Sports Field Guide

The Duquesne Duke reveals how Duquesne's cuts adversely affected athletes on 4 teams.

The Duquesne Duke does a solid job illustrating the real cost of eliminating four men’s sports teams at the Pittsburgh university.

Duquesne is typically evasive, calling the reduction a difficult but ’strategically important’ decision, according to the school’s president. The athletic director offers an equally ambiguous reason: “Focusing on and strengthening a core group of sports will maximize our ability to compete at the highest level, enhance the student athlete experience, and better utilize existing funding,” said Greg Amodio.

Of course, all of this is offered in a press release and not in a press conference, where officials would have to answer the tough questions, like the following:

• How is this a strategic move?
• How does this strengthen the core sports? And baseball is not among them?
• Why were only men’s teams cut?
• Is this a way to backdoor Title IX, by deleting men’s teams instead of increasing women’s programs?

No, the university sent out a press release filled more with vague adjectives than concrete nouns. And then ran and hid. More and more, this is how athletic programs are operating. They try to control the flow of information instead of furnishing relevant facts and details, something you would expect at institutions that purportedly promote erudition and truth. Maybe the athletic director should hit the library to read some Anton Chekhov, a writer who could slice truth to the bone: “Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.”

Fortunately, the Duquesne Duke, the school’s student-run newspaper, looked beyond the press release to reveal the true cost of these cuts. Reporters John Bojarski and Steve Orbanek spoke with coaches and players to cite their respective challenges. Essentially, this decision prematurely ends the collegiate careers (and dreams) of dozens of students who now need to retain their current scholarships instead of transferring elsewhere. Sure, NCAA athletes are free to immediately transfer whenever a school cuts programs like these, but, typically, these young men will face far too many challenges. For example, credits don’t always transfer, meaning players might have to pay for another year in college. Plus, players can’t transfer in the middle of a spring season (nor are schools likely to sign a player for a single year).

“At this stage, for all the juniors, it’s almost impossible because there’s no way that all of the credits are going to transfer,” Jim O’Hara, a junior swimmer, told the Duke. “You would have to spend at least one extra semester wherever you’d go. And it’s just a whole new situation for us, because, you know, we were going to be seniors, leaders of the team, next year.”

Check out the story on the Duquesne Duke’s website for more stories like this. Hopefully, the staff will also be able to uncover the real reasons these programs were cut, details the administration owes to families adversely affected by this decision.

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