Liz,

I read your piece on the loss of competitive cheerleading at Maryland and I too think it’s sad that this is happening. It’s sad in this day and age that ANY sport is lost at the college level. However, I’d like to tell you who the real culprit is and has been for many years when it comes to unequal treatment of “secondary” sports in Division 1 programs across the country.

I don’t have the exact numbers here but bear with me. I’ll do the best I can. I wrestled and played baseball at East Carolina University in 1970-74. ECU was an up and coming university that now has well over 20,000 full time students, a 4 year med school, and has become pretty well known especially in the Mid-Atlantic region. When I wrestled at ECU, we were ranked in the top 20 each year in wrestling. Our football program was coming into its own with Sonny Randle as head coach, then Pat Dye, then Ed Emory. Skip Holtz, Lou’s son even coached there. ECU had a string of something like 8 bowl games in a row until this season.

Our baseball program was a very competitive program even back in the 50’s and 60’s. It has continued to be a top 25 program usually each year in Division 1. They run a GREAT college baseball program at ECU.

There hasn’t been a wrestling team at ECU since 1982 when the Athletic Department got rid of it’s “non-revenue” supported programs. That happened when Pat Dye left and similar to what’s happening right now at the University of Maryland, alumni were mad and quit giving money to athletics. When I was wrestling at ECU, we won three Southern Conference championships in a row and took 7 wrestlers to the NCAA tournament each year. We were ranked as high as number 8 in the country when I was there. The program continued to prosper until the date they got their pink sheet.

Let’s look at two men’s sports I’m very familiar with. Wrestling fully vested gets just 9.9 full scholarships total and Baseball gets 11.9 in the NCAA Division 1 allocations. Usually wrestling has anywhere from 20-25 good kids in the room. In a good Division 1 program, most of these wrestlers are either state champs in high school or better. There are fewer than 100 division 1 wrestling programs left in the U.S. There are tons of Division 2 and 3 and JUCO programs but there is one reason that wrestling and now competitive tumbling are falling by the wayside…..COLLEGE DIVISION 1 FOOTBALL!

For some reason, football is considered a men’s sport even though there is NO alternative sport for the women. Division 1 football programs fully vested get 85 FULL SCHOLARSHIPS. (It might be 86) Let me repeat that..85 FULL SCHOLARSHIPS. As I said before baseball just gets 11.9 full scholarships even though baseball has a roster of 35 players. Making a Division 1 baseball roster is INCREDIBLY HARD and most of these kids are pro prospects at one time in their careers. That means the average Division 1 baseball player gets less than one-third of a scholarship. It doesn’t work that way usually. Most of the time the great high school players get full or more than half of a scholarship and the rest of the players get nothing. High School baseball is incredibly successful and as you know, IS OUR NATIONAL PASTIME! Even though football is really the most popular college and professional sport as we all know.

Let’s quickly analyze the FOOTBALL situation. If FOOTBALL gets 85 full scholarships, here’s the breakdown for them. You can only put 11 men on the field in football on offense or defense, correct? So let’s say that we give a Division 1 football team their first AND second string players a FULL SCHOLARSHIP each year. Let’s ALSO give the starting punter and kicker a full ride OK? That’s a total of 46 FULL SCHOLARSHIPS. Wait a minute, WE STILL HAVE 39 FULL SCHOLARSHIPS TO GIVE AWAY FOR FOOTBALL!! OK, let’s give them another 14 scholarships for their THIRD STRING PLAYERS WHO MAY PLAY A LITTLE BIT, BUT MAY NEVER SEE THE FIELD AT ANY TIME IN THEIR CAREERS!! You would think that more than a half scholarship would be plenty for a kid who might never play, right? That’s a total of 60 full scholarships.

AT ONE TIME NOT LONG AGO, FOOTBALL HAD FEWER THAN 60 FULL SCHOLARSHIPS AND DID JUST FINE!! At one time, players played both offense AND defense, but I’m just pointing that out.

My point is this. FOOTBALL DOESN’T NEED 85 DAMN FULL SCHOLARSHIPS TO RUN A GREAT PROGRAM! Many kids want to go to a Division 1 school and still tryout for the team anyway. These kids are called WALK-ONS. If football programs need to have 85 kids in their program, 60 FULL SCHOLARSHIP KIDS are PLENTY to start with and I’d bet that several of the 25 walk ons that are allowed to practice with the team and possibly play in the games are as good as many of their recruits to begin with. How many great high school players do you know that were missed by recruiters. Quite a few, right?

Back to the baseball comparison. Baseball has 35 kids on their roster in Division 1. They have 11.9 FULL vested scholarships. That’s almost EXACTLY FUNDING ONE THIRD OF THEIR ROSTER EACH YEAR. WRESTLING IS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME THING with only 9.9 full scholarships. FOOTBALL FUNDS THEIR ENTIRE ROSTER AND GETS A TOTAL OF 85 FULL RIDES A YEAR!!

That Liz, is ridiculous. If that blonde riding Bobby Petrino’s motorcycle had been a freshman, I guarantee she would have gotten a full ride to play football at Arkansas….just kidding but you get my drift.

Football does bring in the majority of money for University athletic programs. We all know that. I don’t argue that, but that’s not the other sports’ faults. EVERYONE loves going to the football games in the fall. It’s part of the college experience and the alumni experience, and the parental experience of having kids in college. HOWEVER, other sports that raise far less money from admission and season tickets SHOULD NOT BE PENALIZED BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT FOOTBALL!

Athletic Directors for years have been bullied by football coaches and programs. Heck, in many instances, the person who becomes the AD when one is fired and a new one hired is A FORMER FOOTBALL COACH!! In the past there have been instances where THE HEAD FOOTBALL COACH WAS THE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR!

If we’re going to complain and bring Title IX into the equation and discussion of right and wrong, I say this. Title IX has made a huge difference in making it so women can compete equally in college sports. I would say without question that it’s EASIER for a young woman to get a college scholarship at the Division 1 level than it is for a young man in any sport EXCEPT football. There are FOOTBALL recruits and players that get 4 years paid for academically that NEVER SEE THE FIELD AS A PLAYER. That is a FACT! THEY NEVER PLAY! NEVER!

I get calls each spring from college softball coaches around the country (my daughter plays Division 3 at Gettysburg..no money available at all in Division 3) but I’ve been Vice Chairman of the Baseball Committee in Fairfax County for almot 10 years. I’m still Chairman of Reston Youth Baseball and I’m currently the head wrestling coach at South Lakes High School in Reston. I own and coach a college summer league team in the Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League. I even have a sports radio show on Sundays in New York. So you could say I know my way around.

I’m telling you Liz and I hope you take this problem and run with it, that football, NCAA Division 1 football is 99% of the problem that it is so hard for other sports, especially men’s smaller collegiate sports, to get a fair shake with the scholarship and money situation. Somebody needs to call out college football for what they are. Even though they raise such a LARGE share of money because of their teams and programs, they also WASTE more money than anyone should be allowed to do.

Maryland is having some money problems for sure. Much of that is just budgetary and alumni driven, just like I described of ECU’s problems in the past. Gary Williams left and a new coach was hired. Ralph Friedgen was fired and a new, not very popular coach was hired. On the positive side, a new baseball coach from Vanderbilt, Erik Bakich, has taken the baseball program in two years and reached places they haven’t seen in more than 30 years. Kerry McCoy, a former Olympic wrestler, took over a program that Pat Santoro started changing a few years ago and has been a top 10 NCAA team the past three or four years. Santoro is at Lehigh now and they have a great, thriving, growing program also. Those two sports get a TOTAL of 21.8 scholarships each year when they are fully vested. That is approximately 64 full scholarships fewer than football gets.

The problem isn’t Title IX or the implementation of it. It has served its purpose and continues to do so and in most cases is taken care of exactly as it is written to be taken care of.

The problem is the HUGE number of total scholarships that football seems to think they need. Believe me…they don’t. They really don’t.