like in football. 81 is a lot of home games to have to strive to consistently get good attendance for.
+ Everything you said.
Extremely well put. Baseball also isn’t a party event like the Superbowl is. Half of the 111mm viewers of the Superbowl are people watching the commercials or socializing at parties. I would guess 95% of the viewers of the World Series were watching/interested in the game.
And come on, you can't compare the Super Bowl with Game 7 of the WS
You just can’t. The Super Bowl is a ritual. There’s a halftime show. There’s “special” commercials. There’s people who don’t care about football whatsoever that hold parties to watch it. That doesn’t mean they’re all big football fans.
I'm not sure this debate is necessary
But I have to say that the fact that people who aren’t football fans watch the Super Bowl, but people who aren’t baseball fans don’t watch the World Series, should tell you everything you need to know about the cultural importance and saturation of the two sports.
Just my $.02.
I disagree
The Super Bowl is much, much more than a sporting event. And I don’t attribute that to the sport having all this extra cultural importance. I attribute it to that one game having much more, because of the societal/media hype placed on it. The World Series is 4-7 3+ hour games. Not one big, winner-take-all one, anyway. That alone changes the dynamic.
every school in the ACC has a baseball team. the programs we a eliminating do not have a full compliment of teams in those sports. baseball has had players drafted by MLB and some have and will continue to further their careers in baseball while few if any in recent years have further careers in track or tennis. talking about a wasted piece of ground on campus, i can’t think of any more wasteful than the tennis courts near cole.
I actually earned a college credit on those courts, so they were good for something. I still have a lousy serve though…
by longerthanu on Nov 15, 2011 12:28 PM EST up reply actions
I would go ballistic if they tried to cut baseball
just me…just sayin’
"A new era has dawned in Maryland Athletics..."
by bball purist on Nov 15, 2011 11:50 AM EST up reply actions
how did UMD and salisbury make this list??
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/the-10-schools-that-study_n_1092172.html#s471263&title=University_of_Maryland
Well, I went to Maryland and my sister to Salisbury.
The only time I studied was when I was following a girl into the library.
My sister studied pretty much non-stop.
Thus, the anecdotal evidence says.
by Tezcatlipoca on Nov 14, 2011 10:12 PM EST up reply actions
we're too busy inventing things.
we’re smart before we get here!
why is it...nobody else in the acc can invent anything? google,pulse doppler radar,underarmour,hybrid engine,universal price code,jumbotron,coronary stents,automatic parachute, sirius satellite,insulin pumps,muppets,wire,seinfeld,boondocks,apollo 13,octane system,sydicate baywatch,broke watergate,retractable landing gear,linear programming,outback steakhouse,frequent flyr systems,more nattys,more accs,more academy awards,more pulitzers,more nobels.
by TERPLANDLORD on Nov 15, 2011 11:27 PM EST up reply actions
This is a real shame...
I hope this is temporary. Track and baseball are sports that should be represented.
* Maryland basketball has been a sleeping Giant. The Giant is waking up.
** It goes without saying, that if Maryland basketball was a sleeping Giant, whoever was at the helm before, put it to sleep.
by CharlesDriesell on Nov 14, 2011 10:09 PM EST reply actions
Where is the sudden ballooning in costs coming from?
Why was everything possible 10 years ago and not today?
Great question
Back when we won the natty, we had a huge influx of donations and other cash. This was stored away in a special fund by Yow – it basically amounted to a rainy day fund. Except it was more or less abused. We would turn a deficit each year, then transfer the funds over to cover and make it look like we were pulling even. Of course, that isn’t sustainable – that extra fund had to run out, and it just did last summer. Thing is, it wasn’t like our extra $4mil or whatever was discretionary spending, so we can’t just cut back; we needed to cut sports.
But Ben, this is the fascinating part
25, 50 years ago, things were able to be incorporated into these budgets to sustain sports programs, medical plans, road projects, etc, in this country. Why did many sustainable programs all get so deep in the red? My theory is it’s similar to corporations as they mature – they get fatter and fatter with the number of positions, overhead, etc., and are not as lean anymore.
So my conclusion is it’s easier to cut the sports than to do the more difficult deed of cutting people’s jobs, plain and simple.
"A new era has dawned in Maryland Athletics..."
by bball purist on Nov 15, 2011 11:54 AM EST up reply actions
What percentage of the 2011 athletic budget is administrative costs versus the 2001 or 1991 budgets?
What about the percentages for travel, equipment, stadium / field maintenance, scholarships?
Are the percentages remaining the same or is one area’s spending growing at a faster rate than the other areas?
What’s the breakdown on where revenue is coming from? Is one area (events revenue, donations, etc.) not keeping pace in growth with the others?
by Tezcatlipoca on Nov 16, 2011 10:44 AM EST up reply actions
Sunday's BB game
I was helping my brother in DC. So i decided to take in a game. I walked up to the ticket window at Comcast instead of buying ticket off of a seller outside the stadium. He asked me where i would like to be seated. I said the best seat he had available. It wasn’t a bad seat either.
Glad to give the athletic department the 30 bucks. I bought a program. $5. The young lady said it meant a $1 for her horse riding team. OK with me. Glad to help.
Nice cover
Picture of Turgeon holding an UnderArmour Basketball.
Suitable for framing
Turgeon with A red, black , and white tie. And a Md flag in the background. Don’t you wish you had one? The one from his first victory as a Md coach.
by PaTerp on Nov 15, 2011 11:18 AM EST via mobile up reply actions
Good one!
NAmstrong was gonna buy a ticket but got comped into KA’s suite for free. Probably grabbed a couple wings and chips and something out of the fridge but he can’t kick in a 5 spot for a program? C’MON MAN!
I grabbed one to hang onto as Turge starts his dynasty. It is a great cover photo. I think they will be selling the same issue at the next couple games for those of you who still want to grab one.
by longerthanu on Nov 15, 2011 12:34 PM EST up reply actions
Hey now...
They only had bottles of water up there! Apparently KA is doing his part to reduce expenses by not eating any food during bball games.
I’m saying this with a smile.
Yea, I was cheap and didn’t get a program. I even thought about it, being Turgeon’s first game and all, but still didn’t. I’ll make up for it by buying one at the next game I go to.
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
