Re: Boston University - 2017-2018 season - thread numero uno
I’m not sure I follow the logic. Overall the patriot league was a step up from America East both athletically and also in aligning ourselves with schools “more like” BU as far as academics and admissions.
BU cut football because of money essentially, and yes, I’m sure they don’t feel bad about it given the research being done about brain injury and the affects of repeated hits to the head. Do you really think their research is part of a conspiracy to help gain an advantage for attracting students.
Not to mention that good academics and good athletics are not mutually exclusive. Across the river our rowing team is more nationally competitive than ever and is posting better academics than ever before as well.
The Patriot League is a lateral move where BU can park its sports and enforce an academic index that will hopefully keep the university from making negative headlines regarding its athletes. The America East versus the Patriot League was not a binary choice for what it's worth; William and Mary FOIA emails revealed that BU was invited to the conference before they ultimately invited College of Charleston and BU went to the Patriot League. Regardless, I do believe BU is happy with the decision because they got to add lacrosse and some full paying high SES kids to fill the giant roster.
BU basically had to drop football because of the gender ratio at BU being 62-38 female, which is an understandable if unfortunate decission. It is almost impossible to make the scholarship offsets work like that if you are doing them based on 2 women scholarships for every 1 male one basically. No, I would not say the research is "a conspiracy," the science behind it is good. The hypocrisy comes in that BU is not creating the NHL brain bank, the women's hockey brain bank and the women's soccer brain bank. Frequency of concussions per "athletic-exposure" is higher in women's hockey and men's hockey then it is for football in the NCAA (article below table 2). In addition, concussion rates are higher in high school and collegiate women's soccer than in football (article below table 3). Having sports is not nearly as important for BU's brand as it is for other high academic institutions such as Stanford, Michigan, Wake Forest, USC, BC, etc. Because of that, it absolutely is a better landscape for BU when college sports, particularly football, are diminished.
Well yes, men's rowing hasn't been negatively effected. First, men's rowing doesn't compete in the PL so the academic index doesn't apply. Second, rowing is a sport of mostly high SES kids that are likely to have high scores anyways. Where you are likely to see the impact of an academic index and the move to the Patriot League are for sports like men's soccer (which was demolished OOC), men's basketball (likely to be demolished OOC), and wrestling (which we dropped).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2987636/
) when they leave BU early. However, I'd really like to see an increased focus on player development, especially of the guys expected to be 4-year players. Make sure those guys improve year after year so that they're playing valuable on-ice roles as upperclassmen to create more roster balance and depth.