In the summer of 1984, America's Men's Gymnastics team was golden. Although it was a boycotted Olympic Game, they still won a team gold medal. How sweet that moment must have felt for Art Shurlock, the coach of the UCLA Men's Gymnastics team.

Not only were the gymnastics events all held at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion, but the Olympic team included: Mitch Gaylord, Peter Vidmar and Tim Daggett. All were products of the UCLA team. The sole member of the Mexican gymnastics team, Tony Pineda, was a UCLA team member as well. The program also later produced Chris Waller, a 1992 Olympian.

But today, you won't find Art Shurlock or a men's gymnastics team at UCLA. Some blame Title XI and others blame football.

Football dominates the sports budget at UCLA--from the salary of the coaches to the number of scholarships offered to athletes. And football doesn't have a women's team.

To balance this out, men's teams were cut and one of those cut was the men's gymnastics team.

While one can reason that football is important to colleges like UCLA because of the revenue provided, what about schools that don't have football teams? How do they survive? And does the alumni and the student body really feel that football should dominate the culture of what should be an academic enterprise?

How do colleges in other countries survive without the revenue from football teams?
For men's gymnastics, colleges had been the route to the Olympics. In 1984, this was true. And for women's gymnastics, colleges was where women, who were usually past their Olympic peak, went for scholarships, not Olympic dreams.

I attended colleges abroad in both Taiwan, England and Japan that didn't have football teams or any teams at all. And those colleges survived.

Do we really need football that much in American universities? So much so that it's allowed to dominate the sports agenda for the men?