Today, a major D-1 school has cut a major sport. Cal-Berkeley announced it will "86" the Golden Bears baseball program. Just like that. Gone. Finito, after over 100 years of team tradition.
The culprit, of course, is dollars. Over budget by $10 to $13-million, California had to take a meat cleaver to one of the oldest and proudest athletic programs in the country.
Could it happen at FSU? It's not out of the question. In fact, it'll be a miracle if someday the decision-makers don't have to do a Cal-Berkeley downsizing to keep from going deep in the red.
California's shortfall had to do in part with Title IX. That 1972 education amendment "requires that female athletes receive athletic scholarship dollars proportional to their participation (e.g., if there are 100 male athletes/100 female athletes and a $200,000 scholarship budget, then the budget must be split $100,000 to men/$100,000 to women)" --Source: Women's Sports Foundation
ChantRant is in favor of equal opportunities and strong women's sports programs at FSU. Still, Title IX is at least indirectly responsible for the struggle to maintain teams in traditional sports for both genders.
The fact that football has 85 scholarships mandates, for starters, there must be 85 women's scholarships. Since there's no women's football, it's a huge challenge for Athletic Directors to maintain two teams -- women's and men's -- in other sports from basketball and golf to soccer and baseball/softball.
It's no secret that football pays the way for virtually all of those teams. So while it may be convenient for some to view FSU Football like a greedy corporation that always has its hand out, imagine yourself as Randy Spetman and staff. You're not unlike a family under constant pressure to pay the bills and maintain a certain quality of life. Except some expenses are more fixed than others. You can't cut women's sports without reducing an equal amount of men's scholarships.
But costs keep going up. So football shoulders an increasing burden to generate enough income to keep all 17 teams -- except men's basketball most years -- competitive and representing FSU on the field, the court, and in the pool.
There's no guilt trip implied here to dig deeper for Florida State athletics. Just a small reality check about what our booster contributions and ticket purchases go to support. And a reminder that in college sports, like most everything else in life, we get what we pay for.
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