NY state, universities and sports

[Milossarian]

You've got the University of Michigan and Michigan State University; University of Pennsylvania and Penn State; Iowa and Iowa State; Oklahoma - Oklahoma State, etc.

All are pretty large players in major collegiate sports.

Why isn't that the case with NYU and SUNY?


With the population base from which the state has to draw, why aren't they powerhouses in major collegiate sports such as football and basketball?

CCNY (City College of New York) was once a basketball power, before it plummeted after a big point-shaving scandal in the 1940s or '50s. St. John's University is a private, Catholic school, IIRC.

So why no prominence in national collegiate sports for one of our most populous, prominent states? In fact, you don't hear about an awful lot of football or hoops players being recruited from the state for major college ball anywhere, at least not at the rate you'd expect.

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[AvenueB-dude]

Good question. This school (I go to NYU) has no support for sports from the alumni. So we dont have under the table cash donations to help with recruiting, I guess that is the #1 problem.

[RM Mentock]

No under the table cash donations? Does sound like a problem.

You mentioned St. John's...what about Syracuse, Cornell, and the Knicks

[Milossarian]

True enough, RM.

I guess I was mostly wondering why the state's "University of" school and its "______ State University" school aren't involved in major Division I NCAA sports, as is the case with most other big states.

And, secondarily, how football and basketball don't seem to be big on even the high school level, judging by the low number of major recruits in those sports going to Division I programs anywhere.

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"You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment." - Bill Hicks

[funneefarmer]

I'm a graduate of SUNY Oneonta and have to agree that sports don't have much monetary support on those campuses. Perhaps it is because there are so many campuses and they stress a comparatively inexpensive education. Also there are many other large campus draws especially the previously mentioned Syracuse and Cornell. Granted Cornell isn't what it used to be. Also don't forget Army at West Point.

I think you're wrong about high school sports though. Both basketball and football in NY are big. In fact local football in small town upstate NY was always a big friday night or saturday afternoon event locally. Although it seems to have taken a hit in the increased interest in soccer. I think there is still some heavy recruiting going on in NY. Syracuse is always complaining about losing local talent to out of state colleges while they continue to get many of their recruits from Florida and Texas.

[Billdo]

It has a lot to do with the history and emphasis of the schools, as well as regional attitudes here in the northeast (and particularly in New York).

Milo mentioned Michigan, Michigan State, Penn, Penn State, Iowa and Iowa State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Of those all but the University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater, GO QUAKERS!) are large state universities that are the leading public colleges in their states (though some Pitt grads might argue about Penn State). Each of these schools has a long history and great identification with the people of their states. (Penn by the way is a private university founded in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin, and is a member of the Ivy League, which is nothing more than an athletic league that has very strict rules prohibiting scholarships and the like.)

SUNY is New York State's public education system. It was a really small, sleepy system of teachers colleges until it was significantly expanded by Governor Rockefeller in the 1960's. It is set up with four major university campuses, Buffalo, Binghampton, Albany, and Stonybrook, and a bunch of smaller uninversity colleges (e.g. Brockport, Purchase, Geneseo, etc.) and specialized colleges (e.g. SUNY Maritime, Fashion Institute of Technology, etc.). None of these colleges has the state-wide history and appeal (nor the committed alumni base) of a Michigan or Michigan State. None of them has ever developed a strong atheletic progam, either, that not being a priority in the 1960's.

NYU is a private university located in Greenwich Village in NYC (formerly located in the Bronx). It has never had a strong athletic focus, particularly with its emphasis in the arts and humanities and the pull of Greenwich Village to the more non-athletic countercultural types. (I believe that there was a period, however, when it was a basketball powerhouse.)

Because New York (and the northeast in general) has for the majority of this century had a full roster of professional sports teams, which became the primary spectator sports outlet for the population. Even other northeastern states that have a leading public university (e.g. UConn, UMass, Rutgers {NJ}, etc.) do not have as strong athletic programs as many of the midwestern, southern, and western states, regions in which professional sports took much longer to arrive.

[RealityChuck]

It's primarily tradition. SUNY has never emphasized big time sports.

However, SUNY Albany has recently started competing as a Division I school in basketball and, I assume, will be on that level in other sports, too.

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[astorian]

As was mentioned earlier, SUNY didn't really get established as a major state university system until the 1960s. By that point, since there was no established tradition of big-time sports, nobody saw a need to establish them.

As for the city of New York, the point-shaving scandals of the 1950s put an end to most of it. The City University of New York plays only intramurals now, and except for St. John's. most big time New York city colleges scrapped their basketball programs.

As for college football, it's worth noting that New York City has big time professional sports franchises, and a LOT of things to do, so college football never had the same appeal in New York City that it had elsewhere. (MOST big city colleges in the Northeast and midwest don't have thriving college football teams, for the same reason). Moreover, in most big cities, land is WAAAY to valuable to be used for college football stadiums!

[Billdo]

The colleges of the City University of New York do not just play intramurals. They are NCAA Div. III schools. They even have their own athletic conference the CUNY league.

[astorian]

"Intramurals" may have been the wrong word- but when I lived in New York (I left in 1986- things may have changed in the meantime) colleges in the City University of New York system (Hunter, CCNY, Brooklyn, Queens, John Jay, Baruch, etc.) only played against each other.

Strictly speaking, this is not "intramural," but it doesn't strike me as truly "intercollegiate" either.

[G.B.H. Hornswoggler]

So the fact that New York's state schools are stronger in academics than in brain-damaged thugs in sporting costumes is a bad thing?

That's what colleges and universities are for; the so-called "athletics" programs at mediocre schools are there because of graft, corruption, greed and misplaced competitiveness.

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[ignatiusjreilly]

Is Syracuse a public or private school?

[Nixon]

Syracuse University is a private college.

It was founded by the New York State Methodist Episcopal Church in 1871. (Actually they simply moved their Genesee College to Syracuse.)
As Syracuse grew with the rest of the industrializing Northeast, the school grew with it, becoming one of the leading universities in upstate N.Y., though never at the academic level of the Ivy League schools.
It has always been strong in sports (author Stephen Crane transferred there just to play baseball), especially in football, basketball & lacrosse.
Their web site is www.syr.edu.

[DSYoungEsq]

The SUNY campuses are affected by not having any one campus be a predominant location of learning in New York state. California suffers the same difficulty: there are nine University of California campuses and gobs of California State University campuses. California makes up for this, however, by having a ton of people and money to throw at its universities' sports programs. Thus, UCLA (really a pretty huge school) and Berkeley manage to field decent Div I programs, as do Fresno State, San Jose State, San Diego State, Long Beach State. The rest of the schools are mostly Div II or III, and when was the last time you followed the exloits of the Anteaters at Irvine or the Banana Slugs at UC Santa Cruz?

One could also make a case, I guess, for the claim that New York's inhabitants don't see the need for their schools to be athletic powerhouses in order to establish their credentials as seats of learning. I'd believe this a bit more if it weren't for SU (admittedly a private school).

[Billdo]

astorian,

As I understand it, the CUNY schools do have ordinary intercollegiate athletics against other Div III schools both in and out of the CUNY system. However, their home league and is the CUNY league, and their main rivals are the other CUNY schools.