The news Tuesday that Arizona State was dropping three men's sports was devestating news for wrestling across the country.
When Oregon announced it was dropping its program after this past season, there was hardly a sound made in this area. Some wrestling fans offered to help, others just felt it bad, but it wasn't happening to their program.
Well, guess what, it's going to happen to your program.
Arizona State was a wrestling heavyweight, albeit one located outside wrestling's heartland. But the Sun Devils won an NCAA title under Bobby Douglas and generally put together competitive teams.
This is the first "major" program to fall and others, I would guess, will follow. Is Jim Zalesky's program at Oregon State safe? It was great tradition, but so did ASU.
ASU was responding to "economic realities," but the bottom line is this was another program lost in the name of gender equity. Now there are 20 sports at ASU, 12 of which are for women. That's great, but it's not equal.
Until football is taken out of the equation - and let's be honest, it pays all the bills and needs to be seperate - there will be no gender equity.