The Ohio State University Athletics Department, a department that brought in over $251 million in revenue last year, more than any other in the country, has dropped scholarships from its men’s gymnastics team, according to a local NBC affiliate citing “multiple sources”.
Ohio State is one of only 15 men’s NCAA men’s gymnastics programs left, a decrease from almost 60 in the 1980s.
This is being treated within the gymnastics world, including Olympic pommel horse icon Stephen Nedoroscik, as the tip-of-the-spear for the new world of collegiate athletics,
Ohio State removing athletic scholarships from Men’s Gymnastics. Yet again, another step backwards for MGYM. With the success of current and former NCAA gymnasts at the Olympics you’d think NCAA programs would be excited for the upcoming season, not stripping away opportunities. https://t.co/gs38K7Kode
— Stephen Nedoroscik (@GymnastSteve) October 4, 2024
The move echoes comments in August by Ohio State’s new athletics director Ross Bjork that rosters would be cut and some sports would ‘act a little bit more like a club sport’ as part of a new tiered athletics department for the Buckeyes. The move also, so far, holds true to Bjork’s comment that the school intends to maintain all 36 of its varsity athletics programs.
While there are untested long-term plans in place to stabilize college athletics in the new world of pay-to-play, including bringing in private equity and increasingly-louder rumblings of spinning off profit making football and basketball programs, there will be a lot of right-sizing of rosters and expenses in the next few seasons, if not total elimination of programs, on the road to solutions, and those budgets and roster spots are unlikely to be returned down the road.
Ohio State hosted the 2024 NCAA Championship in men’s gymnastics at the on-campus, 3,700 seat Covelli Center, where the Buckeyes finished 6th behind Stanford, Michigan, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Illinois. Ohio State has won three national titles, fifteen Big Ten titles, and five Nissen Award winners as the NCAA’s best male gymnast.
While interest in women’s college gymnastics has exploded across the country, with crowds of 10,000-plus becoming a regular occurrence across the country (and two programs averaging more than 10,000 fans per game last season), men’s NCAA gymnastics still averages just 673 spectators, with the best program pulling in about 1,200 fans per day according to The College Gymnastics Association.
NCAA men’s gymnastics programs are limited to a maximum of 6.3 scholarships, and like swimming those scholarships can be split among any number of athletes.
The U.S. men’s gymnastics team won a historic bronze medal at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in the team competition: their first medal since taking bronze in 2008. The men’s national gymnastics team members come from a number of different colleges, notably Stanford, Michigan, and Oklahoma, but noe attended or are scheduled to attend Ohio State.
In other news:
Qin Haiyang is trending on Weibo.
His fiancée published multiple posts on her account explaining him cheating on her during pregnancy, threatening her with intimate videos and much more. Here’s her first Weibo post: (can be translated to English on Web/Phone)
https://m.weibo.cn/status/5086845471558006?jumpfrom=weibocom
You can click on her profile at the top to check her other posts, where she published detailed text messages.
Oof. Not only cheating but he’s also avoiding her it seems. She’s claiming that every time she wants to break up, he uses his swimming ambition and goals as an excuse for doing something wrong. She also claims that she buys all the expensive brands for him. Chinese netizens (and to a certain extent the govt media) hate cheating scandals even for high profile celebs so will be interesting to see what happens.
UNLV QB quit after not getting $100,000 for a month.
Along time ago a friend of mine was asked, •what value does having swimming on this campus bring to the school?”
If you can’t answer that now then the sport is on the way out .
Common Ross Bjork L
Far fetched idea but aren’t Athletic Director’s supposed to protect all the sports? Isn’t that the reason we have athletic departments in the first place. Dropping men’s wrestling…your telling me Ohio State can’t find the money? A sport that has been there for so very long…taken out to make room for the almighty dollar. I remember Ross when he was starting out at UCLA (I believe in fundraising)….AD’s like him (which are most) have no feel for things like preserving sports that need to be there in athletic departments.
Most AD’s now are simply money managers – and do very, very little “athletic directing”. Their only interface with actual sports are performance reviews of the head coaches and glad-handing boosters.
ALL swim fans may want to cheer for Ryan Day to beat Michigan this year because I think his buyout is over $45 million!
Where did everyone think this hasty drive to commoditize the athlete, invent an entertainment value, and place the monopoly board square in the lap of the institutions would lead?
It is like the poor old sap that built his new home next to the international airport, then complained to the local authorities about the noise.
A “sport” like competitive swimming will not thrive as the runt of the litter in these rather over financed and over mismanaged monstrosities.
Swimmers who are serious about their quest would do well to break from these collectives and rid themselves of the unnecessary drag of political chicanery.
There has never been any amount of money that could guarantee quality and success. If the… Read more »
I think this is just the beginning. The big football schools are realizing that they are going to have to start paying Pro- sized salaries to their college players. $251 million may not be enough. It is certainly the end of minor sports and may very well be the end of all sports.
I’m voting this up for daramtic effect, but to be fair… here in Europe, we go to college and swim at our local clubs at the same time. The sport’s not dead here.
Olympic sports are dying a slow and painful death in the NCAA.
It’s going to happen to swimming .
Apparently there is more than one Observer. And I disagree with you. This is not a foregone conclusion. That said, it’s in our community’s interest to support athletic departments being creative/thoughtful as they think about Olympic sports. There is a way forward.
Yes, and Ohio State — with a Top 5 athletic department budget — just clarified what it is.
Top 25 football schools will pour tens of millions into remaining Top 25 football schools. Second tier football schools will pour millions into attempting to become Top 25 football schools. Third-tier schools will pour hundreds of thousands into attempting to become second-tier football schools.
That leaves money for men’s and women’s basketball and enough women’s sports to comply with Title IX.
The next move is either reducing the minimum number of sports for NCAA membership or the Big 10 and SEC just leaving the NCAA altogether.
Odds of there being a 2035 NCAA men’s swimming and diving championship… Read more »