SOUTH BEND, Ind. --- The Atlantic Coast Conference won't hold its baseball championship at Fenway Park next year, choosing a North Carolina venue over far-flung Boston. Michigan, Ohio State and Wisconsin aren't printing media guides. The Miami Hurricanes will be busing players to games.
As the recession drags on, many big schools are drawing attention for cutting sports outright -- Washington expects to save $1.2 million by eliminating swimming, for example. But college athletic departments throughout the country also are taking smaller, less obvious steps to trim costs in the sluggish economy.
"You seldom find a silver bullet that saves you all the money you need," said Bob Bowlsby, the athletic director at Stanford, whose athletic endowment has dropped to $410 million from $520 million in three years. "Instead you find a hundred areas where you save a little and you eat the elephant one bite at a time."
To that end, Cincinnati will no longer offer new scholarships for men's cross country, track and swimming, a move expected to save $400,000 a year. Virginia Tech is asking its teams to try to travel no farther than two states away for nonconference games. Athletic Director Jim Weaver said that's expected to save $50,000.
State schools are facing budget reductions handed down by lawmakers while private schools' endowments are shrinking. Both are dealing with dwindling contributions.
It all runs counter to a culture of ever-more resources being devoted to college sports. In May, the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics said declining athletics revenues have been unable to keep up with a "runaway train of spending."
In the five-year period through 2008, only 18 of 119 Division I athletic departments operated in the black, according to preliminary numbers compiled by Dan Fulks, an accounting professor at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., who has been an NCAA consultant for 20 years. Those numbers were before the economic downturn.
"What we're seeing is that schools that are making money are typically making more money and schools that are losing money are losing more money," he said. "The gaps between the haves and have-nots has been getting wider. Over a 10-year period that's been pretty consistent."
HOW SCHOOLS ARE SAVING MONEY
MORE BUS RIDES: Miami will bus its football team to games at South Florida in Tampa and Central Florida in Orlando instead of flying, saving $140,000. Virginia Tech will bus its teams to Maryland, saving $80,000.
NO PRINTED MEDIA GUIDES: Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Oregon, Texas A&M (except football), Iowa State, Rice, South Florida, Arkansas State, the Ohio Valley Conference and the Mid-American Conference are eliminating printed media guides. The Pac-10 has proposed NCAA legislation that would ban printed media in all sports.
FEWER MEET AND GREETS: The Big Sky Conference, the Ohio Valley Conference, the Southern Conference and the Sun Belt Conference are dropping in-person media days, opting for teleconferences in some cases.
TRAVEL SQUAD CAPS: The Atlantic Coast Conference voted to cap football travel squads for league games at 72 players. There was no limit previously. The Pac-10 cut the size of its travel squad to 25 in baseball (from 26), 13 in basketball (15), nine in men and women's cross country (10), 15 in gymnastics (17), 20 in women's soccer (22), 19 in softball (20), 14 in volleyball (15) and 13 in wrestling (15).
JOB CUTS: Tennessee plans to save about $500,000 by leaving five administrative positions unfilled. Stanford has laid off 24 employees, saving about $1 million.
SPORT CUTS: (savings included when known) Washington, men's and women's swimming ($1.2 million); Massachusetts, men's and women's skiing ($100,000); Pepperdine, men's track and field; Indiana State, men's and women's tennis; Northern Iowa, baseball.
TOURNAMENT CHANGES:
- The Western Athletic Conference is cutting the size of its tournament fields to six teams in women's volleyball, men's tennis, women's tennis, softball, baseball and soccer.
- Conference USA is cutting the size of the tournament fields in baseball from eight to six, from 12 to eight in volleyball, and from eight to six in women's soccer. It also eliminated the play-in game in softball.
-- Associated Press
The Augusta Chronicle ©2010 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
