Group With Plan to Save Iowa Sports Struggles to Be Heard
By Vanessa Miller, Cedar Rapids Gazette
A growing group of University of Iowa alumni, parents and athletes has developed a plan and raised about $3 million to try to save the four sports administrators discontinued after the Big Ten announced that fall football wouldn’t happen — a decision since reversed.
But advocates clamoring for an administrative ear say they’ve been repeatedly shut down — both publicly before the regents and privately — even after raising millions from hundreds of donors and garnering signatures of support from tens of thousands.
“By dropping programs, you might think you save a million dollars a year, but you have now taken 500 potential Iowa alumni and turned them away from the state of Iowa.”
Kaminski said the group proposes partnering with the university’s own John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center and moving Olympic sports out of the UI Athletics Department and into a different department — say Reactional Services, housed in the Division of Student Life.
Then for each sport, the group proposes creating advisory councils of experts, advocates and alumni who would volunteer their time to fundraise, mentor student athletes, support the coaching staff and “help them be their own CEOs of their businesses.”
Kaminski said the group raised nearly $3 million “in a snap.”
“And those individuals are still sitting there going, ‘We don’t even know what we’re giving the pledge for,’” Kaminski said. “When we release to them a plan … those pocketbooks and that intellectual support will open up like we won’t believe. I know it. I believe it. I know it’s going to happen.”
“By dropping programs, you might think you save a million dollars a year,” he said. “But you have now taken 500 potential Iowa alumni and turned them away from the state of Iowa.”
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