Although you wouldn’t know it today, the University of Toronto once boasted the most prestigious athletics program in the country.
In the first half of the 20th century, Varsity Blues in every sport were unequalled on both the national and the international stage. The Blues name elicited intense pride in its athletes and great fear in its opponents. For decades, the Varsity Blues were the best athletes in the nation. The numerous banners that hang above our gyms, pools, and fields are a direct testament to this.
Now, those very banners serve as bitter reminders of our current failures. The Blues have stopped winning. Our successes have dried up. Excluding three sports, it has been at least 15 years since we have won a national championship. Football hasn’t won in 18 years, women’s basketball in two; men’s track is in a 27-year drought and men’s hockey hasn’t lifted the University Cup for almost 30 years. Not surprisingly, school spirit is at an all time low — there is no unifying force on campus for students to rally around. Though the University of Toronto has the largest student body in Canada, its bleachers and stands remain empty. But can you blame them?
Our teams are not winning. The reason for this is simple: where the athletics department once placed great emphasis on elite success, it now favours widespread participation.
There are currently 44 different athletic teams and over 900 students defined as varsity athletes on campus. McGill, a national leader in athletics — and also in academics — has only nine teams. What little funding that does exist at U of T is spread equally amongst all 44 teams.
It is useful in this context to turn to economic theory. We have two options. We can invest significantly in a small number of products and expect great returns. Or we can sprinkle a fraction of the total investment over a great number of recipients and ensure mediocrity. Over the past 20 years, we have chosen the latter of these options.
Fortunately, the University of Toronto’s athletic director, Beth Ali, is proposing an end to this failed logic. The most promising of her proposed models, the Taupe model, advocates a pronounced focus — in terms of funding, recruitment and attention — on 16 Varsity High Performance teams. These will be men’s and women’s teams in basketball, cross-country, football, soccer, swimming, track and field, volleyball, and hockey.
The other 28 sports, ranging from kendo to cheerleading to badminton, will become KPE club teams.
To be sure, an exclusive focus on elite sports will be unpopular to some. An example of this displeasure can be found in last week’s issue of The Varsity where the women’s rugby team voiced their anger at the possibility of being downgraded to an intramural sport. Essentially, they are concerned that by being reclassified as an intramural sport, the team would lose the opportunity to compete at a high level.
The issue must be approached from an objective and balanced perspective. The rugby team plays only six games in the OUA. This short season does not require the same 12-month intensive training that is needed for high performance sports, nor does it incur the considerable expense needed for teams who play upwards of 30 games, half of which are on the road.
So, a choice must be made.
Do we continue to spread attention and funding across a vast array of sports, allowing for small successes in some sports while completely eliminating the possibility of success for the most conventional ones?
Though elusive at this moment, we are on the precipice of regaining our lost supremacy. Exclusive attention to our 16 high performance sports is the catalyst to launch us back into greatness.
U of T’s Varsity Blues need to become competitive again; we need to draw fans back into the stadiums, arenas, and gyms. We need to reignite school pride. Athletics are the unifying force this school desperately needs. Let the seven colleges, the prestigious faculties of engineering, sciences, and medicine, the hipsters, the foreign students, the phys eddies, all come together in support of our Varsity Blues. The benefits are multitudinous. In a modern society characterized by mediocrity, it is worth fighting to regain our excellence.
Kevin Deagle plays on the Varsity Blues Men’s Hockey Team
