Next Big D1

[wgdsr]

ask them to detail where in the law you would be violating title ix. there will not be anything comparable in past rulings to an institution like columbia that has provided so many opportunities for women. adding mens lax would not be violating the law in any way, shape or form. another womens sport would not be necessary at all, you're proportional with the male population you have.

I'm sure the folks at Columbia are quite familiar with the experience their friends at Brown have had on this (including going all the way up to SCOTUS). Per Brown's settlement agreement (still in effect fyi), Brown must:

"insure that the percentage of athletes who are women is no more than 3.5 percentage points lower than the percentage of women enrolled. If Brown eliminates or downgrades women's teams, or improves men's sports without doing the same for women, it would be required to keep its sports participation rate within 2.25 percent of enrollment."

If you add 45 mlax heads to Columbia's current portfolio of sports, the pro forma would be 57.5% male athletes (up from 55.5%) versus 53.9% male undergrads. That's a gap of 3.6%, and the Brown settlement (a pretty good on point precedent if you ask me) limits the gap to 2.25%.

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/24/spor ... -suit.html

great news!

so you are saying that in a year or 2, they could have 12 fewer male t&f participants, 9 fewer football, and 6 fewer rowing, and be able to add 40 lacrosse players without adding a woman's sport. and it's in the precedent.

right?

[DMac]

Is it all clear now, Dr.?

[Makeit8Lax]

I have heard about the Brown precedent though not to that degree of detail. Good to know those numbers. We plan to identify donors who will support us for a significantly/fully funded team and suggest to Columbia women’s sports that it can fund to make the Title IX math work. This is doable as none of the women’s sports discussed here either require expensive equipment (rugby/water polo) or if they do (sailing) lack established club teams (like our CU lacrosse club) with alums who could help pay for said equipment. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

[ggait]

so you are saying that in a year or 2, they could have 12 fewer male t&f participants, 9 fewer football, and 6 fewer rowing, and be able to add 40 lacrosse players without adding a woman's sport. and it's in the precedent.

right?

You can work the math however you want.

Doing what you suggest, however, would nick off three coaches (and related alumni groups). And would result in CU having four under-rostered squads as compared to its peers. Again, the question is why would the AD want to do that?

Seems like adding one female team (if you can get away with it) that is played by other Ivy schools is the more reasonable way to go. But more expensive and complicated. Adding two female teams (if you have to) is even more expensive/complicated. But totally do-able with enough Benjamins.

Or you could cut an existing mens sport if there's one that the AD thinks there's one that CU doesn't really want/need to continue.

[Makeit8Lax]

Adding the women’s teams is the only way to go. Especially when the smaller men’s sports at Columbia have won multiple Ivy League titles (soccer, baseball, fencing) or have wealthy alumni backers (swimming, wrestling—the latter to the tune of endowed head and assistant coaching positions). Something like rowing might be able to expand to include a lightweight division or at least additional boats on the current women’s team.

[palaxoff]

What teams could Columbia add on Women's side? I think you already have most of NCAA Women sports, whats left Beach Volleyball, Ice Hockey, Rifle and Water Polo. Don't think Ice Hockey in the cards due to facility. Could the others offset men's lacrosse?

[Homer]

Seems like adding one female team (if you can get away with it) that is played by other Ivy schools is the more reasonable way to go. But more expensive and complicated. Adding two female teams (if you have to) is even more expensive/complicated. But totally do-able with enough Benjamins.

The other component to this, even setting the $$ part aside, when you're talking about adding multiple new sports at an Ivy in particular is it's also X many more admissions spots that need to be set aside for those coaches to get their recruits in. 2-3 high-headcount rosters needing to be filled simultaneously -- that's going to take a visible bite, especially if you're not expanding the overall size of the freshman class. Those spots (you may have heard) are valuable commodities that'd no longer be available to serve other constituencies and agendas, so it's not necessarily going to be a popular move across the university. There was perhaps a time when you could make that move anyway without anybody much noticing, but do you get my drift when I say that just right now might not be the ideal moment for this from a PR perspective?

[ggait]

What teams could Columbia add on Women's side? I think you already have most of NCAA Women sports, whats left Beach Volleyball, Ice Hockey, Rifle and Water Polo. Don't think Ice Hockey in the cards due to facility. Could the others offset men's lacrosse?

As 8 pointed out above, several Ivies have varsity teams in sailing, womens rugby and w water polo. The teams just have to be varsity rather than club. They don't have to be NCAA sanctioned to count (although wwp is NCAA sanctioned). In Columbia's case, it would be more important that Ivies and other nearby NE colleges sponsor the sport (for conference and scheduling) than whether the sport is currently NCAA sanctioned.

[Makeit8Lax]

We were recently made aware of the admissions slot problem by a well-connected alum of Columbia who is friendly to our cause. The politics of that issue are unclear as Columbia has added only very small roster sports (women’s golf, men’s/women’s squash) since the 1990s. I don’t think there’s necessarily any “good” time
politically to make the move, only a time when we have commitments to fund the team and thereby boost Columbia’s athletic endowment to something resembling that of its seven peers.

[ggait]

The other component to this, even setting the $$ part aside, when you're talking about adding multiple new sports at an Ivy in particular is it's also X many more admissions spots that need to be set aside for those coaches to get their recruits in. 2-3 high-headcount rosters needing to be filled simultaneously -- that's going to take a visible bite, especially if you're not expanding the overall size of the freshman class.

Excellent point.

Columbia's current athlete count is a bit lower than its similarly sized Ivy peers -- 775 heads vs. 910 at Brown, 850 at Yale, 1,115 at Harvard. So maybe that means Columbia has room to grow its athlete headcount. Or maybe it means Columbia likes it the way it currently is.

Allocating an incremental 90-100 heads to varsity athletes at a school like Columbia would be a significant policy change that would have ripple effects elsewhere.

Just another angle on how T9 affects this whole issue. In no way does T9 prohibit schools from adding mlax. But T9 seriously increases the cost and complexity of doing so. And when the cost and complexity of doing something are very high, people do that thing much less often.

Adding a very high head count (45 guys these days on a D1 roster) niche non-revenue male sport is just a very tough hurdle to clear.

[Homer]

I don’t think there’s necessarily any “good” time politically to make the move

"Good" in the sense of "not immediately following a major national scandal that drew overwhelmingly negative attention to athletics admissions at selective universities and Ivies in particular, something much of the general public didn't even previously really know existed."

[Makeit8Lax]

Columbia is also one of the smallest Ivies by overall headcount with 1000 per class in the College and 300 in Engineering.

[Dr. Tact]

Is it all clear now, Dr.?

crystal

[Dip&Dunk]

The other component to this, even setting the $$ part aside, when you're talking about adding multiple new sports at an Ivy in particular is it's also X many more admissions spots that need to be set aside for those coaches to get their recruits in. 2-3 high-headcount rosters needing to be filled simultaneously -- that's going to take a visible bite, especially if you're not expanding the overall size of the freshman class.

Excellent point.

Columbia's current athlete count is a bit lower than its similarly sized Ivy peers -- 775 heads vs. 910 at Brown, 850 at Yale, 1,115 at Harvard. So maybe that means Columbia has room to grow its athlete headcount. Or maybe it means Columbia likes it the way it currently is.

Allocating an incremental 90-100 heads to varsity athletes at a school like Columbia would be a significant policy change that would have ripple effects elsewhere.

Just another angle on how T9 affects this whole issue. In no way does T9 prohibit schools from adding mlax. But T9 seriously increases the cost and complexity of doing so. And when the cost and complexity of doing something are very high, people do that thing much less often.

Adding a very high head count (45 guys these days on a D1 roster) niche non-revenue male sport is just a very tough hurdle to clear.

I guess it is a matter of perspective. 33,000 undergraduates, $11B endowment. 45 or 90 is a rounding error. I won't even point out what a rounding error lacrosse costs are versus $11B.

[Makeit8Lax]

33,000 is total students including all grad schools. Undergraduate enrollment is around 6,000. And most of that $11B endowment is restricted-use for non-atheletics purposes. Columbia athletic-specific endowment is the smallest in the Ivy by a mile. We are looking to change that with our own restricted-use endowment fund for Mlax which is already up and running.

[Dip&Dunk]

33,000 is total students including all grad schools. Undergraduate enrollment is around 6,000. And most of that $11B endowment is restricted-use for non-atheletics purposes. Columbia athletic-specific endowment is the smallest in the Ivy by a mile. We are looking to change that with our own restricted-use endowment fund for Mlax which is already up and running.

Got it. Mis read Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge. They list undergrad at 8900 once I read it correctly. $11B, restricted or not, can be shifted many, many different ways to free up funds otherwise used. Good luck.

[Makeit8Lax]

Thank you! 8900 may also include Barnard (2,000 women). We will be fundraising for the Mlax endowment fund as part of Columbia Giving Day on Wednesday, 10/23.
www.makeit8.com

[ggait]

The schools all have to report their T9 data to the USDOEd which posts that info in a public database. Presumably that's the data that would be used for this analysis/exercise. The numbers get run off of undergrad enrollment only, since grad/professional students typically aren't playing varsity sports.

Per that database:

Columbia listed at 7,592 full time undergrads. 939 athletic roster spots. 775 unduplicated athletic participants.

Could be that DOEd is counting the Barnard undergrads. Which would make sense because I believe Barnard gals can play on Columbia's D1 teams. Or maybe they are including Columbia's school of general studies, which is the undergrad division for non-traditional students.

At 7,600, Columbia is bigger than every Ivy except Penn and Cornell. At 6,000, it is a little smaller than Brown and Harvard; a little bigger than Yale and Princeton.


https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/institution/search

[notentitled]

Recruiting can be tricky. Columbia's athletic facilities/fields are about 100 blocks from campus. That issue alone has been one of the reasons the football team suffered for so many years- though it has improved of late. Another IVY would be fun. Go Quakers.

[Makeit8Lax]

One other thing that may skew the numbers: the School of General Studies is counted as part of undergrad even though it’s aimed at 30-40 year olds who only rarely play sports (one guy starred for the baseball team a few years back). Barnard gals do play on Columbia teams through an athletic consortium. I made that commute many trines to the same football field with the club lax team. We won an NCLL title my senior year. It has not stopped the baseball and men’s soccer teams from winning a number of Ivy titles. It’s something of a deterrent but one that can be and has been overcome with the proper coaching and culture within a team. The football team did not have that until very recently with Bagnoli’s hire.