[BostonCard]

Why “ouch”.  I mean, sure, all else being equal I would have rather had Canady and a likely national title than not.  But it’s not like I gave any money to Lifetime Cardinal to keep her, so clearly I don’t care enough to put my own money where my mouth is.

Moving forward, maybe I’m paranoid, but I think it is going to get a lot worse in the next few years.  The national environment has turned against elite academic institutions and while I think we are back to having an athletics-friendly administration, that may be of limited value when the University is facing a financial Armageddon.  I don’t think athletics, which right now is dependent on a massive subsidy from the University due to the loss of revenue and increase in expenses from the transfer to the ACC, will be spared.  Notwithstanding the blowback after Muir’s recent attempt to cut sports, my base case scenario is that Stanford will have a lot fewer than 36 varsity sports in a few years.  Losing Canady is the least of our recent problems; we may not even be fielding a softball team (though I think that for Title IX reasons, it’s unlikely that women’s softball, specifically, would go). 

BC

[BostonCard]

Why “ouch”.  I mean, sure, all else being equal I would have rather had Canady and a likely national title than not.  But it’s not like I gave any money to Lifetime Cardinal to keep her, so clearly I don’t care enough to put my own money where my mouth is.

Moving forward, maybe I’m paranoid, but I think it is going to get a lot worse in the next few years.  The national environment has turned against elite academic institutions and while I think we are back to having an athletics-friendly administration, that may be of limited value when the University is facing a financial Armageddon.  I don’t think athletics, which right now is dependent on a massive subsidy from the University due to the loss of revenue and increase in expenses from the transfer to the ACC, will be spared.  Notwithstanding the blowback after Muir’s recent attempt to cut sports, my base case scenario is that Stanford will have a lot fewer than 36 varsity sports in a few years.  Losing Canady is the least of our recent problems; we may not even be fielding a softball team (though I think that for Title IX reasons, it’s unlikely that women’s softball, specifically, would go). 

BC