Stanford dropping wrestling (and other sports)
- Thread starter backdrft76
- Start date
Not so sure about being bullied or beaten up. More like ego. People who felt unimportant and unpopular throughout life, finally surround themselves with like-minded people, and still feel like second class citizens even within their own bubble.
Also very few people think (or care) how much effort student-athletes put in. True story: I was in a work mtg with a group of executives, when one (a fellow Penn Stater) whined about college athletes getting special access to tutors. Everybody agreed with her ... until I opened my big mouth.
I told them: Let's all go to the gym for the next hour. We'll do heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, heavy overhead presses, and then fill out the hour with wind sprints. Then let's go immediately into mtgs for the rest of the day -- but without any of the project engineers or technical experts in the room -- they would be our "tutors." Our work day won't end at 5 pm. We'll do it again at 5 am tomorrow, and every day for 4 years. Who's in?
Amazing how quickly the mtg shifted to the actual business.
Also very few people think (or care) how much effort student-athletes put in. True story: I was in a work mtg with a group of executives, when one (a fellow Penn Stater) whined about college athletes getting special access to tutors. Everybody agreed with her ... until I opened my big mouth.
I told them: Let's all go to the gym for the next hour. We'll do heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, heavy overhead presses, and then fill out the hour with wind sprints. Then let's go immediately into mtgs for the rest of the day -- but without any of the project engineers or technical experts in the room -- they would be our "tutors." Our work day won't end at 5 pm. We'll do it again at 5 am tomorrow, and every day for 4 years. Who's in?
Amazing how quickly the mtg shifted to the actual business.
I’m guessing they worship at the altar of Baphomet and Satan and always have. They steal people’s food from the lunchroom fridge.
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Maybe they weren't smart enough to use the resources available to them...
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As a tenured professor at a Power 5 and AAU school, I can tell you that professors do not spend any time thinking about intercollegiate athletics (either positively or negatively), other than making scheduling accommodations when you have an athlete in your class. The academic and athletics parts of the university might as well be separate enterprises. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I know many professors who are former NCAA D1 athletes.
Thanks but that entirely misses the point. She was smart enough to not need tutoring, and had no concept that anyone would except dumb jocks who only got in for football.
She didn't know any athletes and didn't have the intellectual curiosity to find out that they essentially have 2 jobs, with one being very physically and mentally taxing and time consuming.
Of course, stereotypes will always be acceptable -- as long as they are the right ones.
And of course you are also stereotyping academic types.
My daughter-in-law is a research assistant. She was at a meeting with the head of her department and others. People went around the table introducing themselves. When everyone was finished, the department head, who was being recognized for some achievement, singled out my daughter-in-law who had just returned to the U.S. after being on the team that won the world championship in women's ultimate frisbee. The department head asked people to consider how awesome it was to win a world championship in anything. The DH said that the recognition she was getting was for doing her job, while my daughter-in-law accomplished her feat on her own time in addition to her job.
My daughter-in-law works for Stanford.
Congrats to her.
And please don't misread what I said. Never said all or even most. Only some. Which is my personal experience in dealing professionally with admin and faculty at several colleges for 20+ yrs. It's a minority view to be certain, and present.
In my experience, some of those same faculty would be insincerely polite toward her. But again, that's likely a small subset.
I also doubt Dr. Urschel holds that view.
She did. Thankfully, they have since moved to Allegheny County. She has been able to retain her job with Stanford. A west coast salary goes a long way here.
It is not clear how you intend “two jobs” to make tutoring suddenly seem okay to someone who doesn’t think it’s okay. Also, it’s not clear that she did not have intellectual curiosity. Both claims (“two jobs = tutoring okay” and “woman lacked intellectual curiosity”) seem to be missing unstated facts/assumptions. Maybe people just stopped the conversation because they were not interested in your incomplete argument and its unstated assumptions?
Here's an article about the Stanford field hockey team that further challenges the argument that the sports cuts were about "finances and competitive excellence".
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/...-telling-field-hockey-it-doesn-t-16133924.php
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/...-telling-field-hockey-it-doesn-t-16133924.php
Jason Bryant's Podcast
https://www.mattalkonline.com/podca...mnist-ann-killion-keeps-calling-stanford-out/
https://www.mattalkonline.com/podca...mnist-ann-killion-keeps-calling-stanford-out/
Appreciate your balanced input from inside an AAU school. Having served on various University boards and advisory committees, I have observed that the majority of professors are too busy to waste time hating on athletics. Just a few vociferous profs garner attention with their rants against the professionalism of college sports. Sports fans lap it up. It’s obvious to most casual observers that there is a huge disconnect between the stated academic missions of most schools and the world where football coaches make many times what professors make. This tension seems tolerable as long as some semblance of symbiosis propels both academics and athletics. PENN deals with this tension one way ...... and Big State Universities another. I think what we see is Stanford looking for a new way. If I were a betting man, I would say that Stanford is going to keep wrestling, but, they are going to strike some sort of new balance between academics and athletics that supposedly enhances their elite position. Let’s see!
If this were true, Stanford would be cutting its Athletics admin staff proportional to its team cuts.
In reality, Stanford is not reducing its Athletics admin staff at all.
Also, the academics vs. athletics tension is largely if not entirely about the Big Money Sports (football and basketball), neither of which Stanford is even contemplating cutting.
Great news!
Also a stunning rebuke of the AD and university president. Their handling of this merits consequences, which of course won't happen.
Also a stunning rebuke of the AD and university president. Their handling of this merits consequences, which of course won't happen.
Best pledge of $25 I ever made.
In support I also bought a Keep Stanford Wrestling sweatshirt with a hood. Glad it now has become a collector's item.
In support I also bought a Keep Stanford Wrestling sweatshirt with a hood. Glad it now has become a collector's item.
Big news = New Headline. So people know to click now for big news, instead of click later or click never for the usual dumb jokes and recipes.
