CIS corner: UBC athletic review complete: football and ice hockey maintain varsity status

The University of British Columbia concluded its athletic review Friday afternoon, axing five sports off its varsity menu and realigning them to club competition.

When news broke of the review back in November, the university was forced onto the defensive, having to put out a press release to counter some of the (mis-)information already being circulated among Vancouver's sports elite. There shouldn't be anything controversial about holding the athletics program up to the same standard as other programs, but this was still the first review of its kind, with the university looking for ways to better spend money across its 29 varsity teams.

However, there was no shocking exit for any of the sports, with the key sports basketball, football and volleyball remaining intact and even receiving "funding enhancements". That's in stark contrast to the November, when news of the review ruffled some feathers among certain white men with veteran sports media chops in Vancouver. There was some discussion that core sports would be relegated to club status while UBC focused on recreation and, by extension, offering UBC's facilities to the widest number of students possible.

Tony Gallagher, in the Vancouver Province, complained that the review panel was mainly made up of women:

Kudos on Dr. Louise Cowin, VP students, on conducting the review despite the initial attacks in the media as the university struggled to control the message. Despite the noise, however, men's football remains very much a varsity program as one of the seven "core" varsity teams including men and women's basketball, men and women's swimming and men and women's volleyball. The five teams who now qualify as "clubs" are men and women's alpine skiing, men and women's nordic skiing, and women's softball.

Per an memo sent out to UBC staff and students, Dr. Louise Cowin, who led the review, stated that the "remaining five teams will form the heart of our competitive clubs, a new category of sport created so more students can experience sport at a high level".

The remaining varsity clubs were sorted into three groups "based on readiness to excel, and we will focus our resources on the teams that demonstrate success". That wasn't so hard.

For those of you wondering why UBC needed to conduct such a review, keep in mind that UBC is the only school in the province that competes in Canada's top level of university sport (CIS) in football and ice hockey. As a consequence, it's difficult to get the average student involved in athletics as a fan. While sports have a much more loyal following on campuses in Ontario, Québec, and the prairies, it can be difficult to form such allegiances in Canada's westernmost province, where students typically attend schools based on their program availability and not for their legacy.

Brian Platt, writing for UBC's student newspaper The Ubyssey back in November, criticized the tone of reporters like Gallagher and the Vancouver Sun's Iain MacIntyre, noted that "many students pay a hefty $200 athletics fee they see little return on":

Platt noted at the time that the provincial government continually asks universities to trim the fat in certain areas. Presumably, the addition of a club component will allow UBC teams for inclusive, recreational endeavours such as ultimate frisbee or quidditch to compete under the Thunderbirds name.

The second big story is that men's ice hockey, which looked to be in danger and relegated to club status having not survived the preliminary cuts in January, was "saved" thanks to a new hybrid funding model which will include community partnerships. That team, along with men's baseball, women's rugby and men's field hockey, will potentially exist at the behest of local sponsors. The team survived probably thanks to the plea of Vancouver Canucks' Kevin Bieksa a month ago:

In the end, some $4.8-million was rallied from the community (not just for hockey) for the review panel to determine how to spend. Not surprisingly, the cries in the early going of football or hockey being stripped of varsity status turned out to be a lot of howling into the wind. The panel erred early on in not deliberately communicating their steps to the public, but given the history of sports like basketball and football and the need for there to be a big university option in B.C. for elite high school athletes, those programs were never going anywhere.

Here is the breakdown of sports into the four groups, per the university's release: