"Sports in decline" like wrestling are not suffering outside of Division I and @EasternMichU is not the type of DI school that benefits from cutting them: https://t.co/q6yryvTQqU pic.twitter.com/UnE0jGCt94
— TheOpenMat (@theopenmat) April 1, 2018
Early Friday morning, the @emunews Twitter account, which is the news source representing Eastern Michigan's Division of Communications, put out a Tweet highlighting what they no doubt considered a particularly poignant line from Dan Bauman's article entitled "Here Are the Hottest College Sports - and the Ones in Decline". The tweet read, "From @chronicle: 'In choosing to eliminate teams like women's tennis and men's wrestling, Eastern Michigan is swimming with the tide. Over the course of the last decade, colleges' athletics departments at all levels have dropped those and other sports in decline.' #EMU". Because the Division of Communications is a school-sponsored marketing organization, rather than a journalistic endeavor, the message is not surprising. Taking up whatever narrative supports the administration is what they are there to do. However, cherry picking this one line in an article that does a poor job of supporting its thesis exposes the lie that is being force fed to the community.