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How would Women's Gymnastics do at CU?

Buffnik

Buffnik

Real name isn't Nik
Club Member
Junta Member
I know that CU used to have both Men's and Women's Gymnastics.

Looks like for Men's there are 6.3 scholarships allowed by the NCAA. For Women's, it is 12 scholarships.

12 just so happens to be the number of NCAA scholarships for Men's Lacrosse, so a Women's Gymnastics program would balance perfectly with MLAX for Title IX considerations.

What got me thinking of this is that there was NCAA Gymnastics on tv at the bar I was at late this afternoon. One of the things they put up on the screen is that Utah averages just short of 15,000 spectators for its home meets. There were a bunch of schools that drew above 10k.

Seems to me W-GYM is a sport hat could do pretty darn well at CU.

Could this work?
 
Buffnik said:
I know that CU used to have both Men's and Women's Gymnastics.

Looks like for Men's there are 6.3 scholarships allowed by the NCAA. For Women's, it is 12 scholarships.

12 just so happens to be the number of NCAA scholarships for Men's Lacrosse, so a Women's Gymnastics program would balance perfectly with MLAX for Title IX considerations.

What got me thinking of this is that there was NCAA Gymnastics on tv at the bar I was at late this afternoon. One of the things they put up on the screen is that Utah averages just short of 15,000 spectators for its home meets. There were a bunch of schools that drew above 10k.

Seems to me W-GYM is a sport hat could do pretty darn well at CU.

Could this work?
Click to expand...

Colorado has had reasonably strong HS gymnastics over the years, a number of Colorado girls have gone to other PAC 12 schools and done well. We have had a few Olympians and international competitors.

Gymnastics is a sport that doesn't require a huge investment in facilities and isn't impacted by our climate.

If we had a program our proximity to the US Olympic training center would be a definite plus.

I'm not a gymnastics fan but your idea would make a lot of sense.
 
Primarily, I'd rather the money be spent on football and maybe a little on basketball. If we're going to add sports though, I'm on board with whatever gets men's lacrosse at CU and this sounds like a reasonable plan.
 
I do not over estimate CU fan support. Besides Football, support for all CU athletics is sparse from fans imo. Utah is like 4th in the country or something and have spent years building it. I would rather see money go the sports that we have. Every single one is underfunded. Lacrosse is a top 15 team and plays on a rec field. Football, basketball and all others need a ton more support. As far as adding any sports, women's gymnastics would be good but I would rather see a mens lacrosse team added. I can see that drawing well. I also wonder if Utah and CU have the same culture on campus.
 
Would be hard to pry top talent away from DU and Utah. With limited AD resources, I’d prefer to keep our powder dry.

Maybe if both football and basketball were sporting ranked teams and regular sellouts, but short of that, we have work to do in other areas.
 
Bmixer said:
I do not over estimate CU fan support. Besides Football, support for all CU athletics is sparse from fans imo. Utah is like 4th in the country or something and have spent years building it. I would rather see money go the sports that we have. Every single one is underfunded. Lacrosse is a top 15 team and plays on a rec field. Football, basketball and all others need a ton more support. As far as adding any sports, women's gymnastics would be good but I would rather see a mens lacrosse team added. I can see that drawing well. I also wonder if Utah and CU have the same culture on campus.
Click to expand...

You can’t have lax without another women’s sport added. Not sure how many heads gymnastics would add but we’d need at least 25-30 to make it offset a lax squad
 
I attended gymnastics meets back in the dark ages at CU. Oklahoma had Olympic athletes on their team. There were very few people in the stands for the meets.

Right now, my issue with gymnastics is that the athletes are protected so that another Michigan State/USA Gymnastics does not develop and that the sport be cleaned up.
 
buffgal said:
I attended gymnastics meets back in the dark ages at CU. Oklahoma had Olympic athletes on their team. There were very few people in the stands for the meets.

Right now, my issue with gymnastics is that the athletes are protected so that another Michigan State/USA Gymnastics does not develop and that the sport be cleaned up.
Click to expand...

I agree, the sport needs some changing but I also think the NCAA needs to make sure protections for all athletes in all sports.
 
Not Sure said:
Would be hard to pry top talent away from DU and Utah. With limited AD resources, I’d prefer to keep our powder dry.

Maybe if both football and basketball were sporting ranked teams and regular sellouts, but short of that, we have work to do in other areas.
Click to expand...

I agree on the football and bball sellouts and if CU had a great donor base. Disagree on the recruiting. Utah started this year and while Denver is a hot program right now Elliot has shown if you got somebody who is not scared and will recruit then you can recruit to CU. DU and Utah have different strengths and weaknesses than CU so I do not care the sport get a coach that can recruit you can win.
 
Happy to have this conversation when football and basketball are resourced to the majority's satisfaction.
 
Buffnik said:
....Utah averages just short of 15,000 spectators for its home meets. There were a bunch of schools that drew above 10k.

Seems to me W-GYM is a sport hat could do pretty darn well at CU.

Could this work?
Click to expand...
that's higher than the capacity of the Events Center and more than double what we've averaged for men's hoops since I started following the Buffs.

we have world class, perennial national championship contenders in skiing and cross country yet don't draw notable crowds at either. The year I was a volleyball season ticket holder we were ranked most of the season and made the tourney, but averaged (eyeball count) <1000 per match.

The Boulder/Denver metro area is a pro-sports oriented culture -- this impacts <holds nose> "Olympic sports" </holds nose> even more than it impacts football and basketball.

I guess I don't know what the standard is for a sport (other than football) "doing well" at CU.

but, specific to your question about women's gymnastics:
  • can we get anywhere near Utah-level participation? hell no.
  • can we turn a profit? hell no. it looks like UU has 4 home gymnastics meets this year. assume we draw 5k per meet (optimistic) at $10 admission ==> $200k/year. that wouldn't even cover the scholarships, never mind equipment, facilities, coaching salaries, recruiting expenses, etc...
  • can we use it as a loss-leader (i.e. marketing tool) to increase interest in the university and other athletic programs? maybe, but I don't see how that could be at a level commensurate with its cost
agree with other posters that CU needs to put the full-court-press on fixing football and hoops before looking at expansion into other athletics.
 
My thinking here is that every single women's sport will lose money. A lot. But there are some that actually draw real interest and community engagement while having a chance to be good. Those are the women's sports that CU has to focus on when it thinks about sports that can balance out scholarships from a desired men's sport that could actually make money. On the women's side, I think that Beach Volleyball and Triathlon fit that. I was wondering if Gymnastics also could.

The real focus here, though, is on figuring out the best path to a spring men's sport that could significantly expand the sports year at CU by having a feature sport in the spring. Lacrosse is the likely candidate there since it can justify a field sports complex that would also be used by our successful women's Lacrosse and Soccer programs.

When I saw those attendance numbers that some schools draw for Gymnastics, it got me thinking that this was a program that was Top 25 at one time at CU, would not require new facilities and should benefit for a lot of youth programs in the metro for gymnastics along with the Olympic training thing.

That said, I absolutely agree that before a plan like this could even be considered that the Balch side of Folsom needs to be taken care of along with other Folsom and CEC improvements and a significant bump in revenues & results from our revenue sports. We also need to see a successful new media deal for the Pac-12 in a few years to drive things.
 
Buffnik said:
My thinking here is that every single women's sport will lose money. A lot. But there are some that actually draw real interest and community engagement while having a chance to be good. Those are the women's sports that CU has to focus on when it thinks about sports that can balance out scholarships from a desired men's sport that could actually make money. On the women's side, I think that Beach Volleyball and Triathlon fit that. I was wondering if Gymnastics also could.

The real focus here, though, is on figuring out the best path to a spring men's sport that could significantly expand the sports year at CU by having a feature sport in the spring. Lacrosse is the likely candidate there since it can justify a field sports complex that would also be used by our successful women's Lacrosse and Soccer programs.

When I saw those attendance numbers that some schools draw for Gymnastics, it got me thinking that this was a program that was Top 25 at one time at CU, would not require new facilities and should benefit for a lot of youth programs in the metro for gymnastics along with the Olympic training thing.

That said, I absolutely agree that before a plan like this could even be considered that the Balch side of Folsom needs to be taken care of along with other Folsom and CEC improvements and a significant bump in revenues & results from our revenue sports. We also need to see a successful new media deal for the Pac-12 in a few years to drive things.
Click to expand...

Gymnastics or any sport starts at 1 mil a year and goes up to support when you count in medical, insurance, recruiting, equipment and all that. If you look at what the top Gymnastics program such as UCLA or Georgia do then it is an expensive sport. IMO I do not think any sport other then football and mens basketball have a shot at making money and if they add any sport mens or women's they will need more facilities especially women's locker rooms and the training facilities. IMO it would take 10-15 years to be in the ball park for a sport like gymnastics to support itself and would require a top level hire right off the bat. I also do not think the Olympic training center being in the springs plays any part. Have not heard 1 volleyball player say that was a reason they came to CU and they train for 1 week at the OTC every year.
 
Bmixer said:
Gymnastics or any sport starts at 1 mil a year and goes up to support when you count in medical, insurance, recruiting, equipment and all that. If you look at what the top Gymnastics program such as UCLA or Georgia do then it is an expensive sport. IMO I do not think any sport other then football and mens basketball have a shot at making money and if they add any sport mens or women's they will need more facilities especially women's locker rooms and the training facilities. IMO it would take 10-15 years to be in the ball park for a sport like gymnastics to support itself and would require a top level hire right off the bat. I also do not think the Olympic training center being in the springs plays any part. Have not heard 1 volleyball player say that was a reason they came to CU and they train for 1 week at the OTC every year.
Click to expand...
Again, I don't expect Gymnastics or any women's sport to ever pay for itself. I expect, if a women's sport is added, the criteria to be whether it can win and also bring community interest to CU while not requiring investment in new facilities.

With men's sports, football makes a ton of money and basketball can probably be profitable enough to allow MBB, WBB & VB to run as a group of arena sports that don't take a loss. WBB & VB can also earn enough revenue to help -- they don't have to be huge loss leaders -- and that can make that group profitable at CU when combined with MBB.

Other than that, the only sports that might be able to eventually turn a profit are men's hockey and men's lacrosse. Hockey has facilities issues and doesn't do anything to fix the spring sport issue at CU. Lacrosse has got to be the target and the 12 scholarships it gets have to be balanced by at least 12 scholarships from women's sports. W-GYM happens to be a 12 scholarship women's sport.
 
I do not know how much the community would support gymnastics at CU. Unless it is a great team and program CU history says people would rather go do things then watch sports. Utah and DU both have campuses in large cities to draw from. The culture of CU is different then those two and gymnastics may not translate. Many people in Colorado think the jaunt of 36 is like going around the world, while in Utah it is not a issue as they are full in support for Utah. For the arena sports to be break even WBB has to be top 15 and mens have to be regular participants in the NCAA tourney and ranked. I do not know why people do not watch volleyball it is a fun sport to watch but if they get more than 1500 fans they are lucky. I also think MBB needs to be supported at a higher rate to be a consistently successful team. I can not wait till CU gets to the point they can add sports but that is a far ways away imo
 
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