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There's A Breaststroke Joke In Here Somewhere, I Just Can't Find It

As I'm sure you can tell from the recent state of our football, basketball and lacrosse teams, DOCTOR Daryl Gross is all about winning. Programs that win championships, like...uh...well, whichever program it is that still does that, can stay. Programs that don't feed DOCTOR Daryl Gross' unquenchable thirst for the blood of our enemies drank from a chalice made of gold and bearing the unmistakable mark of the NCAA must be dealt with.

And so, the SU men's and women's swimming programs will be no more after the 2007-08 academic year. They're the first sports programs to be cut since the wrestling and men's gymnastics teams were excised in The Great Skintight Outfit Purge of '97.


Not too coincidentally, SU will be sporting a women's hockey program about the same time the swimming programs go bye-bye. Two different sources, who leaked the news to
the Post-Standard, give their own takes on why the switcharoo:

One source said athletic director Daryl Gross wants to place more emphasis on sports that can compete for NCAA championships. "Daryl wants to be extraordinary," the source said. The second source mentioned the financial aspects of the decision.

Likely, the cost of building a new and competitive pool wasn't worth the effort for a program that doesn't bring in any cache whereas building a women's hockey program in the hotbed of New York where teams such as Colgate, Cornell and St. Lawrence all compete could pay dividends much sooner.


Seems strange no one has asked the question "How bout a men's team?" Both the men and women already have hockey clubs. Upstate New York seems a great place to build a men's program as well. I'm not saying we could compete with the Boston-area schools right away but I could foresee the team being competitive just as quickly as a woman's team could. Perhaps in the cost-per-championship analysis the good doctor did in his head, it just didn't make the cut.