spokanexc wrote:
The truth is, the W&M athletic department has become/is just like most other athletic departments out there: it cares about football and men's basketball.
The football team is a good but not great 1-AA team, which peaked in making the National Semifinals in 2004. Since then, there has been aggressive development to improve facilities, building a new practice facility and continually making improvements to the stadium. I don't know if they envision trying to turn the program into a D-1 program eventually, like ODU, or not. But, football is king, even if the stadium isnt always full and the team isnt always good at a level below the rest of the sports at the College.
The athletic department didn't even care about basketball until the team started making a couple of runs in the CAA Tournament the last few years. Coach Shaver has had his job for well over 10 years and only in the last 3-4 has he started winning consistently. He had the job for so long doing so poorly because the athletic department didn't care if they were good or not. They shared facilities with the women's team. There was no investment in men's basketball from the athletic department until very recently. But, now that the team is competitive it is a focus of the athletic department.
All this is to say that the athletic department won't care that the men's xc team is no longer nationally or regionally competitive. If they didn't care that the men's basketball team sucked for so long, I can't imagine them making changes to men's xc, especially when the overall state of the track program doesn't look as bad to a casual observer. It's a real shame, because men's xc was one of the only sports W&M was competitive at on a national level. Under Gerrard and Gibby those guys really made something of themselves, placing highly at nationals (save for the food poisoning year) despite not getting stellar recruits.
As an alum of the school, I hope things get turned around, but I'm not hopeful knowing how that athletic department works.
Generally agree but couple of corrections - Football is Division I - they are FCS (formerly I-AA) as opposed to FBS (formerly I-A). Don't think they go FBS as there are many factors stopping it.
They also made Semis in 2009 before losing to eventual champs Villanova and were briefly ranked #1 FCS in 2010 (#2 Seed in that tourney before losing to the triple option team in Georgia Southern).
As for basketball, agree it has generally sucked though gotten better recently. Shaver was able to get the team to a few conference championship games a bunch of years in (5 and 7 years in) which is unheard of for the Tribe so that kept him around until now. Been the bridesmaid 4 of the last 8 years but never won the conference tourney.
All that said, if the Tribe and Gibby can agree for him to come back, the team may have a chance but it seems like the Tribe won't be the cause of firing as they have not done so with any of their coaches.