St Cloud State drops football

[Neighbor]

St. Cloud State and Minnesota Crookston are cutting their Division II football programs, the schools announced Tuesday.

St. Cloud State is also cutting men’s golf and women’s golf — and adding men’s soccer — to comply with federal Title IX regulations and address a budget shortfall.

[vbfan19]

i could see more programs considering cutting football.
Attendance is declining. The costs of running a program keep climbing (tuition, travel costs, coaching salaries).
Some schools may just start to consider it not worth it anymore.

[run&blade]

D1 hockey sucks up a lot of resources.

[ronfitch]

D1 hockey sucks up a lot of resources.

That was my first thought. Hockey is huge at St. Cloud.

I honestly did not know that Crookston has football.

[sevelev711]

Well that would certainly make it tougher to schedule them...

[clenz]

Well that would certainly make it tougher to schedule them...

NSIC was a 16 team conference - 14 team now.

They play 11 games

All 11 are agaisnt NSIC teams.

That won't be changing with 14 teams

[lakesbison]

D1 hockey is a sinkhole and crookston is a town in middle of nowhere, they were 0-11 this year.

[vbfan19]

D1 hockey is a sinkhole and crookston is a town in middle of nowhere, they were 0-11 this year.

an NDSU person talking down hockey is like a Creighton person talking down football.

[lakesbison]

well, hockey is such a niche sport, like seriously, who cares. .01% of college sports fans?

[Drpanther]

You are clueless. For the colleges, that have hockey, it is a money maker.
look at UNO. QUIT a yearly champion wrestling team, and kept hockey.
how much money does North Dakota make from hockey? Sorry, you suck at the sport.
back to football, several colleges have quit football to restart it a couple years later when alumni money goes away.

[clenz]

You are clueless. For the colleges, that have hockey, it is a money maker.
look at UNO. QUIT a yearly champion wrestling team, and kept hockey.
how much money does North Dakota make from hockey? Sorry, you suck at the sport.
back to football, several colleges have quit football to restart it a couple years later when alumni money goes away.

It makes so much money at UND that they had to cut their women's hockey team and like 4 others because they were hemorrhaging so much money.

It makes so much money that for UNO to move to D1 they secretly cut their wrestling team about an hour after they won their second or third straight national title and didn't tell them. They found out when they got home and their lockerroom was chained shut with a note on the door telling them the sport was cut. It makes so much money that UNO spent millions renovating their football stadium in like 2009 or 2010 to try to position for an FCS move only to cut it to make the move to D1.

Hockey makes so much money that SCSU has now cut 9 or 11 sports since 2012 just to stay kind of afloat in D2.


There are very very few schools that turn profit in hockey nationally. Those that are turning a profit aren't turning much of one. UND might be one of the very very few exceptions to that rule, and even then they aren't turning nearly enough of a profit to justify keeping other sports afloat.


Look at the schools playing D1 hockey - outside of those at major institutions - they are mostly small, private schools that have all killed football off and/or are a non D1 school using the exception for hockey.

[Neighbor]

Very interesting insight on the dealings of college administrators.

https://jupiterstreet.home.blog/2019/12/11/captain-potter-the-bad-football-men/

I asked Earl what sports he was going to cut. He sat back in his chair, gave me a smug smile, looked me directly in the eyes and said “football.”

I think my jaw dropped to the floor. It took me about 30 seconds to gather myself. Here were some of the questions I asked, and the responses he gave: