Stanford reinstating athletic programs (& its grip on the Directors Cup?)
Stanford is reinstating the 11 athletic programs it had planned to cut, meaning it reinstates its grip on the Stanford (aka Directors) Cup.
The decision to reinstate squash, fencing, sailing, etc. was announced by its president Marc Tessier-Lavigne.
Dammit. It looks like our window of opportunity to win the Director's Cup has now closed. The rich Stanford athletic donors have mobilized to thwart the ill-advised announcement of cutbacks by the SU administration.
No institution is immune from out-of-touch leadership. There seems to be an epidemic of failing to consult interested constituencies and making ill-informed, tone-deaf decisions. If only there were a vaccine to cure hubris within the Ruling Class.
I think that's true in general, but I'm not sure how much this particular decision had to do with failure to consult stakeholders or out-of-touch leadership.
I think they just looked at their balance sheet in the early months of the pandemic and totally freaked out. Then they looked at their balance sheet again recently and thought, "Huh. That wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be. I guess we didn't need to do that."
Yeah, this feels like a textbook example of people worrying about a budget shortfall and the finding out it wasn't that bad so they didn't have to follow through with such drastic cuts. It's a net-positive for the athletes and the school; what would have sucked would have been had they looked at the savings and still cut the sports even though they had the budget for it.
I doubt that the pandemic was the real motivation for Stanford's initial decision. I imagine that any decision to cut 11 sports is made over a period of many months, and Stanford took advantage of the pandemic as cover for a decision that it had long wanted to make.
Brown made a similar decision about numerous sports at about the same time as Stanford, and reversed that decision shortly thereafter. At the time of reversal, Brown administrators admitted that they had been planning the cuts since long before the pandemic.
Be specific. Why is Stanford’s leadership out of touch? Is leadership not aligned with their student -athletes ?
i don’t understand your point
Getting rid of sailing made them out of touch, apparently
I am not sure I understand what precisely you're trying to say here with regards to something that was a financial decision on the part of Stanford, made in a time of unprecedented uncertainty for them and a lot of other institutions, many of whom were contemplating (and in some cases, executing) similar rather stark choices. How was this ill-informed and tone deaf?
I don’t think they actually had a point, other than trying to insert politics where it doesn’t belong. Maybe I misinterpreted though...
Just trying to sound smart by using fancy words that actually say nothing at all.
Does anyone actually talk like this? "consult interested constituencies"?
Best career advice I was ever given was, "it's better to speak simply and be understood by all than sound smart and be understood by few."
Maybe we should think about adding squash, fencing, sailing, men’s rowing, etc. They are Olympic sports. For title 9 purposes you could add them all as women’s sports with the obvious exception of men’s rowing. We also have wealthy athletics donors. The only reason it doesn’t happen is because of parochial attitudes that they aren’t “real sports” or are only sports for “rich kids”. You can’t complain that the rules are unfair when you have the ability to compete and choose not to out of misguided notions of principle. And yes, some of these were suggested as additions when Bo was AD. In the case of rowing, he was said to reply that as long as he was around, Michigan would never sponsor a sport where you sit on your ass and go backwards. That’s as closed-minded as it gets.
I think people might start finding out that their hero Bo was a lot more close minded and less of a hero than they believed growing up. I wonder when people will start questioning Carr........like he wasn’t around for numerous decades and also somehow didn’t know.....
As some on this board are aware, I have been ambivalent about Bo’s legacy for a long time. Yes, he reinvigorated the football program, instilled toughness, and was generally forthright and genuine. The problem was that he was also short-sighted, stubborn, and often tactically sound but strategically inept. We saw it play out in his record in bowl games, lack of MNCs, and more recently in the handling of Dr. Anderson. While it’s unfair to criticize Bo because he was a man of his time and is no longer here to respond, I can’t help but wonder how much better M football and the rest of the athletic department would have been if he were more dynamic and adaptable in all things, not just football. Because he was a heck of a motivator.
That's ambivalence? Hate to be on your bad side...
Stanford Wrestling took a hard stance during the NCAAs. Glad ppl listened.
The whole thing never made sense. Wrestling alumni raised 10 million dollars and they still said no. The problem is their coach already took a different job.
Most (all?*) of their scholarship student athletes are sponsored by rich alum. I probably should look more into it, but I was kind of surprised they cut those sports in the first place.
* a buddy was a full ride scholarship football player and he was sponsored by a rich SF area widow. They still stay in touch.
This is true. Two of my good friends were on “scholarship “ to play football but the scholarship is sponsored by a wealth family.
I don't think the decision to cut or reinstate had much to do with the cost of scholarships. The affected sports probably did not offer many, if any, scholarships. I know that men's rowing programs rarely offer scholarships. Many of them, like the Ivies, find ways to use financial aid to cut the cost of attendance for recruited athletes, but they don't use athletic department funds to subsidize athlete attendance. Other high-level rowing schools with big endowment funds offer some partial scholarships along with generous financial aid, but the scholarships are a relatively small part of the financial aid package. Washington and Cal offer some "regular" athletic scholarships to rowers, but these are also mostly partials, and those two schools are pretty unique because of their historical commitment to rowing and historical success. I think it's likely that most of the athletes in the 11 sports were not getting significant financial help that came from the athletic department budget.
Many of the sports that were cut, particularly sailing and rowing, are relatively expensive to operate. I think that those operating costs, along with a perception of alumni disinterest, was the primary motivation for the cuts. When alumni objected, Stanford realized that its cost savings would not be pain-free, and it reversed itself.
I have first hand knowledge of the ripple effect of this decision and its now reverberation on people's lives. The son of my college teammate is a '21 top 5-ranked boy's volleyball player from California. He was recruited and offered by nearly every top program, going on all of his official visits (including to Ohio State, where they had him on the field of Ohio Stadium pre-game), but had Stanford as his number one all along. Due to the delayed Stanford recruitment/application decision process, he essentially waited out an offer from them thereby forgoing all of his other offers. Stanford finally made the offer, they celebrated, and exactly 1.5 weeks later he got the phone call from the men's VB coach about the cancellation of the program. They were devastated, and had nothing having turned every other program down. Finally, UCSD offered, and then, Harvard called, and he ended up committing there. Certainly an amazing "consolation prize". Today, however, with this news, they are angry all over again and in utter disbelief, and certainly torn as well...
is there a directors cup this year? the website hasn’t been updated at all.. which would be so typical for michigan because this year i think we would actually have a shot at beating them
There supposedly will be. I'd been bugging them on Twitter about their complete lack of momentum even as NCAA championships were being awarded. Then about a week ago this statement appeared on the site:
A release regarding the 2020-21 Learfield IMG College Directors' Cup will be published in the upcoming weeks
Still nothing more than that. But you're right: we're doing very well. I started computing my own version of the standings, using their same methodology, and through Winter sports (not including any Fall), we're #1.
I'll post more about this as either they release something or I continue to do it myself.
I wonder what the net $ were for some of these sports--maybe(?) not as big a financial drain as you might imagine. I'm guessing (?) that the squash, sailing, fencing teams are enriched for families paying full cost; and that sailing alumni could be motivated to donate to endow the sport (e.g. like people donate 'named' crew shells) etc.
Generally I'd be curious to see average alumni giving per sport...
Fuck Stanford.
Varsity Blues