Baseball Dropped (Updated)

[Paul C]

I would take a B student that can pay over an A student who has to have some financial aid for a while. It's Econ 101.

This was the Smolla strategy that caused him (among other things) to get run off by the faculty....

[Paul C]

On the endowment, I thought this was instructive.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-u ... -endowment

That's fantastic

[Furmanoid]

We already do it to at least some extent. There are no SAT or ACT requirements for FU. But of course you have no chance at financial aid without SAT or ACT scores. So if you’re willing to pay, just send in your inflated HS grades and come on. But enrollment is slipping anyway.

[fufanatic]

Not sure what Greenville is so upset about. In looking at the attendance numbers for this season, outside of opening day, most games averaged between 250-300 fans at a stadium that's located in a county that has over half a million people. Not exactly wearing out the turnstiles. As another poster said, if the local community cared about Furman baseball, they would have shown up when they had 25+ opportunities a year for decades on end. I won't hold my breath to see if North Greenville's attendance figures go up because of Furman's decision since there's apparently such a thirst for college baseball among the locals.

This decision is a huge bummer, but the sky is not falling. Assuming we can get back to normal as a society, I think we are going to be very pleased with the fall and winter our Paladins will have.

[Affirm]

By the way S.C. is also starting on campus classes 2 weeks early this fall, August 10th. I really thought Furman had finally made a little headway in becoming Greenville’s team. Something that really had been in name only previously. What progress had been made went out the window yesterday. The Greenville community as a whole is now mad at Furman and don’t understand this decision. I’ve heard a lot of negativity addressed at Furman from various sources. Even the guy at checkout in the grocery store talked about it and was upset. Doubt we will see 6k at the well next year. We asked the Greenville community to get behind Greenvilles team then do this. One other thing that comes to mind is the athletes themselves losing part of their community. Loved seeing the baseball teams reaction to the last second win at the well against WC. Btw on tonight’s news they said WC had made some changes including things like a freeze on spending. WC has no plans to cut any sports. I am sure they will gladly take Furman’s spot against CU and S.C. next year at Fluor.

Either propose better solutions or shut up.

AMEN. AMEN. AMEN. AMEN. AMEN. AMEN. AMEN. AMEN. AMEN. AMEN.
And if you choose to do the former, please think and consider very carefully, very long, and very hard, so that YOU make sure the solutions that you would propose would actually be better.
Please do not propose solutions that WE on the message board are tempted to spend our time reading if they would not actually be better. We WOULD naturally be tempted to spend our time reading the solutions that anyone on here would thoughtfully propose because we are interested in this important topic.

[Affirm]

Not sure what Greenville is so upset about. In looking at the attendance numbers for this season, outside of opening day, most games averaged between 250-300 fans at a stadium that's located in a county that has over half a million people. Not exactly wearing out the turnstiles. As another poster said, if the local community cared about Furman baseball, they would have shown up when they had 25+ opportunities a year for decades on end. I won't hold my breath to see if North Greenville's attendance figures go up because of Furman's decision since there's apparently such a thirst for college baseball among the locals.

This decision is a huge bummer, but the sky is not falling. Assuming we can get back to normal as a society, I think we are going to be very pleased with the fall and winter our Paladins will have.

I agree. If Furman baseball was such a popular draw among persons in the local community or among the alumni or in the student body, that would surprise me. I never knew that it was. And what was the great publicity that we received out of having baseball, even whenever we had a SoCon championship season or whenever we had an occasional, rare win over a UofSC or over a Clemson or over a UGA? When was the last time we got to the CWS?(... yeah ... that's what I thought ...) Furman tried to support baseball. Spent a lot of resources trying to improve baseball.
The decision that has been made and is being implemented is a good one.
Condolences to the people most severely impacted, particularly the student-athletes, coaching staff, student staff, and family members of all those, plus to any and all of those who are (were) true fans of Furman baseball.

[palafan]

It is pretty clear from Jason's interview on Sportstalk that if we don't have a normal football and basketball season, college sports nationwide may be done as we know it.

Time to end this nonsense.

[Fessor]

Time to end this nonsense.

Your comment tells me that you (1) haven't yet been personally impacted, (2) know nothing about the volume and acuity of the patients presenting for care that are resulting in war zone-like conditions in many hospitals and ICUs, and (3) don't understand the significant risk to which many healthcare workers and their families are being exposed. Two-thousand people per day on average are dying from this illness, multiples of that number are hospitalized and requiring intensive/invasive care , and the disease has now been linked to a vasculitis-like syndrome in children. Perhaps you should show your disbelief in the seriousness of this illness, and contempt for those expressing concern, by pledging not to accept care should you become infected and symptomatic?

[MetroMizzy]

100ish male athletes no longer attending Furman hurts athletics and academics. Period. These men (players and coaches) are ambassadors of the university. They attend other on campus sporting events, play games on other campuses, tweet all day long about Furman, recruit other students AND athletes to Furman and give back to the community - $140K raised by the baseball team since 2014 in the fight against childhood cancer is one example.

Some nerd in a science lab with a 4.0 GPA that sleeps, eats and studies science has minimal to no positive effect on the university profile. Until private university administration realizes this (which they never will) the system is doomed. Furman Baseball was cut for no real reason. Hide behind CV, endowments, WTFever you want. It was a mistake. And it was an even bigger mistake to do it with no warning. At least give the players and coaches one more year to see it out.

If you have time, google "Providence College Baseball" and do some light reading on what happened to that program in 1999. Go on and google their head coach Charlie Hickey as well and see what he's done since the program folded. I hope Harker moves on elsewhere, hopefully locally, so all of you Greenville Furman Football die-hards with blinders on get to read about his success for the next two decades.

My solution: Give lacrosse one or two more years to phase out. Cut the baseball budget. Go to even less scholarships if necessary and secure outside funding from donors to make up the difference. The program can and should live on. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe Davidson has any baseball scholarships. In 2017 they were on the doorstep of the CWS.

[palafan]

Time to end this nonsense.

Your comment tells me that you (1) haven't yet been personally impacted, (2) know nothing about the volume and acuity of the patients presenting for care that are resulting in war zone-like conditions in many hospitals and ICUs, and (3) don't understand the significant risk to which many healthcare workers and their families are being exposed. Two-thousand people per day on average are dying from this illness, multiples of that number are hospitalized and requiring intensive/invasive care , and the disease has now been linked to a vasculitis-like syndrome in children. Perhaps you should show your disbelief in the seriousness of this illness, and contempt for those expressing concern, by pledging not to accept care should you become infected and symptomatic?

This media fear-mongering "pandemic" in no way merits the loss of 30+ million American jobs, loss of small and large businesses forever, and financial ruin and devastation of the economy. Yeah, I know hundreds of people personally impacted by this. I have friends that have had ZERO income for months and are about to lose everything. Furman sports will likely cease to exist if we do not have a normal football and basketball season.

It is a real illness and it does kill or make seriously ill a fraction of the population. We know who they are and they can be protected, or better yet, exercise their freedom to know the risk and decide for themselves what level of risk they choose to expose themselves to. My 90 year old mother has barely left the house at the wishes of me, my sister and herself, but my sister and I carried on with life. Fortunately we had jobs that allowed us to continue working and have not personally experienced much of the financial impacts.

In 1968 the Hong Kong flu killed 100,000 Americans and 1,000,000 worldwide. That year Woodstock was held and life went on. H3N2 now circulates the globe yearly as one of the Type A flus. In 2009 under the Obama Administration, H1N1 started in the US and again nothing was done to devastate the economy. This present "pandemic" is a media driven hype with a clear agenda.

[fufanatic]

Not sure what Greenville is so upset about. In looking at the attendance numbers for this season, outside of opening day, most games averaged between 250-300 fans at a stadium that's located in a county that has over half a million people. Not exactly wearing out the turnstiles. As another poster said, if the local community cared about Furman baseball, they would have shown up when they had 25+ opportunities a year for decades on end. I won't hold my breath to see if North Greenville's attendance figures go up because of Furman's decision since there's apparently such a thirst for college baseball among the locals.

This decision is a huge bummer, but the sky is not falling. Assuming we can get back to normal as a society, I think we are going to be very pleased with the fall and winter our Paladins will have.

I agree. If Furman baseball was such a popular draw among persons in the local community or among the alumni or in the student body, that would surprise me. I never knew that it was. And what was the great publicity that we received out of having baseball, even whenever we had a SoCon championship season or whenever we had an occasional, rare win over a UofSC or over a Clemson or over a UGA? When was the last time we got to the CWS?(... yeah ... that's what I thought ...) Furman tried to support baseball. Spent a lot of resources trying to improve baseball.
The decision that has been made and is being implemented is a good one.
Condolences to the people most severely impacted, particularly the student-athletes, coaching staff, student staff, and family members of all those, plus to any and all of those who are (were) true fans of Furman baseball.

As I watched coverage of college baseball become bigger and bigger, especially with the creation of ESPN3, I had high hopes every year that we would get to see the Paladins make a run and pull some upsets. And it never happened. Even after the push to make baseball better several years ago with more scholarships and better facilities, the team has been mildly competitive, but not outstanding or consistently top contenders in the SoCon. Which makes me sad. I really don't know what the admin would have done if Furman baseball had been really competitive in the SoCon. Unfortunately, we will never know.

[Furmanoid]

Time to end this nonsense.

Your comment tells me that you (1) haven't yet been personally impacted, (2) know nothing about the volume and acuity of the patients presenting for care that are resulting in war zone-like conditions in many hospitals and ICUs, and (3) don't understand the significant risk to which many healthcare workers and their families are being exposed. Two-thousand people per day on average are dying from this illness, multiples of that number are hospitalized and requiring intensive/invasive care , and the disease has now been linked to a vasculitis-like syndrome in children. Perhaps you should show your disbelief in the seriousness of this illness, and contempt for those expressing concern, by pledging not to accept care should you become infected and symptomatic?

Are you saying we shouldn’t do college in the Fall or just don’t do sports? I just think that if you do open colleges, you might as well do sports, because the athletes aren’t much more at risk than the regular student population (and the risk is tiny). Very, very few programs have packed stadiums so distancing is manageable. If you mean no college, ok, but that means a good many will close for good. Not FU but their game plan will have to change because so many of the majors are geared to academia and that won’t be a viable career choice anymore. Before you yell at me, my niece (a chubby Native American) got it and did fine. And I live in a small city with 6 hospitals and no war zone conditions.

[Affirm]

Not sure what Greenville is so upset about. In looking at the attendance numbers for this season, outside of opening day, most games averaged between 250-300 fans at a stadium that's located in a county that has over half a million people. Not exactly wearing out the turnstiles. As another poster said, if the local community cared about Furman baseball, they would have shown up when they had 25+ opportunities a year for decades on end. I won't hold my breath to see if North Greenville's attendance figures go up because of Furman's decision since there's apparently such a thirst for college baseball among the locals.

This decision is a huge bummer, but the sky is not falling. Assuming we can get back to normal as a society, I think we are going to be very pleased with the fall and winter our Paladins will have.

I agree. If Furman baseball was such a popular draw among persons in the local community or among the alumni or in the student body, that would surprise me. I never knew that it was. And what was the great publicity that we received out of having baseball, even whenever we had a SoCon championship season or whenever we had an occasional, rare win over a UofSC or over a Clemson or over a UGA? When was the last time we got to the CWS?(... yeah ... that's what I thought ...) Furman tried to support baseball. Spent a lot of resources trying to improve baseball.
The decision that has been made and is being implemented is a good one.
Condolences to the people most severely impacted, particularly the student-athletes, coaching staff, student staff, and family members of all those, plus to any and all of those who are (were) true fans of Furman baseball.

As I watched coverage of college baseball become bigger and bigger, especially with the creation of ESPN3, I had high hopes every year that we would get to see the Paladins make a run and pull some upsets. And it never happened. Even after the push to make baseball better several years ago with more scholarships and better facilities, the team has been mildly competitive, but not outstanding or consistently top contenders in the SoCon. Which makes me sad. I really don't know what the admin would have done if Furman baseball had been really competitive in the SoCon. Unfortunately, we will never know.

We were not really competitive in the SoCon. That factor contributed to the choice of which program(s) to cut.

[Affirm]

Time to end this nonsense.

Your comment tells me that you (1) haven't yet been personally impacted, (2) know nothing about the volume and acuity of the patients presenting for care that are resulting in war zone-like conditions in many hospitals and ICUs, and (3) don't understand the significant risk to which many healthcare workers and their families are being exposed. Two-thousand people per day on average are dying from this illness, multiples of that number are hospitalized and requiring intensive/invasive care , and the disease has now been linked to a vasculitis-like syndrome in children. Perhaps you should show your disbelief in the seriousness of this illness, and contempt for those expressing concern, by pledging not to accept care should you become infected and symptomatic?

Are you saying we shouldn’t do college in the Fall or just don’t do sports? I just think that if you do open colleges, you might as well do sports, because the athletes aren’t much more at risk than the regular student population (and the risk is tiny). Very, very few programs have packed stadiums so distancing is manageable. If you mean no college, ok, but that means a good many will close for good. Not FU but their game plan will have to change because so many of the majors are geared to academia and that won’t be a viable career choice anymore. Before you yell at me, my niece (a chubby Native American) got it and did fine. And I live in a small city with 6 hospitals and no war zone conditions.

What makes you think that our majors are not assets to one’s career? I do think that “so many of our majors“ are useful to people who aspire to academic careers, but those same majors are relevant to many, many careers.
Besides, why does anyone think that “... academia ... won’t be a viable career choice anymore.”?

[fufanatic]

100ish male athletes no longer attending Furman hurts athletics and academics. Period. These men (players and coaches) are ambassadors of the university. They attend other on campus sporting events, play games on other campuses, tweet all day long about Furman, recruit other students AND athletes to Furman and give back to the community - $140K raised by the baseball team since 2014 in the fight against childhood cancer is one example.

Some nerd in a science lab with a 4.0 GPA that sleeps, eats and studies science has minimal to no positive effect on the university profile.

This last part is really interesting to me. I've never thought of it quite like that, but I believe I agree with you.

My solution: Give lacrosse one or two more years to phase out. Cut the baseball budget. Go to even less scholarships if necessary and secure outside funding from donors to make up the difference. The program can and should live on. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe Davidson has any baseball scholarships. In 2017 they were on the doorstep of the CWS.

I would get behind this. I'm sure something similar was considered. I don't think the decision was made lightly, but I do wonder if they reached out to baseball donors first to try to gauge interest in donating more to save the program.