ESPN.com columnist and Holy Cross graduate Bill Simmons has long complained about the state of athletics at his alma mater.
But in his most recent column, there’s this:
…although there’s not much to follow at Holy Cross ever since the administration decided to murder its sports program once and for all. (You know, because it’s so difficult for a college that charges $50,000 a year for tuition to keep alive a hoops program that once gave the world Tommy Heinsohn and Bob Cousy.) So I’m a man without a college team, and it’s probably always going to be that way unless little LaBill Simmons ends up playing Division I somewhere in 17 years….
Happy March Madness!
1 Comment
March 23, 2008 at 10:55 pm
According to the College of the Holy Cross website (http://www.holycross.edu/athletics/varsity/) and read that your alma mater sponsors 27 varsity sports, and one-quarter of the student body compete as varsity athletes. Holy Cross appears to have a very large sports program for a relatively small university (2,700 students) and the percentage of students who are athletes appears to be phenomenally high.
I am a student at Arizona State University and part-time employee at Sun Devil athletic events. ASU has over 50,000 students, yet has only 20 varsity sports, according to http://thesundevils.cstv.com/index-main.html. While ASU does have several of its athletic teams that are among the strongest in the nation (i.e. baseball, track & field, and softball), it offers relatively few athletic opportunities for its large and diverse student body.
Therefore, it appears to me that overall, Holy Cross has an outstanding athletic program and is one best programs per capita among any university in the USA. Holy Cross offers most of the sports that ASU offers plus several sports that ASU does not offer, such as men’s and women’s ice hockey, men’s and women’s lacrosse, women’s field hockey, men’s soccer, and men’s and women’s rowing. Holy Cross offers even more sports than the best-known Catholic university in the USA, Notre Dame, which has only 24 varsity sports.
Ken Akerman