Why We Need to Save College
Track and Field and Other
Olympic Sports
WORDS BY RUSSELL DINKINS
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN RUN BY OUTSIDE MAGAZINE, MARCH 2024
Loyola Marymount is just the latest school to cut its track and field program. Here’s what the running world needs to do to protect and preserve our sport.
In January 2024 Loyola Marymount University announced that it would be discontinuing its men’s and women’s track and field programs and its men’s cross country program along with its men’s and women’s rowing and women’s swimming teams, so, in the words of the school’s administrators, it could concentrate its resources on its remaining programs.
It is disheartening to see that collegiate track and field remains under threat, especially after being one of the leaders of a movement that helped save four high-profile track programs in 2020 and 2021: Brown, Clemson, Minnesota, and William & Mary. At the time, we believed that the high-profile nature and visibility of those fights would dissuade other universities from following suit. That instinct may have been correct, but only to an extent.
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Since successfully saving Clemson’s men’s track program in 2021, no other major D1 school has announced plans to cut their track team. We, the track and field world, took that as a success: that the attention and energy we expended around saving important, high-profile track programs removed the threat and rendered collegiate track and field safe. However, as the track world has largely moved on, the threat has still loomed, only now affecting programs that do not garner the same kind of attention as some of the Power Five schools’ programs that were targeted in 2020 and 2021. Also, just because major universities’ programs are not openly under the chopping block does not mean that they aren’t being framed up that way or won’t be in the future.
Three years ago, when Brown, Clemson, Minnesota, and William & Mary and several others threatened to eliminate their track programs, the landscape was different. We were in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis which fundamentally altered college sports as well as our society. Our nation was also in the throes of a collective reckoning of our past via the Black Lives Matter movement, not to mention a financial crisis and divisive political uproar.
The confluence of these challenging factors created the perfect environment for people to not only notice the kinds of college sports administrative decisions that would otherwise go unnoticed but also provided the societal capacity for the public to understand and address racial inequity in a way we have not experienced prior or since. And so when these schools announced that they were cutting their programs, the public took notice. Also, given that track and field is one of the most diverse sports in the NCAA, there was a real sense that what these universities were doing–eliminating opportunities that benefited diverse communities–was wrong.
Today, college sports cuts do not command the same kind of media attention and desires to address systemic racial injustice do not have the same level of currency in our society as they had just a few years prior. The result is that program cuts largely go unnoticed, and there’s less energy around protecting the sport due to its diversity.
So when schools like LMU cut its track and field programs, it does so expecting the cut to fly largely under the radar. It also banks on a level of deference the public and the media gives to college athletic departments when it makes statements about why it has had to cut lower-profile, non-revenue programs. Oftentimes, athletic departments will cite finances, Title IX concerns, or as is the case with LMU, will reference some vague objective of strengthening the athletic department, which on the surface appears to be well reasoned but often crumbles when any degree of scrutiny is applied.
Seldom is there an interrogation of whether these decisions make sense nor is there a questioning of whether these decisions are within the best interests of a university and its athletic department. Seldom does the media evaluate whether the self-interests of athletic directors play a part in these decisions—if they prioritize their career aspirations over the needs of the hundreds of athletic and educational opportunities they oversee. Pouring more resources into an athletic department’s money-makers—football and basketball—certainly looks good on a résumé, particularly for those who may have designs of climbing the AD ladder to a bigger school.
What made the fights in 2020 and 2021 successful is that we, the track world, leveraged a groundswell of support to effectively place pressure on the universities.
LMU’s recent decision puts into stark relief the need for us not to get complacent and to continue to keep our awareness up and advocacy strong. We also need to do more as a community to not only respond to these issues as they arise but to also make the sport more resilient and less vulnerable to these kinds of cuts in the first place.
Currently, when a team is cut, we rely on individuals such as myself to rally the troops in order to save a program. I believe this is a good start, but we can do more.
Track and field media should make it a priority to always cover program cuts as they occur on their websites and social media channels so that the public is informed about what’s happening in our sport. Athletic directors win when these decisions remain in the dark.
Our institutions—governing bodies, coaches associations, etc.,—can also be more responsive when programs get cut by issuing statements and press releases that will be covered by the media. These press releases should emphasize the sport’s diversity, its financial accessibility, and the fact that given that most college track athletes pay tuition to some degree, the large nature of college track teams represents a significant tuition revenue source for colleges and universities.
In terms of resilience, I believe we as a community need to think of ways to make the college side of the sport more attractive. In addition to more broadly communicating the sport’s benefits of diversity and its tuition benefits via public messaging campaigns, there are things that can be done at the grassroots level.
Perhaps we ought to think about how college track could be more integrated into the community. Recently the University of Washington held a number of community mile races as a part of a collegiate indoor track meet. That model could be replicated at other college meets to engage high-performing collegiate runners with the goals and aspirations of the recreational running public.
I also believe that it’s important for college track to embrace a more team-oriented model where competitive, scored, team meets that see a team walk away as the victor is the norm. It’s difficult for the general public to understand the importance of an invitational where athletes chase top times and marks that most people not connected to track won’t understand. The average person who lives near a given college may not know what a fast 5K time is, but they do understand gritty competitiveness and wins and losses and may be more interested in hearing that their local college’s track team has a winning record as opposed to the individual performances of athletes in events that may be all but foreign to them.
The college side of the sport should also consider advocating for policy change at the NCAA level. Currently, track and field counts as three different sports per gender: cross-country in the fall, indoor track in the winter, and outdoor track in the spring. Athletes on a college track team therefore are double- and triple-counted when tallying athlete participation for Title IX purposes. This means that universities can use these counting quirks to make it appear that they have a higher degree of participation than they actually might. In fact, many universities look to their women’s track programs as a way to increase their female participation numbers, as one female track athlete who does all three seasons counts as three athletes. A cursory look at many college track rosters reveals that many schools have female teams that are larger than their male counterparts.
The separation of track and field into three different sports also means that universities can make decisions like LMU has and eliminate one or two of track and field’s seasons. While LMU eliminated their entire men’s track and cross country program, it only eliminated its women’s track program, leaving their women’s cross country program orphaned. A serious DI track program cannot operate with any degree of success as a cross-country-only program. By only leaving one of the seasons intact, the university has relegated it to a permanent second-tier status in the name of cutting costs.
Taking a Broader Approach
Currently, NCAA policy allows those kinds of decisions to occur. But track and field and cross-country are unique parts of a whole rather than their own distinct entities and, thus, should not be counted as different sports.
Looking at collegiate athletics as a whole, Olympic sports should not be saddled with the undue burden of having to pay for themselves. Football and basketball athletes also should be getting a fair share of the value that they generate and should not be responsible for subsidizing a university’s other sports. Universities do not expect their performing arts programs and other co-curricular activities to finance their own existence; instead, universities invest in these offerings as they are regarded as important parts of a holistic liberal arts educational experience. Universities should regard track and field, and Olympic sports more broadly, similarly and look to invest in those offerings instead of expecting them to follow a model that only football and basketball can realistically achieve.
LMU’s decision to cut its men’s and women’s track programs, its men’s cross country program, its men’s and women’s rowing programs, and its women’s swimming program has created a deep wound in the LMU community, has left current athletes and incoming recruits stranded without many transfer options as many other universities’ applications have closed, and has left the community with many questions and fewer answers.
Collegiate sports represent educational pathways but also connect people—athletes, general population students, parents, alumni, and the public alike—to an institution in ways that are unique to college sports. College athletics brings people to campus via homecoming, inspires individuals to donate to their alma mater, and offers one of the few opportunities where the university connects with their local communities by way of at-home competitions. In much the same way as a university’s music and theater programs add value to a college community, so too does athletics.
If we, the track and field world, believe in college track, and in college athletics overall, we must do what we can to protect these programs and the educational and athletic opportunities they provide. With major changes to the collegiate athletic landscape, such as conference realignment tied to massive new media rights packages largely for football and basketball, legislative pushes to re-categorize college athletes as employees, and Name Image and Likeness (NIL) compensation to athletes , colleges may look to cut their Olympic sports as a way to adapt to new financial and external pressures.
The best way to protect the sport from what may be looming on the horizon is to advocate the sport’s value today. We should aim to make the sport no longer a soft target in the minds of the athletic departments but rather have the sport be regarded as an important part of a college’s overall sports offerings.
In order to save college track and field, and other Olympic sports in the process, we must do the work now to make it clear what the sport’s value is. Otherwise, if we wait until major changes in the collegiate landscape inspire a cascade of program cuts nationwide, it will be too late.
College track and field and Olympic sports more broadly need our support. Let’s all do our part to ensure that Olympic sports are here to stay and are a vital part of college athletics.