Covid Impacts on Upcoming Season

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

To be fair, the 50% threshold is nice ... but this was coming anyway. But yeah, it doesn't help that basically just one conference planned to play any fall sports - as mentioned.

[Gregory Sager]

Good to see D-Mac and PaulN keeping it real with the resource issue. EXTREMELY tricky for even D1 schools to spread out the support staff, let along locker rooms and fields. A lot of east coast schools have limited real estate and struggle in normal times to find practice and game day fields.

I want to highlight the training staff issue. At the high school level, this makes stacking Fall and Spring sports a complete non-starter. I know there's a range of AD budgets across D3, but this isn't a "nice to have," there are liability issues at play here... You have to have training staff at every game and every practice.

FTFY

[stlawus]

People still trying to hold onto delusions that schools will play any sort of spring competition for fall sports remind me of that scene from Bad Santa where Billy Bob Thornton repeatedly tries to get Bernie Mac to settle for anything less than half of their haul.  It is not going to happen.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

People still trying to hold onto delusions that schools will play any sort of spring competition for fall sports remind me of that scene from Bad Santa where Bill Bob Thornton repeatedly tries to get Bernie Mac to settle for anything less than half of their haul.  It is not going to happen.

Sadly, I know of conferences trying to make it happen especially in football ... I just don't think people are (a) working in reality or being honest to themselves and (b) being honest with the students.

[PaulNewman]

People still trying to hold onto delusions that schools will play any sort of spring competition for fall sports remind me of that scene from Bad Santa where Bill Bob Thornton repeatedly tries to get Bernie Mac to settle for anything less than half of their haul.  It is not going to happen.

Color me guilty if the mention of a possibility of Spring competition in the event of a very unlikely scenario (an "all clear")  counts as delusional.  I think I was clear that play in the Spring seemed very unlikely.  That said, I wasn't holding a pending NCAA announcement, and I was probably influenced by suggestions here, including formally on the site, that there was significant momentum towards moving towards a Spring season as the prospects for a Fall season continued to evaporate....as well as the talk about how dire not playing would be for many schools and that at least some would move heaven and earth to salvage some kind of real season.  And of course then there were the conferences and schools themselves promising a careful look at the feasibility of the Spring, and while I was cynical about that I didn't want to think they were being totally disingenuous.  To be fair, a month ago I stated that these statements about Spring seemed "mostly an appeasement and a 'let 'em down easy' kind of strategy."  I will readily concede that I appear to have whiffed on the "resource" issue, in part due to what I just described, but also because schools and conferences avoided the inevitable about the Fall for so long and why would they publish consideration of the Spring if that was going to be a non-starter from the jump.  I admit that after weeks of conferences, schools (and posters here) holding out for the Fall I didn't see everything turning on a dime right now in terms of a Spring possibility proffered in just the past few weeks.  FWIW, I gave my opinion that the "writing was on the wall" for the Fall almost five weeks ago, and there was pushback at that time and for at least two to three weeks thereafter. 

At any rate, it appears we have finally reached consensus that the towel has been thrown in the middle of the ring. 

Stay safe everyone.  Now I can turn my focus more exclusively to which electric moped scooter I'm going to get.  Oh, and.....Go Lords!

[PaulNewman]

Good to see D-Mac and PaulN keeping it real with the resource issue. EXTREMELY tricky for even D1 schools to spread out the support staff, let along locker rooms and fields. A lot of east coast schools have limited real estate and struggle in normal times to find practice and game day fields.

I want to highlight the training staff issue. At the high school level, this makes stacking Fall and Spring sports a complete non-starter. I know there's a range of AD budgets across D3, but this isn't a "nice to have," there are liability issues at play here... You have to have training staff at every game and every practice.

FTFY

FWIW....wow.

[d4_Pace]

So way too early 2021 top 5...
1 Amherst
2 Tufts
3 Calvin
4 Messiah
5 someone else

[PaulNewman]

So way too early 2021 top 5...
1 Amherst
2 Tufts
3 Calvin
4 Messiah
5 someone else

LOL.  That's great.  Wasn't that your 2019 "too early" prediction?

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Good to see D-Mac and PaulN keeping it real with the resource issue. EXTREMELY tricky for even D1 schools to spread out the support staff, let along locker rooms and fields. A lot of east coast schools have limited real estate and struggle in normal times to find practice and game day fields.

I want to highlight the training staff issue. At the high school level, this makes stacking Fall and Spring sports a complete non-starter. I know there's a range of AD budgets across D3, but this isn't a "nice to have," there are liability issues at play here... You have to have training staff at every game and every practice.

FTFY

And some sports I think require multiple - like football - but don't quote me on that. I just have it in my memory bank as something I was told once.

[stlawus]

People still trying to hold onto delusions that schools will play any sort of spring competition for fall sports remind me of that scene from Bad Santa where Bill Bob Thornton repeatedly tries to get Bernie Mac to settle for anything less than half of their haul.  It is not going to happen.

Sadly, I know of conferences trying to make it happen especially in football ... I just don't think people are (a) working in reality or being honest to themselves and (b) being honest with the students.

At this point is selfishness.   A month ago I was not opposed at an attempt to have some sort of fall competition if there were agreed upon universal guidelines but at this point there really is not an argument to have fall sports at any point this year.  There are enough issues and constraints to even begin the academic year in the fall, and adding a whole other layer of stress to move fall sports to spring is not something at the top priority list for schools.     I'm not normally a cynic but it appears that some people care more about alma mater glory and entertainment than the health and safety of the athletes. 

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

People still trying to hold onto delusions that schools will play any sort of spring competition for fall sports remind me of that scene from Bad Santa where Bill Bob Thornton repeatedly tries to get Bernie Mac to settle for anything less than half of their haul.  It is not going to happen.

Sadly, I know of conferences trying to make it happen especially in football ... I just don't think people are (a) working in reality or being honest to themselves and (b) being honest with the students.

At this point is selfishness.   A month ago I was not opposed at an attempt to have some sort of fall competition if there were agreed upon universal guidelines but at this point there really is not an argument to have fall sports at any point this year.  There are enough issues and constraints to even begin the academic year in the fall, and adding a whole other layer of stress to move fall sports to spring is not something at the top priority list for schools.     I'm not normally a cynic but it appears that some people care more about alma mater glory and entertainment than the health and safety of the athletes.

...or care more about making sure they get tuition money.

[Falconer]

I want to pick up on the "need for tuition money" theme that's often found in this thread—for good reasons. Of course the biggest potential impact is that some D3 schools might actually fold, if their numbers this fall are just too low, after many years of being on shoestring budgets. Everyone knows this; just wanted to ensure that no one thinks I'm ignoring it.

However, a secondary but very important impact could be much more widespread, namely, that lots of schools might be forced to lay off or outright release ("fire" isn't really the right word in this context, since we aren't talking about people who defy institutional policies) many faculty members who won't be able ever to return to those schools, or at least who probably won't be back in the near term. I stress faculty here, rather than other employees, b/c colleges typically hire faculty differently than most other employee categories, including mid-level administrators. Faculty are usually hired after national searches, in which most or all viable candidates have earned doctorates that resulted from 5-7 years of post-baccalaureate training, during which time they were being paid living wages. The opportunity cost for those people is very, very large—they gave up many years of good earnings to become qualified for the jobs they most wanted. You can't just wave your hands and create those people, and their loss is not the institution's gain. IMO, this is bigger hit to those schools than ending a few athletic programs or other areas that might be cut without hitting the core academic mission of the school.

And, of course, this is happening already across the country, and probably will continue to happen for a few years to come, even if a vaccine is soon widely available. A single terrible year can have a very big footprint, far beyond that year. The people you have to let go will be in many cases really hard to replace. People who give that many years in pursuit of faculty jobs deserve job security (if earned), more than many other employees who didn't have to make comparable economic sacrifices to work at a college. If that can't be counted on, the pipeline may start to go dry.

So, yes, at many schools the need to retain as much tuition as possible is critical to their academic mission. They might actually survive the pandemic and other economic threats, but if they do so with substantially reduced quality than they will still be on life support. It's not a trivial problem. Those dollars really do matter. Only institutions with very deep pockets (Lafayette, for example, which is saying that they might lose $30M because of the pandemic) can afford to tough it out. And, most D3 schools are not in that category, even if many NESCACs probably are.

[Gregory Sager]

Excellent post, Falconer.

The pipeline is already not as prolific as it used to be, as two generations of colleges and universities foregoing the hiring of tenure-track instructors in many fields in favor of usings TAs and "gypsies" (non-tenure-track adjunct instructors working on annual contracts) has made the pursuit of college professorship much less enticing to young people. In particular, this is acutely felt in the STEM disciplines, whose areas of expertise often (but not always) translate better to in-demand careers outside of academia.

This was always counteracted somewhat by the bull market of higher education; the U.S. is flush with four-year institutions of higher learning of all sizes, and in our culture it has long been expected of most young people that they attend college (an expectation that does not necessarily redound to our society's advantage, but that's a subject for another day). But that bull market, as we all know, is drawing to an end. Plus, the periodic (and seemingly inevitable) hiring freezes that accompany economic or demographic downturns make it worse, because, as you said, the opportunity cost is so high for those who seek a career in college teaching. It's easy to be dissuaded from enrolling in an academically-oriented masters program with an eye on an eventual professorship if you're a college junior or senior reading an article about 300 people applying for a single tenure-track teaching job on some college campus. Dissuade enough of them, and eventually you'll get only five people applying for such a job. The law of supply and demand is inexorable.

A parallel problem is that more and more liberal arts colleges, in an effort to stay economically viable, are making programmatic decisions about faculty that are based upon student demand. They're counting heads among undergrads on a major-by-major basis and deeming that certain fields regarded as esoteric in the public mind (i.e., many of the humanities and social sciences disciplines) that are not drawing students to major in them are therefore expendable in an era in which institutions of higher learning have less pie to carve in their annual budget pie charts. Meanwhile, those budgetary resources are shifted towards popular majors with a more obvious and direct classroom-to-career connection (business administration, nursing, education, engineering, etc.). What has gone on at Illinois Wesleyan over the past month or two -- it's drawn a lot of media attention in the Prairie State, including the Chicago Tribune, that I'm sure IWU would've rather not had -- is a perfect example of this sort of institutional shift of faculty resources.

As it is doing in so many other ways, I'm sure that the pandemic will act as an accelerant to this process. As more and more liberal arts colleges edge towards the brink, or at least towards the sort of long-term damage of which you spoke, this type of human-resources shift within faculties will start to look less like trendy bean-counting and more and more like triage.

[WUPHF]

I'll be honest, I have no concerns whatsoever that the United States will run low on faculty anytime soon.

The supply exceeds demand in every field, including business and STEM fields.

I do think that the federal government will offer financial support to most colleges who can hold out long enough, but time will tell.  It is going to be a rough ride for everyone.

[Gregory Sager]

I'll be honest, I have no concerns whatsoever that the United States will run low on faculty anytime soon.

The supply exceeds demand in every field, including business and STEM fields.

Oh, I certainly agree. But will the quality be the same if only a quarter, or a third, as many people are applying for each job opening?

I do think that the federal government will offer financial support to most colleges who can hold out long enough, but time will tell.  It is going to be a rough ride for everyone.

I wish I shared your optimism.