Baseball Dropped (Updated)

[Affirm]

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.

With a goal of respectfully discussing opinions and seeking to clarify, Affirm agrees that Furmanoid did mention the Patriot League. But Furmanoid incorrectly stated only a couple of Patriot League schools playing D-1 sports, whereas there are actually 4 of them (Bucknell, Colgate, Lafayette, Holy Cross) all playing at the same big-time level as Furman.
Army and Navy are full member of Patriot League, though they do not play ********FCS********football.
(Colgate does not play baseball.)
Richmond is A10 and CAA (football).
Davidson is A10 and Pioneer (football; and Pioneer of course is D-1).
(Davidson does play baseball.)
A point which Affirm wishes to make is that all the above schools (minus Army & Navy, for the most part) should be considered Furman’s peers academically and athletically; and Furman should continue always to strive to compare as favorably as possible with them in all respects including academics. That is something Furman SHOULD be able to at least strive to do. Affirm would also gladly add Wofford and Presbyterian to that group. Affirm does not perceive a better group of peers for Furman if Furman is going to continue being in D-1.

[CharlieFU]

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.

While there were unintended consequences from the Furman/Baptist split, it was absolutely the right thing to do at that time. And nthere was much anguish over whether it should be done. I do not accept the argument about the finances--we lost that, but it was not significant when you consider the other funding we have received since then, whic we may not have gotten if we had stayed Baptist.

[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.

While there were unintended consequences from the Furman/Baptist split, it was absolutely the right thing to do at that time. And nthere was much anguish over whether it should be done. I do not accept the argument about the finances--we lost that, but it was not significant when you consider the other funding we have received since then, whic we may not have gotten if we had stayed Baptist.

I wasn’t excited about it one way or the other then, but now I think it was a step in the direction of losing an identity. And many if not most past donors (Buck Duke included) were set spinning in their graves, which is legal but pretty awful. Why was it the right thing to do, in your opinion? I thought it was mostly religion department stuff.

[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.

With a goal of respectfully discussing opinions and seeking to clarify, Affirm agrees that Furmanoid did mention the Patriot League. But Furmanoid incorrectly stated only a couple of Patriot League schools playing D-1 sports, whereas there are actually 5 of them (Bucknell, Colgate, Lafayette, Lehigh, Holy Cross) all playing at the same big-time level as Furman.
Army and Navy are full member of Patriot League, though they do not play FBS football.
(Colgate does not play baseball.)
Richmond is A10 and CAA (football).
Davidson is A10 and Pioneer (football; and Pioneer of course is D-1).
(Davidson does play baseball.)
A point which Affirm wishes to make is that all the above schools (minus Army & Navy, for the most part) should be considered Furman’s peers academically and athletically; and Furman should continue always to strive to compare as favorably as possible with them in all respects including academics. That is something Furman SHOULD be able to at least strive to do. Affirm would also gladly add Wofford to that group. Affirm does not perceive a better group of peers for Furman if Furman is going to continue being in D-1.

OK should have said a few instead of a couple. So they (Patriot League) are the five we compare to, but they’ve only done fb scholarships for a few years- they didn’t want to. They were forced into it in order to compete with the Ivy’s who give everybody a scholarship. We’ll see how it goes for them. If they make it work financially, we need to study them.

Why is it so important that some magazine (with clear regional bias) compares us favorably with schools hundreds of miles away? FU provides a good education and always has. Smartest college grads I ever worked with went to Furman, Northwestern, Cincinnati, Michigan Tech and Clemson. A couple of the dumbest went to MIT and GaTech. Ivy’s were hit or miss. The smartest overall never went to college.

[FUKA61]

Back in the day of the SC Baptist control FU had a 20 person BOT. It was required that they all be Baptist and live in SC.
By that time the majority of the students were from out of state. Also, because of the rigid requirements to be on the board there were many who did not have the backgrounds to really be very helpful and most did not have the financial resources to make a significant gift to FU. Dr. Johns approached the SCBC with the idea of simply letting five of the members on the BOT be either from out of state or not Baptist. The Baptist refused and that it what caused the split. Like everything there were pros and cons but it turned out to be a great.

[couchbomber]

For what it’s worth, and I believe it is worth at least noting and considering, I have an observation about the degree to which Blacks are represented in the rosters of college baseball.
It seems that Blacks (or African-Americans, if one prefers that designation) are significantly under-represented, nationally, in college baseball.
This was true in the 2020 Furman baseball team roster, even if it is also apparent that certain other Furman teams besides baseball had a similar situation, and even if a majority of all the other college baseball teams in the nation have a similar situation.
This could be one small piece, at least, in the decision-making calculation of what sport(s) to maintain and what sport(s) to not be able to continue to maintain.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you are right about this one.

Basically every sport at Furman besides M & W basketball and football have the same situation so I don’t think this had anything to do with it. College baseball rosters have always been underrepresented among the African American community because of lower sport participation rates in the community and the lack of available baseball scholarships. Virtually all basketball and football scholarships are 100% aid. Most baseball are not even 40%. Plus the MLB draft has many of the very best going pro out of high school.

It's actually not worth noting at all and you put it out there to get political and start an argument that has literally nothing to do with the decision Furman made. If a player is good enough to play at Furman and wants to play at Furman, he'll go to Furman regardless of his/her race. That's it and I'm not going to engage in this bogus narrative any further.

Nothing bogus here.
It IS time to engage in all aspects of discussing race.
If we do not, our nation suffers, and our state, county, city, university, ALL, suffer.
You can choose to avoid it, but it does relate in some way to the matter you are grieving, the discontinuation of baseball.
Affirm DID STATE that it "could be one small piece". Affirm is not, as alleged by apaladin, "reaching for straws." It could be one small piece. What Affirm has written is factual.
More importantly, and with emphasis, again, that Affirm does not write the factual statements about college baseball to allege or insinuate racism by any persons involved in Furman baseball but just to express an observation of facts that "COULD be one small piece", below is something that Affirm shares now In case you have not seen it, or if you have and need to be reminded.
This was published yesterday.
(By the way, the Furman women's basketball team has already spoken out "as one" with a tweet of their video of brief statements by members of that team.)

**** excerpts from letter that recently went to the Furman campus community from President Davis and senior leadership of Furman (which includes the Athletics Director)
The letter was shared 6/3/2020 with all Furman alumni, by the Director of Alumni and Parent Engagement, who asked as she shared it, “During this difficult time in our country, may the Furman Family unite in spirit and stand together as one.”

Dear Campus Community,
…
… events … remind us that we – at Furman and across our country – need to do so much more. …[to confront] stark, systemic and institutional realities of racial injustice in America … [that] says through words and actions that black lives are expendable.

… important for our entire community to understand that …circumstances have affected … African American students, faculty and staff in countless ways, reflecting a burden carried by many African Americans …. we ask that each of us takes time to reflect …consider the collective trauma experienced ….

Our request is … empathy … caring, … a conviction and a call to collective action. As a community, do we understand what it’s like to be an African American student, faculty or staff member? Have we asked or otherwise sought to understand? And, if we collectively knew the answers, would they lead us to say or do things differently?

… recommit ourselves to acknowledging racism and … working with African American students, faculty, staff and others in our community in ways that are affirming, supportive and understanding of the cultural trauma they have experienced. In confronting … our hope is that we can have … understanding of what it takes to build a beloved community, where equity and inclusion permeate all that we are and all that we do.

Hi, I'm new here. Found the website by Googling "smug, virtue signaling toolbag". Took me directly to this post from Alimp.

[CharlieFU]

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.

While there were unintended consequences from the Furman/Baptist split, it was absolutely the right thing to do at that time. And nthere was much anguish over whether it should be done. I do not accept the argument about the finances--we lost that, but it was not significant when you consider the other funding we have received since then, whic we may not have gotten if we had stayed Baptist.

I wasn’t excited about it one way or the other then, but now I think it was a step in the direction of losing an identity. And many if not most past donors (Buck Duke included) were set spinning in their graves, which is legal but pretty awful. Why was it the right thing to do, in your opinion? I thought it was mostly religion department stuff.

See FUKA61 post below for most of the answer. It was about academic independence in a time in which Baptists were moving way right. I reasonable proposal was made to save the relationship--and was rejected.

I agree losing the identity was a problem, and I regret we are now essentially a totally secular school. Further, we no longer have many of the students who attended Furman when i was there--Baptist kids from SC for whom Furman was their school, and who were in many instances lower middle class. I think that element of diversity was important--and we no longer have that, or at least little of it.

Long term, i still think it was best for Furman. You can be sure there were many sleepless nights. Some people may forget that Dr Johns was a BAPTIST; his parents were the directors of the Florida Baptist Children's Home in Lakeland Fla. He came to Furman from another Baptist school, Stetson. It couldn't have been easy.

[Furmanoid]

My father was a past president of the SC Baptist General Board and a trustee at Baptist College. He was in favor of the split because he had such disdain for fundamentalists who were so demonized at the time. He didn’t realize that he himself would have been considered an idiot fundamentalist by the FU “moderates”.

Anyway, your second paragraph is exactly what I was talking about before. I was one of those kids you talk about: barely middle class SC Baptist.

What all this has to do with anything is that somehow we used to be able to afford sports before we decided to get rich, and now we can’t.

[Affirm]

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.

With a goal of respectfully discussing opinions and seeking to clarify, Affirm agrees that Furmanoid did mention the Patriot League. But Furmanoid incorrectly stated only a couple of Patriot League schools playing D-1 sports, whereas there are actually 5 of them (Bucknell, Colgate, Lafayette, Lehigh, Holy Cross) all playing at the same big-time level as Furman.
Army and Navy are full member of Patriot League, though they do not play ********FCS******** football.
(Colgate does not play baseball.)
Richmond is A10 and CAA (football).
Davidson is A10 and Pioneer (football; and Pioneer of course is D-1).
(Davidson does play baseball.)
A point which Affirm wishes to make is that all the above schools (minus Army & Navy, for the most part) should be considered Furman’s peers academically and athletically; and Furman should continue always to strive to compare as favorably as possible with them in all respects including academics. That is something Furman SHOULD be able to at least strive to do. Affirm would also gladly add Wofford and Presbyterianto that group. Affirm does not perceive a better group of peers for Furman if Furman is going to continue being in D-1.

OK should have said a few instead of a couple. So they (Patriot League) are the five we compare to, but they’ve only done fb scholarships for a few years- they didn’t want to. They were forced into it in order to compete with the Ivy’s who give everybody a scholarship. We’ll see how it goes for them. If they make it work financially, we need to study them.

Why is it so important that some magazine (with clear regional bias) compares us favorably with schools hundreds of miles away? FU provides a good education and always has. Smartest college grads I ever worked with went to Furman, Northwestern, Cincinnati, Michigan Tech and Clemson. A couple of the dumbest went to MIT and GaTech. Ivy’s were hit or miss. The smartest overall never went to college.

Just continuing the discussion.
Furman **IS** a national liberal arts college.
Here is a list of the national liberal arts colleges located in the south which play Division 1 Football, besides Furman:
Richmond
Virginia Military Institute
Davidson
Wofford
Presbyterian
Gardner-Webb, Campbell, Elon, Mercer, are considered national universities by USN&WR annual college rankings. We are not considered a national university. Stetson is considered a “Regional University - South” and appears to be the only D-1 FCS school in that category.
The respective rankings for those 4 as national universities are, by the way, 281, 272, 84, 153. And a Stetson as “Regional University -South” is ranked 100. Fact Check

Perhaps you would want Furman to not be a national liberal arts university.

Even if you were able to change the nature of Furman to make it into a "Regional College - South" or a "Regional University - South", what would you change it to? Please be aware that there is apparently one school designated as "Regional College - South" or "Regional University - South" which plays D-1 sports that include football, only Stetson, I believe.

9, 70, 139, 147 are the respective rankings for the schools you mentioned as having the smartest college grads you ever worked with, Northwestern, Clemson, Cincinnati, and Michigan Tech, each of which is designated a "National University".

Perhaps you would want Furman to be in the category of a "National University". I imagine to do that, we would have to expand our graduate school offerings greatly and/or add several professional schools such as medical, law, nursing, business, engineering, or divinity school. Doing that would be very much changing the nature of Furman University. Where would the money come from to do that anyway? And if that occurred, how successful do you imagine we would be with being placed in rankings compared to the national universities mentioned above:
9, Northwestern
70, Clemson
84, Elon
139, Cincinnati
147, Samford
153, Mercer
272, Campbell
281, Gardner-Webb?

So, I still say that we should consider our peers to be those 7 that I named before; and it just so happens that they are located in SC, NC, VA, PA, NY, and MA. Fine with me to also add national liberal arts colleges VMI and Presbyterian to the list, making it 9, 10 counting Furman. Then, it just so happens that the group of peers just so happens to be located in SC (3), NC (1), VA (2), PA (2), NY (1), and MA (1).

Perhaps you just consider our peers to be only the 2 other SC schools that are designated national liberal arts colleges, i.e., Wofford and Presbyterian. Those are good colleges and good to be PART OF our peer group, but we should set our sights and ambitions beyond just the small state of SC, beyond just 2 colleges, 2 that are smaller than Furman, 2 both of which we already (at present) rank ahead of.

[FurmAlum]

Of all the schools Affirm listed (Bucknell, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Colgate, Davidson, Lehigh) as a peer group, I would bet that Furman top to bottom has a better athletic program than all of them.

As for academics and quality of education, it is my opinion that Furman is as good or better than any of them. I would (and did) send my children to FU over all of those schools. Of course I'm looking thru purple glasses .

P.S. Army and Navy do play FBS football.

[Furmanoid]

We could increase our crazy low student faculty ratio and increase enrollment. Maybe they said it was 10:1 in my day, but it wasn’t. More students = more fees and lower tuition which decreases cost of scholarships and further increases enrollment. That might help. They could also increase the use of adjuncts. Greenville is probably crawling with experienced people who would teach for peanuts. You could teach composition affirm! That’s the kind of stuff that might hurt the ranking but has no huge impact on learning as long as you don’t over do it And it frees up money for important stuff.

[Affirm]

Of all the schools Affirm listed (Bucknell, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Colgate, Davidson, Lehigh) as a peer group, I would bet that Furman top to bottom has a better athletic program than all of them.

As for academics and quality of education, it is my opinion that Furman is as good or better than any of them. I would (and did) send my children to FU over all of those schools. Of course I'm looking thru purple glasses .

P.S. Army and Navy do play FBS football.

Your opinion about Furman being as good or better in “academics and quality of education ... than any of them ...” is not shared by the staff of USN&WR, which has done college rankings, using objective data”, for over 30 years.

I like to share your sentiment and have purple glasses also. However, when people are looking at where they want to apply to attend college, or where they want to encourage their children to consider attending, or where they want to support as donors and benefactors, they are, in my estimation, very likely to consider objective data and widespread national/worldwide publicity much more than they consider just sentiment of people who love Furman. And mist people won’t even know about that sentiment anyway!

P.S.: Please excuse my typo about Patriot League full members Army and Navy not playing FBS football. I have corrected my typo. I have also edited to include Presbyterian and exclude Stetson from my list of 11 Furman peers, and you will see the reasons when you read the edited text.

[Affirm]

We could increase our crazy low student faculty ratio and increase enrollment. Maybe they said it was 10:1 in my day, but it wasn’t. More students = more fees and lower tuition which decreases cost of scholarships and further increases enrollment. That might help. They could also increase the use of adjuncts. Greenville is probably crawling with experienced people who would teach for peanuts. You could teach composition affirm! That’s the kind of stuff that might hurt the ranking but has no huge impact on learning as long as you don’t over do it And it frees up money for important stuff.

Your ideas have some merit, except that increase in student:faculty ratio and in use of adjuncts would have to be done very sparingly and very judiciously.
And, I assure you that if Affirm were to have the honor of teaching composition or anything else at Furman, whether for peanuts or for $150,000.00 a year, Furman’s quality would immediately plummet.

[JohnW]

Found an article discussing how some liberal arts colleges were faring during the crisis. Some doing very well at or near their enrollment goals. Furman, not so much. According to the article, Furman is at around 85% of their goal of 635 for this fall. Of course that is a huge loss of revenue, worse than I expected, but the enrollment goal seemed low. Led me to wonder if there was also a long term plan to "right size" the university. Interesting idea, a smaller student body would check a lot of the boxes rating services use, endowment per student, student aid, faculty per student, etc... It would also, most likely, raise the student body profile and make Furman more selective. A 2500 student Furman might be more financially stable and more attractive to our demographic. Being more selective could alleviate the male/female imbalance too.

[Furmanoid]

Found an article discussing how some liberal arts colleges were faring during the crisis. Some doing very well at or near their enrollment goals. Furman, not so much. According to the article, Furman is at around 85% of their goal of 635 for this fall. Of course that is a huge loss of revenue, worse than I expected, but the enrollment goal seemed low. Led me to wonder if there was also a long term plan to "right size" the university. Interesting idea, a smaller student body would check a lot of the boxes rating services use, endowment per student, student aid, faculty per student, etc... It would also, most likely, raise the student body profile and make Furman more selective. A 2500 student Furman might be more financially stable and more attractive to our demographic. Being more selective could alleviate the male/female imbalance too.

That’s what I suspect is going on. With fewer students you may gain some sort of prestige but the price has to go up, and you may reach a point where DI sports aren’t “sustainable”. If you want the sports, enrollment needs to grow.