With the recent announcement that the UT Athletic Dept has once again broken it's own record for department revenue (thanks almost entirely to football), which sport(s) would you add and why? If none, why not? My choices would be: 1) Men's soccer and women's gymnastics. Why? Because both have more than the 3 or 4 fans that women's rowing has, and there is plenty of Texas talent to recruit. 2) Men's and women's lacrosse. Why? Can't really think of a real good reason other than people seem to like it once they've experienced it. Would availability of facilities be a problem for any of these sports? I know rowing was added just to equalize scholarships, but I think it's a shame that Texas was putting ads in the school paper offering scholarships to anyone who could make the team. Almost no one rows, but there are tens of thousands of kids who have dedicated countless hours to Olympic sports like gymnastics, wrestling, hockey, etc. with the limited prospect of getting a scholarship. Women's rowing allows more scholarships than baseball, for crissakes.
Wrestling, with the right coach you can be competitive before a player completes their eligibility. I was there at a sold out basketball arena watching ASU win the National Championship within 5 years of hiring Douglas. Douglas eneded up going back to OSU and now wrestling is a club sport at ASU.
I thought about wrestling, but I didn't want to start a thread about wanting to watch men in women's swim suits rolling around on a mat together.
Men's Soccer - its perceived elitism will add cachet to the university and help with recruiting model students from affluent families with an academics first mentality.
As a former lacrosse player, I vote lacrosse. The state is producing some talent now, and I think we could recruit nationally when prospects see the facilities and climate in Austin.
accurate, I took 'Revenue and Budgeting in Sport' at UT back in the Spring Semester of 1998 with Dr. Janet Fink. I am pretty sure at that time football and Men's bball were the only sports to turn a profit. Baseball, and women't basketball I believe were the least in debt. Things may have changed since then, but that is what I was operating from. Also, I think that you and I agree that whether baseball makes a little, loses a little or breaks even it is more than worthwhile to have at The University.
Men's Volleyball and whatever women's sport makes it possible. Oh, and while we're at it....a Women's Softball program would be nice.
definitely men's and women's gymnastics, and men's soccer, wrestling and volleyball. i don't even know why the issue has to be debated or discussed...we should have had these programs on board long ago.
mens volleyball and men & womens lacrosse...I really enjoy watching lacrosse and if we fielded teams, I think it would be a very popular spectator sport at UT.
Pancho Negro, If I recall correctly from taking Sport Law back in teh day at UT... Title IX directs that the number of athletes have to be in percentage with the number of that gender in the general student body.. So if UT is 48% male and 52% female in the general student population, at least 52% of the athletes must be female. It is a ratio based on the larger student population and not necessarily male athlete to female athlete. I have long said that football throws this way off. For just about every sport.. there is male and female, save football. Football is A LOT of athletes and there must be offsets in the way of additional female sports. Which is why we have female soccer and volleyball and rowing, but not men's.
I would think that the womens BB team is in the black averaging over 5K/game? Over 75K fans per year?
I would prefer the Athletics Department funnel more money back into academic departments that are really hurting for revenue with the declining endowment. All colleges are laying off staff and non-tenured instructors.
I have no idea why we don't have a Men's Soccer team. That would be at least as popular as, say... women's volleyball with the number of international students that UT has. We already have a soccer field! We'd just have to buy jerseys!
Also, Lincoln, Texas is a hotbed for the country in soccer talent. Our club teams among the best for youth leagues. It all goes to other schools or even out of state.
With the dough the Texas Athletic Department (read: football) has coming in these days, I can't see how a few additional sports would be that big of a drain. The cost of men's soccer and volleyball would consist mainly of scholarships, coaching and travel. Same for women's gymnastics. I'm not sure we could add lacrosse without adding to the infrastructure. Wrestliing might not cost a whole lot, but would think that adding a mirror program (i.e.- men's soccer and volleyball) would make recruiting easier. I would have to think that starting from scratch in wrestling would be difficult since Texas h.s. wrestling is a relative newcomer to the game. The coaches would have an uphill battle convincing kids from traditionally strong wrestling states that Texas would be competitive with the established powers. I haven't looked up the scholarship limitations for these sports, but I'd be willing to bet that women's gymnastics has a higher limit than either men's vb or soccer. But, they may not have quite the numbers to offset two men's sports. Title IX is a joke. Schools should be able to exempt from scholarship equalization football or any other sport that is self-supporting. If a college doesn't have to subsidize a sport, why does it matter? The main problem I see with that is that schools could manipulate their books to show that football is in the black.
In reality, I don't believe we can add a men's sport without adding at least an equal number of scholarships for a new women's sport, per Title IX. So we would have to add field hockey for women, and soccer for men, something like that. Are there fan dollars to support any more sports? Hard to picture in this economy, but maybe there are enough who would follow newly added sports.
That would be sweet. As $$ intensive as racing is, we would absolutely own everyone. Speaking of F1, loop, check out the F1 thread. Big news there.
