Wrestling Cut at UNC-Greensboro
Another wrestling team was blasted out of existence this week when the University of North Carolina at Greensboro announced it was terminating its program. Four wrestlers from UNC-Greensboro qualified for the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships being held from March 17-19 in Philadelphia. Good luck to those young men. Not matter the outcome, I’m betting all four will finish like champions.
Once again, the school admitted that while it was nice that they could save $308,000 every year by cutting the team (an odd figure when the school self reported operational expenses of less than $47,000 per year for the program to EADA), it was also going to help with—you guessed it—Title IX compliance.
Let’s look at the numbers!
Folks, if these numbers are even close to correct, the elimination of wrestling is only the start of the slaughter that’s set to take place in men’s athletics at this school. According to the EADA cutting tool, women outnumber men at the school 8,511 to 4,174, a student body that is 67% female. Yet, as you can see from the above table, men outnumber women in the athletic department either 130 to 92 (almost 59% male) or 141 to 103 (almost 58% male).
No matter what number is true, there’s going to have to be massive cuts or roster caps on the men’s side in order to get anywhere near to proportionality. So, in this case anyway, the male wrestlers will simply be the first athletes out the door.