I found this interesting suggestion in this whitepaper…
“‘Add varsity-lite second teams’ in a few sports as a pilot program, with an eye towards expanding the model in success. We will call these “Varsity Clubs” or “Second Squads.” These Varsity Clubs do not need to be sanctioned NCAA teams to be attractive to tuition paying families.”
While the purpose of this whitepaper appears to champion the valuable qualities of athletes/athletics in our changing society, and promotes increasing participation numbers, it oddly ‘doubles-down’ on the old NCAA model-- which is to create more oversight, add more expense, add more layers for schools to manage.
If the tea leaves are correct, there will be FEWER teams, a smaller NCAA model, that survives. This will leave the ‘Varsity Club’ or ‘Varsity Lite’ options that these authors are suggesting… on their own for survival at the college level… or, restated, a number of sports will be required to strategically align with other governing bodies (e.g. USA Water Polo).
Wow, the CEO of IMG academy arguing for more college roster spots is akin to the wolf telling the farmer to stock more chickens.
Don’t we already have “Varsity-lite” programs in water polo? ex: SFU, UCSB, Northridge, Siena, etc. - schools without adequate pools, a full complement of scholarships, or a fully funded coaching staff. I’d argue we’ve already tapped into that.
He argues that growth is the answer to challenges - I imagine at the small private schools that’s true (APU is down nearly 50% enrollment from 10 years ago and they’ve certainly embraced growth with the move to D3 and bringing football back), but a quick scan of applications over time to UC Santa Cruz and Cal Poly SLO (our best 2 prospects to add college polo (academics, location, 50m pools)) show record applicants - so they don’t need to add sports to get more kids to attend.
Amazing, the ink isn’t even dry and the NCAA is immediately trying to knee-cap the settlement.
Is it not enough to to create an end-state designed to starve Olympic sport programs into self-funding or extinction? Now the NCAA wants to be protected from running roughshod over any sport that doesn’t line its pockets?
The tide has gone out and we see EXACTLY where the NCAA stands.
I find it pretty hard to believe that we are going to get Congress to pass a bill allowing for federal grant money to be used to boost Olympic sports. This feels like a red herring. A “we tried, they said no. Now we will need to start cutting sports to balance our budget. Which sports have the least impact on our alumni donations?”
The issue with this settlement is for schools that play big-time football. That $20.5MM each school will pay those athletes is going to come from somewhere.
Also, I wonder if these people did not have foresight or purposely wrote something that you knew would receive an immediate Title IX challenge. Not sure how anyone conceived that you could allocate a pool of money to spend that didn’t have to be spent evenly.
I think this has the chance to disrupt water polo as schools without football can likely spend more on their Olympic sports if they are motivated to. I can see even revenue sports like men’s basketball being disrupted. Think St. John’s in basketball. They have no football and a billionaire alum who was profiled in the New York Times as being willing to spend what it takes to win a national title in basketball. Now he has $20.5MM he can spend on it versus a North Carolina that has to divide between football and basketball.
Wow, lots of questions arise from this:
So if congress approves helping only Stanford keep water polo afloat - who will Stanford play? Don’t they need competition? Wouldn’t that require funding multiple schools?
Which water polo programs are in trouble via the House settlement? I’m guessing the unsuccessful P4 football schools like UCLA, Cal, & Indiana as they will need to cobble $20.5mm together to keep up with the Jones’.
I’m guessing USC, Mich, and Stan have enough $$ to stay afloat and ASU is safe behind their 70k enrollment - but that’s just a guess.
Do you think the mid-majors FS, Haw, SJSU, & SDSU will be in trouble? I don’t think they have $2mm to spare, let alone $20.5mm, so cutting water polo to save $250k hardly matters.
I’d like to think that the non-football schools (Pepperdine, UCSD, UCI, LB, etc) are safe, but Cal Poly cut their Swim team and it felt related to the House decision, so who knows
