Maybe colleges Should Be Adding, Not Dropping Sports
By Eben Novy-Williams, Sportico
Idaho President Chuck Staben thought he’d found the perfect solution.
In 2018 the state’s board of education had told its flagship university to cut its athletics expenses by $1 million. The result likely meant the elimination of three sports—women’s swimming, women’s soccer and men’s golf—and the addition of a low-cost sand volleyball program.
But looking at the numbers, Staben came to a different conclusion. By accounting for the tuition paid by non-scholarship athletes he concluded that those programs were actually net profitable for the school. Instead of cutting sports to save money, Staben argued that Idaho should add them. He put together a 22-slide presentation which argued that while cutting sports would satisfy the cap, it would also cost the school $1.6 million per year. Adding men’s swimming, women’s triathlon and rifle, on the other hand, would bring the school an additional $843,000.
This doesn’t apply to every school, and that incremental revenue is less of a concern for the biggest athletic departments, which make enough money from ticket sales and media contracts to easily cover other sports. In fact, no school in the so-called Power Five has eliminated a program during the pandemic.
That said, the siloed budgeting affects those schools in other ways. Excess revenue at big football schools are spent fully within athletic departments (on new stadiums, raises for coaches or other amenities), without regard to another area of need for the university.
After Idaho’s education board chose not to hear Staben’s presentation, it kicked the can down the road. Later the board announced it would not renew Staben’s contract after the 2018–19 school year.
“Now instead of $1 million over the cap we’re $1.5 million over the cap, so it’s just gotten worse,” said Staben, who is now a biology professor. “We still have the sports, and frankly, we should still have the sports, but the board should be thinking about this in a different way.”