Baseball, dropped by UTEP because of budgetary reasons in 1985, could return to the school if a new downtown ballpark is built for a Pacific Coast League team.
Right now it’s a numbers game, both on the ledger sheet and on the participation side. Adding baseball means the school would need to add womens’ sports as well. The actual number is under debate: the athletic director, Bob Stull, says he’d have to add two women teams; Title IX expert Donna Lopiano says the school needs to add womens teams anyway and adding a baseball team doesn’t really change the balance. (Bret Bloomquist does a nice job laying out the numbers here.) Of course, football screws up the numbers, and having 110 scholarship players on the football team does screw things up royally.
In any case, with a new ballpark just a mile from campus, it will be hard for Stull to ignore the pleas for baseball — and maybe bring more balance to the program at the same time.
Rendering courtesy city of El Paso.
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