Baseball Dropped (Updated)

[FU3]

There are unintended consequences in any decision. What has been disconcerting about this one is the shifting explanations about rationale and timing. The lack of any interaction with donors and alumni is inexplicable.

[Fessor]

There are unintended consequences in any decision. What has been disconcerting about this one is the shifting explanations about rationale and timing. The lack of any interaction with donors and alumni is inexplicable.

One should consider (4th person) that there are donors and then there are DONORS.

One would think (again, 4th person) that the DONORS were advised of the possibility, if not directly involved.

[FGT]

There are unintended consequences in any decision. What has been disconcerting about this one is the shifting explanations about rationale and timing. The lack of any interaction with donors and alumni is inexplicable.

One should consider (4th person) that there are donors and then there are DONORS.

One would think (again, 4th person) that the DONORS were advised of the possibility, if not directly involved.

For lacrosse yes. I believe he sits on the BOT if I’m not mistaken. For baseball no.

[furmandad]

Absolutely agree with affirm; I don't recall a Furman President that has supported athletics quite like E. Davis. And I believe Fessor is correct that select DONORS were contacted prior to announcement. I am happy several of our baseball players are "upgrading" to bigger/better teams. Extremely tough decisions, but I believe the right ones for Furman's overall future.

[freebird]

Absolutely agree with affirm; I don't recall a Furman President that has supported athletics quite like E. Davis. And I believe Fessor is correct that select DONORS were contacted prior to announcement. I am happy several of our baseball players are "upgrading" to bigger/better teams. Extremely tough decisions, but I believe the right ones for Furman's overall future.

Dr. Johns was the biggest advocate for Furman sports as a President in my lifetime. FU all the time.

[Furmanoid]

Davis has a tricky job. Long ago Furman decided to become a top national liberal arts college. But there is a tradition of playing sort of big time sports. If you look at the other schools in that category in US News (and I suspect the bot and admin pay way too much attention to that crap) out of the 100 or so schools listed only Richmond, Furman and a couple of Patriot League schools play scholarship sports. It appears to be a challenge to check all of the boxes for those rankings AND do sports. I wish we could have just been content with what we were 30-40 years ago.

[FU3]

I know several (in Furman terms) major donors who were blind sided by this. I also believe Fessor is correct that some of the largest donors were likely aware of the this decision. Furman because of the relatively small size of the alumni and donor base doesn’t have the luxury of alienating a decent sized swath of them. If there were immediate reasons for cutting these programs it has not been explained coherently.Allowing a group to try and begin to determine the feasibility to raise funds and then rejecting it in a statement a couple weeks later made it worse.

[FUKA61]

Richmond has an undergrad enrollment of 4,350 students and an endowment of 2.5 billion.

[Fessor]

I wish we could have just been content with what we were 30-40 years ago.

Please elaborate.

[Furmanoid]

I wish we could have just been content with what we were 30-40 years ago.

Please elaborate.

Furman was a very, very good little school with surprising (at times) success in high level sports. Furman wasn’t (so far as I could tell) trying to be Bowdoin or Amherst transplanted into Greenville, SC. And, OK, I’ll come out and say it, looking back now I don’t like the decision to dump the Baptists. It was only 5% of the funding(actually a lot more) but FU could use that now. And it just seems tacky to blow off the people who supported you for so long and in whose interests you were founded. If you want to be the Bates College of the South, OK, but you’re going to suck at sports sooner or later.

[Flagman]

I beg to differ with my good friend, Freebird. My son graduated with a degree in English and Philosophy. He marketed his personal analytical skills into a 6-digit income in construction management. He has managed multi-million dollar projects. Most employers want people who had the commitment to complete their education, and are trainable.

He is one of the exceptions Flagman. I can cite many more to the contrary. Hope you are doing well my friend.

He comes from good genes.

[JohnW]

Richmond has an undergrad enrollment of 4,350 students and an endowment of 2.5 billion.
[/quote

FWIW. According to their website UR has 3147 undergrads. They sponsor 17 Div 1 sports and have 48/52 male to female ratio.

[Affirm]

Davis has a tricky job. Long ago Furman decided to become a top national liberal arts college. But there is a tradition of playing sort of big time sports. If you look at the other schools in that category in US News (and I suspect the bot and admin pay way too much attention to that crap) out of the 100 or so schools listed only Richmond, Furman and a couple of Patriot League schools play scholarship sports. It appears to be a challenge to check all of the boxes for those rankings AND do sports. I wish we could have just been content with what we were 30-40 years ago.

The other top national liberal arts colleges that play scholarship sports in D-1 (“tradition of playing sort of big time sports”) that are ranked by USN&WR above Furman besides Richmond are, I believe, Colgate, Bucknell, Lafayette, Holy Cross, and Davidson. So that’s 7 of which Furman is ranked “lowest”.
In addition, there are about 35 other top national liberal arts colleges USN&WR, besides those 7, that do not play D-1 sports in the USN&WR rankings and that are ranked above Furman.
Whether it’s at least with those 6 D-1’s that are above Furman or, it’s even with the 35 or so non-D-1’s, WHY should Furman NOT be continuously and always striving to be ranked as highly as possible and be the best possible?
I do know that Furman has been striving in that direction for at least the last approximately 55 years.
Is it time now to change course?
Also, why is it that those USN&WR rankings are “crap” (per furmanoid’s stated assessment) any more than athletics rankings are “crap”? Many would say that the athletics rankings are irrelevant and “crap” much more than the USN&WR rankings.
( ... By the way, Army, Navy, and Air Force are, somewhat oddly, in the top national liberal arts colleges group, and each of those 3 ranks above Furman; but I do not include those 3 in the above enumerations of the 6 or 7, nor of the 35).

[Furmanoid]

I think I mentioned the Patriot League. Davidson doesn’t play scholarship fb. Service academies don’t do athletic scholarships. Anyway my point was that it appears to be very difficult to be in that club and play scholarship sports, especially fb, unless you have way more money than FU. It looks like we are trying to do something nobody else is doing. Maybe that’s why we are having trouble.

[Roundball]

“The day Furman baseball died: Players, parents recount the emotional ending to program.” https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/ ... 273923002/