Baseball Dropped (Updated)

[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.

Even at schools where stadiums are not normally packed (Furman, etc.) there will still have to be very serious social distancing and attendance limitations and inconveniences to attendees.

[FU3]

This present "pandemic" is a media driven hype with a clear agenda.

Explain then why the rest of the world (including countries that our are adversaries) adopted almost the exact same strategy as us , because they were afraid of CNN and NBC? They did it because they believed it was in their best interest to try and slow a pandemic that has no vaccine or effective treatment.

[MetroMizzy]

To my knowledge no one that I know was contacted hence Harker being blindsided.

[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.

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.”?

The line about some of these majors being relevant to many, many careers is just a tired old liberal arts college sales pitch. It works on fewer and fewer people. As for academia, there aren’t enough jobs now, and when you close a bunch of colleges there will be even fewer. Of course, if all the old Profs everywhere retire, that will help some.

[Roundball]

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.

Davidson does have a few players on scholarship. That team had three.

[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?

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.

I love the new national frenzy for epi, as misguided as it is. Pump handles!!!

I'm familiar with 1957, 1968, MERS, and SARs. This is a different animal (figuratively speaking). You're also ignoring the significant morbidity associated with the disease.

Also, pandemic means "global". So, I doubt Luxembourg has a state of emergency to thwart the re-election bid of your science-denying messiah.

[JohnW]

Been reading everything here, on twitter, listened to the interviews. It seems Lacrosse was headed to the block pre-virus. Furman was simply funding too many scholarships for the resources available and had a looming Title IX problem because of the current makeup of the student body that could have meant adding another women's sport. Baseball seems to actually be a victim of the shortfall and future uncertainty caused by the pandemic. That gives me hope that baseball will return when conditions have improved, including steps to address the male/female imbalance.

[Jasper]

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.

I love the new national frenzy for epi, as misguided as it is. Pump handles!!!

I'm familiar with 1957, 1968, MERS, and SARs. This is a different animal (figuratively speaking). You're also ignoring the significant morbidity associated with the disease.

Also, pandemic means "global". So, I doubt Luxembourg has a state of emergency to thwart the re-election bid of your science-denying messiah.

I stopped reading the post at "media fear-mongering pandemic". That should give you a clue of what is coming next: the collective wisdom of Fox News.

[MetroMizzy]

Can we all agree that Title IX is a 40 year old law that is outdated and really doesn't make any sense? There is no women's equivalent sport to football so football should be taken out of the equation. Go from there...

Liberal Arts colleges...what does that even mean? So Furman is a Top Liberal Arts university? Who cares. My communications degree (I know, I know) has meant absolutely zero in my professional life. Working together as a team, organization, dedication, hard work, recovering from injuries, being coachable, getting out of bed at 5 to get to weight training, etc etc - everything that I did on a day to day basis playing ball at Furman is what translates to real life. The rest of my Furman years is bogus nonsense higher education scam that puts kids in debt for life.

Those of you that played or coached in college at any level, get it.

[Fessor]

Can we all agree that Title IX is a 40 year old law that is outdated and really doesn't make any sense? There is no women's equivalent sport to football so football should be taken out of the equation. Go from there...

Liberal Arts colleges...what does that even mean? So Furman is a Top Liberal Arts university? Who cares. My communications degree (I know, I know) has meant absolutely zero in my professional life. Working together as a team, organization, dedication, hard work, recovering from injuries, being coachable, getting out of bed at 5 to get to weight training, etc etc - everything that I did on a day to day basis playing ball at Furman is what translates to real life. The rest of my Furman years is bogus nonsense higher education scam that puts kids in debt for life.

Those of you that played or coached in college at any level, get it.

On the topic of working together as a team and being coachable, do you wear a mask and practice social distancing?

[FurmAlum]

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....

Uh Oh. I wasn't a big Smolla fan either. Make that a B+ student with a lot of extracurricular activities.

[Affirm]

Can we all agree that Title IX is a 40 year old law that is outdated and really doesn't make any sense? There is no women's equivalent sport to football so football should be taken out of the equation. Go from there...

Liberal Arts colleges...what does that even mean? So Furman is a Top Liberal Arts university? Who cares. My communications degree (I know, I know) has meant absolutely zero in my professional life. Working together as a team, organization, dedication, hard work, recovering from injuries, being coachable, getting out of bed at 5 to get to weight training, etc etc - everything that I did on a day to day basis playing ball at Furman is what translates to real life. The rest of my Furman years is bogus nonsense higher education scam that puts kids in debt for life.

Those of you that played or coached in college at any level, get it.

I do not agree with your apparent implication that Title IX should be done away with. And no, football cannot be taken out of the equation! Weak try.
You attended Furman?
Why?
You hold liberal arts, and liberal arts colleges, and Furman trying to be a good liberal arts college, in such low regard?
Your comments may be good evidence for arguing in favor of Furman considerably reducing emphasis on athletics as much as possible.
“Bogus nonsense higher education scam.” False.
Many would say that athletics as they exist within higher education are the bogus nonsense scam.

[Affirm]

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.

I don’t know how many baseball scholarships, if any, Davidson has.
Maybe if we would follow Davidson’s model on football and basketball, we too could keep a baseball program at the same level of program as Davidson.
You cannot have everything you want.

[Roundball]

Another good piece in the Charleston P&C, the source for all things Furman. https://www.postandcourier.com/sports/c ... de518.html

[Fessor]

You cannot have everything you want.

You can't kiss all the girls. (You can try, but it usually doesn't end well).

Post and Courier is a legitimately good newspaper. I read it regularly during my Charleston Days.