re: Small sports starting to react

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To be fair small sport students and the grandparents won't have a sport to watch at all if football isn't footing the bill.

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Odd, I remember all these small sports existing before football became insanely profitable.

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This mentality has been so misapplied over the years that it has gotten painfully stupid to hear. Just about everything in life is a fricking privilege. Just because something is optional, doesn’t mean it should be left alone with the tip of a cap.

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I played in those non revenue sports. While enjoyable, the overwhelming majority of those that participate would not be harmed by dropping them. I was ranked nationally in foil and better than most with an epee while in college. And I know this will shock you but most southern universities or colleges don’t have funded fencing programs. So for meets we had to travel a good bit. Bowling was the a little better but bigger meets we traveled. We loaded up the passenger van and took turns driving if everyone couldn’t afford a plane ticket. The school paid for hotels and fees but we bought our own food, non sponsored equipment, and transportation.

When I go back to events or meet up with old teammates, not a single one is making a dime off the sports. A couple of us passed love of those sports to our kids(my daughter prefers to saber now over the foil) but that’s it.

Now they majority that took it seriously ended up being driven, successful folks but the school shutdown both the bowling and fencing programs a long time ago.

It was a privilege to play at some of the highest levels of the sports I loved. It provided an outlet for people like me that loved competing were were not good enough to play a revenue sport. I was fortunate enough to participate in Olympic trials (very early) and train with some of the best fencers in the country. But I could have devoted that time to rugby or cricket and not traveled and had no idea what I was missing.

There is always the possibility that the administrators recognize these issues as problems and adopt some new arrangements to solve them.

There are already hybrid conferences for some sports. Here in the Big XII we have all kinds of non football members who participate in wrestling.

Who would've thought, the regional basis of conferences had benefits??

Track guys at Oregon (one of the best in the nation - although no one will ever accomplish what Arkansas had done) and Washington (8 guys under 4 minutes for a mile this year) are worried. Travel to the east is not easy and takes time. No rivalries or fast races at Stanford either. Query whether track will in five years become only viable at the schools with the top 25 football programs. Rest assured Arkansas will be one of the them. I get many don't like track, but McDonnell brought guys in who were not D1 quality athletes as walk-ons and made them NCAA champions (he had great recruited guys too). That legacy won't go away - I ran against Arkansas at Penn Relays - got dusted despite running a top 10 time. Much respect.