[ Post a Response | Long Beach State Sports ]
Posted by 2001 grad
on 4/13/2026, 7:19 pm, in reply to "Re: The State Of Long Beach State Athletics"
Second that motion.
Just wasting money to still be lousy. 
Previous Message
Long Beach State is all done. Most of our teams already stink and it will not get any better. Like I posted previously I am done with Long Beach State as it is a waste of my time to continue to be a fan. Previous Message
College sports as we knew them will disappear at the majority of schools. It speaks to the value of a degree that basically any athlete today doesn't care about transferring 3/4 times.
The NCAA was gutless in it's handling of the actual scandals of UNC/Arizona,etc , it caved to the FBS schools and already had granted them their own regulatory structure, and now almost every FBS school is going to hemorrhage money.
The $10mil a year football coaches, the destruction of regional rivalries and affiliations, the absentee degrees, and now NIL which became pay to play. It's not college sports, and it's not for profit either.
Get ready to say goodbye to a lot of fringe sports across the country. You're going to have schools basically gut their whole program and be something resembling non-scholarship in all things but football/basketball and a few women's sports to balance it out.
Before, you could recruit and develop a program. That's gone. If I ran our athletic department, I'd recruit only high school players, and after that I would only sign transfers to 2 year deals.
The NCAA needed an administration to set separate rules for university sports to reflect it's uniqueness. The NCAA recently was quoted along the lines as saying something along the lines of "we denied 400 medical hardships for 6th years, and half sued for damages." That's untenable.
This idea that athletes are employees only holds weight if they are profitable or at least cost neutral.
Athletics was viewed as a universities front door, but not by all. If we had a campus that pushed achievement above all else, I would be less sad to see athletics fade. But we had a decade of destroying our history, systematically by leftist groups, all along some socialist ideal. The reality is we provided one of the greatest lower socio economic education opportunities in the country, for decades. Athletics mimics the spirit of accomplishment, but in a much more visible way. The pride in a jersey was exemplified by athletes who became Rhodes scholars. The commitment to the self in academics, athletics, and societal cause is the perfect embodiment of human achievement.
Is that a little rose colored glasses, sure. But I'd rather strive for that than what it has become. Previous Message
Salary cap? Wild to think that we need something like that in college sports. Schools getting state and federal money should have to give back money if it’s going to pay for players. I don’t know how NIL is funded tho. Previous Message
The state of Division 1 basketball is now totally controlled by money. The rich will continue to get richer with the transfer portal and NIL totally favoring the power 4 conferences. This year again we have lost most of our quality players. Long Beach will never be able to hold on to a player like Gavin Sykes for more than a year. I'm not sure how much money we have to give NIL with but I'm sure it's no more than $500,000 and that's probably high. Every major conference program gets 20 million annually to spend on NIL plus whatever contributions come from rich alumni, businesses, etc. For example Indiana football this year had 20 million to spend plus a major contribution from alum Mark Cuban of about 20-30 million more. In my opinion there will probably be a new division established fairly soon for the Long Beach's, UCI's, Wichita State's, etc. It will be like a Division 1-A in football. At present I would assume a player like Sykes will probably go to a major school, get paid about 1 million and be a rotation player in the top 8. It's so sad to see players changing schools only for a big pay day. I would hope rather than get a whole new team every year, win 10-15 games and have no chance to ever compete for ANY kind of championship that we go Division 2 fairly soon. At least we have the facilities and location to be a viable player in that division. Of course we would have the option of remaining Division 1 in men's volleyball where there is little NIL money and only about 50 teams competing. It would save a lot of money and angst on the part of the fans and alumni!
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