Officials decided this summer to stop funding seven varsity teams. As a former athlete on one of these teams – women’s squash – I can vouch for the devastation these athletes felt and the sorrow across the athletic department.
Around five years old, my father began coaching me to play squash. By the age of eight, I was playing competitively. Weekends were spent driving for ungodly hours to play three or four matches. I often woke up early to squeeze in an extra practice before school. At 14, I moved to Connecticut for boarding school so I could compete with the other suburban squash players in New England. Through those years, I had one goal in mind: college recruitment.
Many of us who play college sports will likely never play our sport professionally. That’s why college athletics, especially Division 1 athletics, is often the pinnacle. To some extent, my childhood was built around this ideal. When my former program was cut, I felt as though those fourteen years of life were all for nothing.
After countless injuries and a few surgeries, I needed to medically retire from squash during my sophomore season, but my ties to the program are deeply ingrained. I am currently the team manager, surrounded by student-athletes that I consider family. While I no longer technically play, I can speak for my teammates when I say the athletic department’s decision to eliminate squash and six other programs was unjust. GW athletics pulled their athletes’ dreams up from under them. Administrators chose money over community and ripped dozens of athletes from the glory of competing as a Division I student-athlete.
I’m not sure anything can be done about this decision. Maybe GW will decide to reinstate these teams – which would be great. But they certainly can’t hide this horrific decision behind the pandemic.
Over the past few decades, college athletics have become more competitive and serious. With that competitiveness comes cash. Seventy-five percent of NCAA revenue comes from March Madness, totaling nearly $1 billion dollars in a normal year. But that money is really only benefiting the sports at the top of the pyramid. Every college athlete knows this hierarchy. It has to do with the locker rooms, practice times and attention. Generally speaking, football and basketball reign supreme at the top. Sports like volleyball and baseball usually come in around the second notch. Squash ranks pretty close to the bottom. That’s because we are an “obscure” sport – not widely known or played.
The hierarchy is taking dreams of playing a college sport away from high school students. Like GW, other schools such as Brown and Stanford have also taken steps to eliminate their own “obscure” sports. The national culture of college athletics is prioritizing sports like men’s basketball and football in a way that takes opportunities away from everyone else. If someone doesn’t have the financial means to get a college degree, athletics scholarships can take that burden off. If someone didn’t have the resources to commit themselves to academics, they may be able to commit themselves to a sport. But GW and other schools are taking those opportunities away from prospective students and only allowing their coveted basketball and football programs to rank supreme.
This culture shift isn’t just emotional, it has real implications as well. When we continue to focus all of our attention and priorities on just a couple sports, that attitude may very well bleed into other aspects around college athletics. In recent years, discussion around paying student-athletes has become increasingly popular. In California, the new Fair Pay to Play Act will allow college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness – a move other states are looking into as well. But paying athletes hurts athletic departments’ wallets, causing more schools to continue to cut their “obscure” programs.
To be clear, I wholeheartedly believe student-athletes deserve compensation. While universities are making millions off the backs of their students, athletes are giving their mental and physical health for absolutely no compensation. Last year, Texas A&M raked in $147 million in football revenue. University of Kentucky basketball makes a three-year average revenue of $56 million. Nick Saban, the famous Alabama football coach, made $9.3 million and NCAA President Mark Emmert made almost $4 million dollars in 2017. But when we continue discussions around student-athlete compensation, they have to include everyone, not just the top sports.
There are many plans for this new wave of student-athlete compensation, and none of them are perfect. As college administrators, athletes, NCAA representatives and politicians address various solutions, there is another overarching issue. All athletes put in the same amount of work – typically 20 hours per week. All athletes have a potential for injury. All athletes balance the burden of classwork on their athletic performance. And no one is getting paid. If we are going to talk about equity for college athletes, we need to talk about all of them – not just the ones that garner the most attention. Though there is a possibility that if student-athletes were to gain compensation, it is also likely that it will not only discriminate against “obscure” sports, but also female athletes. Female teams tend to be treated differently from their male counterparts – whether administrators admit to it or not. While Title IX might protect women from being underpaid, that’s not necessarily the case. When we consider the cultural implications of prioritizing sports, that could very well bleed into the future of compensation. My fear is that not only will athletes of obscure sports be neglected, but female athletes as well.
I understand that sports like basketball are the main source of income for athletic departments, including GW. However, continuing to propagate a national culture that prioritizes a small number of programs takes opportunities away from high school students who don’t play those particular sports. I also realize that it’s very unlikely athletes who play “obscure” sports will receive the same level of compensation as basketball and football players – if any at all. But promoting this culture will not help sow the seeds of school spirit and equity. We saw how GW’s athletic department prioritized its glorified sports and laid other programs – squash, rowing and many others – to rest, inevitably devastating its student-athletes. If there is one last thing to say, shame on GW for perpetuating this culture.
Zoe Eberstadt-Beattie, a junior majoring in criminal justice and political science, is an opinions writer.
