Let me start by saying how fortunate and grateful I am for the opportunities I have had as a student athlete at Ball State University. The cuts the athletic department announced yesterday, however, will only connect Ball State with negative thoughts for the rest of my life.
People have said a lot of things about these cuts and tried to blame a lot of different people along the way. It should be emphasized that these cuts are not the fault of any other coach or athlete at Ball State, or a football player, basketball player or golfer.
Those athletes and coaches are out there doing the exact same thing any track athlete does: They are competing in a sport they love or coaching a sport they love because they have a passion for that sport.
I am also not going to tell you how terrible President Brownell and athletic director Bubba Cunningham are as people. I will tell you though that I strongly disagree with those two men when it comes to goals of intercollegiate athletics and the direction this university is heading.
Athletic programs are extra things Ball State offers, just like any club, the SGA or the DAILY NEWS. The university is not required to offer these things but BSU decided along the way that these things promote the values they want to stand for and enrich the experience for many people.
When Ball State started the track and cross country programs (and all the athletic programs, for that matter), they undoubtedly did so to enrich the experience of students. Ball State saw an inherent value in offering these opportunities for the individuals involved and the university as a whole.
What President Brownell and Bubba Cunningham are saying now is the experience, enrichment and diversity these sports bring to the table are not worth what President Brownell called "a relatively small amount of money" in the grand scheme of things for the university budget.
They are saying that rather than finding money somewhere in the $10.5 million budget these experiences are not worth it and we don't need them.
I refuse to believe college athletics should be about the bottom line. It was never supposed to and never will be a source of revenue for the university. Athletics were designed and intended to promote other things that are far more valuable -- things that the current administration has decided we don't need to worry about quite as much anymore.
I feel for the thousands of athletes that will never get to come here and have the opportunities I did. I feel for my teammates, who will lose the opportunity to compete as a college athlete at BSU.
I feel for my coaches and their families. But most of all I worry for Ball State because the path BSU began on Wednesday is a perilous one that leads far from the values and roots on which Ball State has long prided itself.
I am deeply saddened by these actions, and hope there is some way to preserve the incredible experience I have had to this point for future generations of track and cross country athletes.
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