Jaybird wrote:LJay wrote:Pretty big loss.
You have to have enough sports to stay D1 but money hogs like a full roster of baseball and softball players may give way to sports with few roster spots. Golf comes to mind of a sport presently in place. Can’t think of a low volume sport that could be added but I’m sure there are some not presently supported by Creighton.
If I’m in sports admin I’m also probably sprucing up my resume.
How many bowlers do you have to have to have bowling? Is there NCAA cornhole or bocce ball?
Chess! How about chess? You get a male chess player, you get a female chess player, boom! You got a chess team. And go buy a chess board at Target so you can have home games and cut down on travel. I was on Creighton's startup cross-country team. That wasn't a sport at Creighton until one day it was. We need creative thinking. Hey, maybe that's a sport.
Sadly, Chess and E-Sports are not recognized by the NCAA as sports, so those wouldn't count towards the minimum sport requirement. We could add a swimming team, just need to buy some suites, skull caps and goggles. I'm sure there are local indoor pools they could practice and host a meet (or relay? not sure what swimming competitions are called). Most of the Big East already competes in swimming so wouldn't have to hunt for a conference. Swimming gets 14 scholarships, so it's not too bloated of a roster either.
Adding Beach Volleyball could be an option, have a few of the non-rotation players be the sand volleyball players and compete in that, wouldn't even have to add more scholarship athletes to add another D1 sport, can't imagine it takes too much effort or money to maintain a sand court and could easily be added when building the new baseball/softball fields.
Also, could look at adding "Rifle" as a sport. Plenty of ranges in the area to practice and I'm sure we could "recruit" 30 miles in any direction outside of Omaha/Lincoln and find athletes to compete. Teams are only 5 people, so a very low volume sport.
Lastly bowling is another low volume, female only, sport to add. Plenty of places to go practice and can compete locally to not add much travel costs.
And as a way to generate revenue, schools should push to move volleyball to a second semester sport. When VB is televised, it always draws great numbers, but it's rarely aired since it competes against football. If they move it to the second semester, could put a lot more matches on TV and help TV companies with programming and generating ad revenue which in turn a portion would go back to the schools. Doing so would give us another sport that would finish in the black, which is very much needed for most every school.