Brown Slashed Sports in 2020 to Become More Competitive — It Hasn’t Worked
Thursday, May 25, 2023
In 2020, Brown President Paxson announced the plan for cutting 11 sports to become more competitive.
According to Paxson in her comments in 2020 announcing the cuts, “In the decade ending in 2018, Brown earned 2.8% of Ivy League titles, the lowest among member schools. The initiative will implement a net reduction in varsity teams from 38 to 29.”
"We envision varsity athletes who, as Brown students, are among the most academically talented in the world, who also compete on teams that are among the most competitive among our peers," Paxson said at the time of the announcement in 2020.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTPaxson later reinstated some sports after alumni and student backlash -- and threatened litigation.
In 2020, Brown University slashed sports, faced federal Title IX litigation, had embarrassing emails released, canceled athletic schedules due to the pandemic and saw the departure of the long-time athletic director Jack Hayes.
The outcome has been a measurable failure for men's sports and an increase for women's sports. But the majority of Brown's programs have losing records and consistently finish at or near the bottom of the Ivy League.
More Title IX Litigation
Just after the announcement of the sports cuts, litigation was threatened and filed after the decision to cut eleven sports at Brown and then to reinstate men's track and cross country. Men's track has a significant number of Black students participating.
In a motion filed with the federal district court of Rhode Island, the original legal representatives for Amy Cohen and the other women athletes who brought the original suit against Brown in 1992, say the University violated the terms of their agreement when it announced the elimination of five women’s varsity athletic teams, resulting in non-compliance with the court-ordered requirement that “intercollegiate level participation opportunities for male and female students are provided in numbers substantially proportionate to their respective enrollments.”
According to the ACLU release on the filing, the cuts announced by Brown “will eliminate participation opportunities for twice as many women as for men,” also observing that “throughout the last 22 years of operation of the Joint Agreement, not once have women athletes at Brown ever reached their proportion within the undergraduate enrollment and at all times have remained the ‘underrepresented’ gender.”
Embarrassing Emails
A series of emails among top Brown officials were released as part of the litigation over Title IV — the emails show Samuel Mencoff, a billionaire co-founder of Madison Dearborn Partners, one of the country’s leading private equity firms in the United States, expressing his frustration over the consent decree.
More than 100 pages of emails and documents released by the RI ACLU showed frustration at the highest level of the university to comply with the requirements of the federal consent decree and functionally linking the requirement to support women’s sports as the cause of the poor performance for Brown’s athletics.
“But here’s an idea. Could we use this moment, where anger and frustration, especially from track and squash, are intense and building, to go after the Consent Decree once and for all?" wrote Mencoff in an email to Brown Christina Paxson.
New AD, New Focus, Still Losing
In 2021, Brown announced a new Athletic Director — M. Grace Calhoun, formerly the director of athletics and recreation at the University of Pennsylvania. At Brown, she was bumped up and named Vice President of Athletics and Recreation and her tenure began April 19, 2021.
It was the first time that the AD was going to be at the Vice President level of the university.
Despite the cuts, some reinstatement, and embarrassing lawsuits, Brown sports continue to rank at the bottom of the Ivy League and especially the high-profile men’s sports.
This past year, none of the top six men's programs had a winning record in the Ivy League and their combined league winning percentage was just 33.8%.
Women’s sports only have one standout program (women's soccer) among the top sports — the rest range from mediocre to cellar dwellers.
A review of the records of the top six men’s and top six women’s programs for the season prior to the Paxson reorganization plan to this past season show there was little improvement, and overall, the performance sank even lower.
Brown football has been dismal for years. In 2019, Brown football was 2-8 (1-6 IVY), and this past season the team was 3-7 (1-6 IVY).
Men’s basketball dropped from 20-12 (7-7 IVY) in 2019 to 14-13 (7-7 IVY) this past season. Since the Ivy League instituted a four-team playoff tournament for the 2017-18 season, Brown men's basketball has not qualified for the league tournament (two tournaments were canceled due to COVID-19).
Over the course of the past few seasons since the announcement of the athletic department's cuts, the winning percentage for men's sports declined from 43.1% to 38.5%.
And, women's sports at Brown saw a small improvement in its overall winning percentage from 37.3% to 43.1%.
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