St Francis-Brooklyn Cuts Entire Athletics Program | The Boneyard

St Francis-Brooklyn Cuts Entire Athletics Program

Fishy said:
This will start becoming more common place.

DI athletics are expensive- paces like Hartford and St. Francis do not benefit from the expense.
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Sadly, I think you are right.

Hindsight is 20/20, but the first signs that something was up when they left their longtime home, The Pope, in the middle of the season and finished playing their games at the Pratt Institute, a D3 school with a gym that looks like a local high school hosting a rec league:

Screen Shot 2023-03-20 at 5.04.38 PM.jpg


Feel bad for the players and hope they land at schools they're happy with.

After leading the Terriers for thirteen years, I'm sure their head coach Glenn Braica will land a job somewhere. He's been an NYC coaching staple for 35 years.
 
It is amazing how expensive college has become, more people are going than ever, and yet it seems 10% of schools are teetering on continuing to exist
 
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WrenchFan69 said:
It is amazing how expensive college has become, more people are going than ever, and yet it seems 10% of schools are teetering on continuing to exist
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I don't think more people are going than ever. It's actually much less. There was a dip to 10.5m at 4 yr institutions last year, and they'll see more drops coming over the next several years.

And this is with a 50% grad rate. We're going to be at 33% of the population having bachelors degrees.

I tell people to ignore the private schools at this point because they are only 14% of the market, but now the publics have entered a territory that makes them unattainable as well. The privates are taking in $$ from wealthy families, 2x over what they spend per student, and they redistribute it. The publics however are now in a bad place because they are going to start doing what the privates have done (jack up tuition above spending per student).
 
Should've seen this coming when they moved their campus to a building above a Macy's in Brooklyn and sold their old campus to a residential real estate developer and the new facility had no gym.... St. Francis is in prime real estate territory. Lots of celebrities live there. I don't understand why NYC schools can't support athletics.
 
Doesn’t surprise me one bit. The school moved its campus to several floors of office space.
 
shizzle787 said:
Doesn’t surprise me one bit. The school moved its campus to several floors of office space.
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Above a Macy's. The problem is they weren't transparent. They told the students they were working on athletic facilities when asked why they moved before they had a gym, pool, fitness center etc. That school will close. People were irate when UHart dropped from D1 ro D3. Dropping down is one thing, but what certified college or university doesn't have any athletics at all? On-line only?
 
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rip7774 said:
My small private school did the same thing. Now like two floors in a Manhattan high rise.

So sad.
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Terrible for Brooklyn and I feel for the city kids that depended on those scholarships for their educations. SFC won't be in business long. First they sold their valuable former campus building for a huge price (expected to be torn down and converted into luxury apartments....) and now cutting Athletics. Death by 1,000 cuts instead of a single blow.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Higher education is going to look very different in 10 years.
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I try explaining this to people and I’m told I don’t know what I’m talking about. The increasing costs of higher education are not sustainable.

We sold the past few generations on a college degree being necessary, more and more are starting to realize that is not the case.
 
WrenchFan69 said:
It is amazing how expensive college has become, more people are going than ever, and yet it seems 10% of schools are teetering on continuing to exist
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At some point, colleges and universities decided that their actual purpose was as jobs programs for middle managers.

They have layers of administration that are simply not sustainable.

It’s easily fixed - stop hiring them, but that’s too obvious a solution. It’s like government…there is nothing that creates the aura of necessity than size. If you hire an administrator, that administrator is going to want to stack the ranks beneath him to make his fiefdom look indispensable….and to create more layers between himself and redundancy.
 
More and more men are not realizing It.

They’re just simply being removed from the equation. If ever take a gander at your local high schools honors list, it will be nearly devoid of male names.

My daughter went to scads of girls-in-tech, girls-in-science, girls-in-business types of fairs at her high school. There were seminars at the local colleges for female students and the guidance department had mentors for girls applying to college.

My nephew hasn’t gone to any because there hasn’t a single offering for him. No mentor plan, no seminars, no nothing. He is on his own to sort it out.

I didn’t notice it until my kid left high school and he entered his senior year - they’re not invested in him at all.
 
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D1 athletics are unaffordable for many small schools. But, I am seeing D3 schools adding sports to attract kids. You can go to big state school and give up playing sports or you can go D3 and play. And, D3 sports are not that expensive.
 
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A Boston Globe article posted this evening regarding New England colleges facing the loss of accreditation included New Haven’s Albert Mangus.

“The commission in recent months also placed Goddard College in Vermont and Albertus Magnus College in New Haven under careful watch for enrollment and financial challenges, a sign the schools’ accreditation statuses could be under threat unless tangible improvements are made.”
 
Anyone that did not see this coming when they sold the entire campus to a developer and moved into an office building was not being realistic. I called this as soon as the campus move was announced.

This is very different from Hartford because of the campus situation and its location in expensive NYC. Once they sold the buildings, they had no way to rent athletic facilities - even as a D-III program. They were priced out of D-I for a host of reasons, but had managed to survive until now with their own recreation center (Gym/Pool/locker rooms/Training/etc.). But it Basically, it was impossible to maintain athletics at any level for a university with out owning any that facility. This was a given once they agreed to sell the campus - it just took some time for them to pull the trigger.
 
BPT2Storrs said:
I try explaining this to people and I’m told I don’t know what I’m talking about. The increasing costs of higher education are not sustainable.

We sold the past few generations on a college degree being necessary, more and more are starting to realize that is not the case.
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I think a well-constructed Associates Degree is sufficient for a solid career in many office jobs. Colleges are selling kids useless degrees, and some of the worst offenders are the more prestigious colleges.
 
Fishy said:
At some point, colleges and universities decided that their actual purpose was as jobs programs for middle managers.

They have layers of administration that are simply not sustainable.

It’s easily fixed - stop hiring them, but that’s too obvious a solution. It’s like government…there is nothing that creates the aura of necessity than size. If you hire an administrator, that administrator is going to want to stack the ranks beneath him to make his fiefdom look indispensable….and to create more layers between himself and redundancy.
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I’ll never forget my son’s orientation at UConn. It was an endless introduction of the middle managers. It is like that all over the state. As low level employees leave, they tell the remaining employees to take that employee’s workload. Yet when a middle manager leaves, they are replaced within weeks.
 
CCSU97 said:
Anyone that did not see this coming when they sold the entire campus to a developer and moved into an office building was not being realistic. I called this as soon as the campus move was announced.

This is very different from Hartford because of the campus situation and its location in expensive NYC. Once they sold the buildings, they had no way to rent athletic facilities - even as a D-III program. They were priced out of D-I for a host of reasons, but had managed to survive until now with their own recreation center (Gym/Pool/locker rooms/Training/etc.). But it Basically, it was impossible to maintain athletics at any level for a university with out owning any that facility. This was a given once they agreed to sell the campus - it just took some time for them to pull the trigger.
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They lied about their intentions when athletes asked why there were no athletic facilities in the new location. I feel bad for their athletes. Just getting this news today, they won't have the ability to find new schools to play at in the Fall since incoming recruits have already taken the roster spots. At least UHart gave their athletes a bit more warning.

Funny comment I read in the SFC AD's question and answer letter: "Will the university consider reinstating athletics? If the future financial situation allows it." Read this as: "Nope. Athletics return? We'll be lucky to survive as an educational institution." but let's dangle that out there to leave a glimmer of hope when there is none.

Without D1 Athletics, SFC is an overpriced community college that won't survive long.
 
Ha Who said:
I’ll never forget my son’s orientation at UConn. It was an endless introduction of the middle managers. It is like that all over the state. As low level employees leave, they tell the remaining employees to take that employee’s workload. Yet when a middle manager leaves, they are replaced within weeks.
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Right?

It‘s amazing.
 
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UCTitleTown said:
They lied about their intentions when athletes asked why there were no athletic facilities in the new location. I feel bad for their athletes. Just getting this news today, they won't have the ability to find new schools to play at in the Fall since incoming recruits have already taken the roster spots. At least UHart gave their athletes a bit more warning.

Funny comment I read in the SFC AD's question and answer letter: "Will the university consider reinstating athletics? If the future financial situation allows it." Read this as: "Nope. Athletics return? We'll be lucky to survive as an educational institution." but let's dangle that out there to leave a glimmer of hope when there is none.

Without D1 Athletics, SFC is an overpriced community college that won't survive long.
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Agree, but it was an overpriced community college with D-I athletics before the announcement. I love how everyone rallies around programs like this when a cupcake team folds up shop, but everyone knows they just don't have the support to survive.

My only point was that it was obvious they were lying to S-A the moment the plan to sell the campus came out. From that announcement to today was almost 2 years.

How did anyone think they could afford/find a place to play D-I home games and where would the kids practice and train? I asked this question to NEC bloggers and those that covered SFNY last year and they were in denial.

Like Hartford they could have handled this better, but when they know the "outrage" and bad PR that would follow it makes sense to just roll this out like this. These are business and institutional decisions and they don't care about the impact on current student athletes. It sucks, but that is the reality.
 
The problems at SFC are bigger than sports expense. Great article. They fired the College president without announcing it publicly and axed the AD after giving her the inglorious task of releasing the announcement tweet.

brooklyneagle.com

St. Francis College scraps entire athletics program

This loss was a big one. The biggest in school history. St. Francis College, Brooklyn, has dropped its entire athletics program, according to Director of Athletics Irma Garcia. “I come to you today to share the news of a decision I never anticipated during my time at St. Francis Brooklyn,”...
brooklyneagle.com brooklyneagle.com
 
dvegas said:
Take a look at their water polo roster (player hometowns), one of the only east coast schools to offer scholarships, gives you some insight into what was wrong with that program 2022 Men's Water Polo Roster - St. Francis Brooklyn Athletics
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The Men's Soccer team was quite good and had an exciting 2022 season. Their roster is mainly international students too, but a lot of that is the NYC appeal. It's a draw for foreign players for sure to play at the pier with the Manhattan skyline, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty righ there. Another problem is they used public fields and as a result, could not charge admission. Even if 200 people came to a soccer match and you could charge $10 per person, it's a couple thousand dollars to cover some expenses. They couldn't generate any sports revenue. That's on the school for not working on something with the city or bureau of Brooklyn.

2022 Men's Soccer Roster - St. Francis Brooklyn Athletics

The official 2022 Men's Soccer Roster for the St. Francis Brooklyn Terriers
sfcathletics.com sfcathletics.com
 
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