More bad news: Akron eliminates three sports programs for financial reasons amid COVID-19 crisis

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bobleenov1963

Hall of Fame
More bad news for tennis: https://www.cbssports.com/college-b...s-for-financial-reasons-amid-covid-19-crisis/

Akron became the latest Division I school to cut athletic programs amid the COVID-19 pandemic when it announced Thursday it is eliminating its men's cross country, men's golf and women's tennis programs. The cuts, which also include job cuts and salary reductions for some Zips coaches, are collectively expected to reduce the university's financial support of the Akron athletic department by $4.4 million — a decrease of 23%.

More often than not, one has to read beyond the headlines to find out how bad things get. Programs that did not get eliminated will certainly get curtailed. Men's tennis scholarship will probably get reduced from 4.5 to 2.
 
J

jcgatennismom

Hall of Fame
bobleenov1963 said:
More bad news for tennis: https://www.cbssports.com/college-b...s-for-financial-reasons-amid-covid-19-crisis/

Akron became the latest Division I school to cut athletic programs amid the COVID-19 pandemic when it announced Thursday it is eliminating its men's cross country, men's golf and women's tennis programs. The cuts, which also include job cuts and salary reductions for some Zips coaches, are collectively expected to reduce the university's financial support of the Akron athletic department by $4.4 million — a decrease of 23%.

More often than not, one has to read beyond the headlines to find out how bad things get. Programs that did not get eliminated will certainly get curtailed. Men's tennis scholarship will probably get reduced from 4.5 to 2.
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What makes the situation even worse is that Akron is not honoring the scholarships of the current athletes on cut teams.
Will student-athlete scholarships continue to be provided? (

Athletics FAQ 05-14-20

www.uakron.edu www.uakron.edu
)

"Unfortunately, the current financial situation does not allow the University to be able to continue to offer and provide athletics scholarships to current student athletes in the sports of men’s cross country, men’s golf and women’s tennis moving forward. However, the University is required to provide the agreed upon scholarship to the incoming student athletes that had previously signed an offer for the upcoming year should they matriculate to The University of Akron."

For all the previous cuts to teams this spring, the affected colleges said they would honor scholarships if players did not transfer. Suppose a player is a rising senior-esp if that player is a US player, he/she might stay to avoid losing many credits in the transfer. Also in the current environment, there will be few scholarships for transfer students unless they are extremely talented due to the late date and 5th year seniors.

Yet Akron keeps football-they were 0-12. 0-8 in their own conference. The coach and assistant salaries are around $1.5MM. Here is an interesting article https://www.wksu.org/post/view-plut...include-dropping-division-i-football#stream/0 The university is having to consolidate 11 colleges into 5 cutting a lot of academic overhead and probably some majors, yet a losing football survives-wonder if any of those 85 scholarships will be cut? One article I read quoted the football coach as saying his players may have to give up staying in a hotel over night and spend less on uniforms. In spite of getting some $ from a few ESPN streamed games, football is losing millions of dollars at unis like Akron but the unis will sacrifice almost any thing else to try to compete in a division where they can't. https://www.beaconjournal.com/news/20191123/bob-dyer-university-of-akron-football-is-invisible FBS schools are supposed to average football attendance of 15,000, but some Akron games only attracted a couple hundred.

Worthy of note is 20-25% of D1 teams with men's tennis dont have football. If unis are losing millions on football, they and/or their conferences should drop down to FCS and cut spending. FCS is only 63 vs 85 scholarships...
 
B

bobleenov1963

Hall of Fame
jcgatennismom said:
Worthy of note is 20-25% of D1 teams with men's tennis dont have football. If unis are losing millions on football, they and/or their conferences should drop down to FCS and cut spending. FCS is only 63 vs 85 scholarships...
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so you are ok with giving less opportunities to minority students by taking away 22 football scholarships?
 
J

jcgatennismom

Hall of Fame
bobleenov1963 said:
so you are ok with giving less opportunities to minority students by taking away 22 football scholarships?
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Yes, when the university is in such severe financial straits that it is consolidating 11 colleges into 5. For nonrevenue sports, players are usually paying a portion of their tuition/R&B anyway and probably the teams as a whole are at least covering the variable costs of their education. The 22 football scholarships would only be cut if uni switched to FCS which in the long run should save millions of dollars. Uni could still honor scholarships until current student's graduation if they didnt want to transfer. Considering the team has the worst ranking in D1, any transfer would probably only be to lower divisions with lower aid anyway. Akron has a $71mil facility for a team that won 25 games in 11 years.

www.clevescene.com

Budget Cuts Render University of Akron's Football Program Increasingly Indefensible

The University of Akron’s maintenance of a Division I FBS football program was hard enough to justify even before last week’s announcement of another round...
www.clevescene.com www.clevescene.com
 
B

bluetrain4

G.O.A.T.
There's more to come, unfortunately. Colleges and universities are trying to figure out how the foundational aspects of the school are going to survive, not just the athletic department.
 
W

WCB

New User
I wonder if one option would be to keep these sports but offer no scholarships?

I did read one article where the author suggested two levels of sports - the first (including football and basketball) that generate revenue would remain funded...with the non-revenue sports offering no scholarships, playing regional competition (vs say conferences) and with lower resources. Seems like this would cut the expenses dramatically. While this might not be ideal, I wonder if better than complete cut.
 
C

ClarkC

Hall of Fame
Bowling Green got rid of their baseball program today. They had a long tradition in baseball, producing some MLB players, like pitcher Orel Hershiser.

Mid-major money situation is going to get worse before it gets better.
 
J

jcgatennismom

Hall of Fame
ClarkC said:
Bowling Green got rid of their baseball program today. They had a long tradition in baseball, producing some MLB players, like pitcher Orel Hershiser.

Mid-major money situation is going to get worse before it gets better.
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Interesting essay on why cutting nonrevenue sports may cost unis $. The total revenue for uni may be reduced more than the athletic budget is cut.
https://sportsgeekonomics.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F613850770429853696

However, the one caveat I have with this argument is that at many public unis, athletes outside of freshmen live off campus. Now at small private LACs of any division that require everyone to live on campus, this argument probably rings true.
 
J

JLyon

Hall of Fame
jcgatennismom said:
Interesting essay on why cutting nonrevenue sports may cost unis $. The total revenue for uni may be reduced more than the athletic budget is cut.
https://sportsgeekonomics.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F613850770429853696

However, the one caveat I have with this argument is that at many public unis, athletes outside of freshmen live off campus. Now at small private LACs of any division that require everyone to live on campus, this argument probably rings true.
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I spoke with a Conference AD few weeks back and mentioned that for smaller conference schools, especially those not full funded, International students bring in $$$ because of tuition rates and for many of these non-revenue sports are gateways to the universities and bring students, which in turn brings money and eventually future monies for endowment. Very short-sighted responses right now to long term issues. As for Akron they have been hemorrhaging money for years, so not surprising to see this coming and they have an excuse now to make cuts.
 
Ronaldo

Ronaldo

Bionic Poster
ClarkC said:
Bowling Green got rid of their baseball program today. They had a long tradition in baseball, producing some MLB players, like pitcher Orel Hershiser.

Mid-major money situation is going to get worse before it gets better.
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At least the curling club at BG still exists
 
B

bobleenov1963

Hall of Fame
JLyon said:
I spoke with a Conference AD few weeks back and mentioned that for smaller conference schools, especially those not full funded, International students bring in $$$ because of tuition rates and for many of these non-revenue sports are gateways to the universities and bring students, which in turn brings money and eventually future monies for endowment. Very short-sighted responses right now to long term issues. As for Akron they have been hemorrhaging money for years, so not surprising to see this coming and they have an excuse now to make cuts.
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I have to strongly disagree with you about the statement "future monies for endowment". I have a small sample here:

- myself, graduated from OSU. I give money to school every year for the past twenty years, subsidize by my employer,
- my wife, graduated from U. of North Carolina and she gives money to school every year, subsidize by her employer,
- both of my sisters graduated from a much smaller schools and MBA from University of VA. They only give money to UVA,
- My brother graduated from some small school in the ******* and graduated school from USC. He only gives money to USC,
- Several of cousins went to schools that no one ever heard of. They went to U. of Florida graduate school and they only give money to the Gators,
- My sister in-law went to Coastal Carolina and then University of Miami medical school. She only gives money to the U.
 
A

andfor

Legend
bobleenov1963 said:
I have to strongly disagree with you about the statement "future monies for endowment". I have a small sample here:

- myself, graduated from OSU. I give money to school every year for the past twenty years, subsidize by my employer,
- my wife, graduated from U. of North Carolina and she gives money to school every year, subsidize by her employer,
- both of my sisters graduated from a much smaller schools and MBA from University of VA. They only give money to UVA,
- My brother graduated from some small school in the ******* and graduated school from USC. He only gives money to USC,
- Several of cousins went to schools that no one ever heard of. They went to U. of Florida graduate school and they only give money to the Gators,
- My sister in-law went to Coastal Carolina and then University of Miami medical school. She only gives money to the U.
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Another scientific study. Thanks
 
B

bobleenov1963

Hall of Fame
andfor said:
Another scientific study. Thanks
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Bowling Green: 16,000+ students. Endownment: less than 200M
Miami of Ohio:
Ohio State University: 65,000+ students. Endownment: 5.26B

You need to get out more often. Most people want to give their money to big U. MM schools are in deep trouble during and after the pandemic.
 
J

jcgatennismom

Hall of Fame
bobleenov1963 said:
You need to get out more often. Most people want to give their money to big U. MM schools are in deep trouble during and after the pandemic.
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Actually there are many elite D3 unis with less than 2500 students that have a very high endowment per student: (By the way Northwestern's endowment of 11B from a uni with only 21K students is more than 2x that of OSU. Your Buckeyes are cheap-only $81K endowment per student . Maybe OSU grads are just buying football tickets and dont have $ left over for academic endowment.)

Chart below is from 2019-I just copied top Endowment per Student Total Endowmen ($000) # of Students
Princeton 3,145,372 26,116,022 8,303
Yale 2,267,714 30,314,800 13,368
Harvard 1,607,596 39,427,896 24,526
Stanford 1,635,946 27,699,834 16,932
MIT 1,533,234 17,569,328 11,459
Pomona 1,486,314 2,324,594 1,564
Swarthmore 1,370,157 2,131,553 1,556
Cal Tech 1,332,457 2,975,376 2,233
Williams 1,380,957 2,888,962 2,092
Amherst 1,332,588 2,473,283 1,856
Grinnell 1,224,100 2,069,953 1,691
Olin Coll. of Engin. 1,097,143 384,000 350
Bowdoin 953,864 1,743,663 1,828
 
J

jcgatennismom

Hall of Fame
Sad to report my alma mater Furman just cut men's lacrosse and baseball. I remember some of my freshmen hall mates dragging me to baseball games because they had crushes on the players. All these local SC girls fascinated by Jersey boys. Seemed after SC, most of the university was either from NJ or Florida-I was from FL. I never saw the tennis courts though until my own son attended Nike camp there as a middle schooler decades later. I did know where the racquetball courts were...took up that sport my senior year.

Really unfortunate Furman cut 2 sports. The school had a $694MM endowment in 2019. Those large roster nonrevenue sports had to be contributing some $ to the school's revenues...
 
B

bobleenov1963

Hall of Fame
Northwestern is a private university while OSU is a public university. Big differences. Northwestern costs 74K/yr and 24K/yr for OSU. For 74K/yr, one could have gone to Stanford instead of Northwestern.

One thing you forgot to mention is that as a flagship university, OSU will get bail out money from the state while Northwestern probably will not. That's the difference. Tax payers is the endowment for OSU.
 
Collegetennisrules

Collegetennisrules

Rookie
bobleenov1963 said:
Northwestern is a private university while OSU is a public university. Big differences. Northwestern costs 74K/yr and 24K/yr for OSU. For 74K/yr, one could have gone to Stanford instead of Northwestern.

One thing you forgot to mention is that as a flagship university, OSU will get bail out money from the state while Northwestern probably will not. That's the difference. Tax payers is the endowment for OSU.
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NW doesn't need a bailout. OSU doesn't either. Tuition doesn't go towards endowments.
 
D

Doan

Rookie
University endowments is mostly a Northern American thing. Unless the foreign student decides to stay afterwards and earn a lot of money I can't see many making any endowment contributions.
 
W

WCB

New User
On the Furman cuts... one thing in the article that I read was that they were also going to cut about 45 athletic scholarships from the remaining sports in the coming years. These would be spread throughout sports
 
B

bluetrain4

G.O.A.T.
jcgatennismom said:
Sad to report my alma mater Furman just cut men's lacrosse and baseball. I remember some of my freshmen hall mates dragging me to baseball games because they had crushes on the players. All these local SC girls fascinated by Jersey boys. Seemed after SC, most of the university was either from NJ or Florida-I was from FL. I never saw the tennis courts though until my own son attended Nike camp there as a middle schooler decades later. I did know where the racquetball courts were...took up that sport my senior year.

Really unfortunate Furman cut 2 sports. The school had a $694MM endowment in 2019. Those large roster nonrevenue sports had to be contributing some $ to the school's revenues...
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Sorry to hear that. Furman has a beautiful campus.
 
B

bluetrain4

G.O.A.T.
General endowments aren't necessarily "anything goes" bank accounts. People often cite endowment figures and how "rich" a school is and tie that to whether there will be or won't be cuts in any number of areas, including athletics Of course a university can certainly bail out a financially struggling athletic department via its general endowment if it wants to and the board (or whatever governing body) approves it. But, this doesn't always happen and it's far from a "rule" that when the athletic department is struggling, it can turn to the general endowment.
 
E46luver

E46luver

Professional
ClarkC said:
Bowling Green got rid of their baseball program today. They had a long tradition in baseball, producing some MLB players, like pitcher Orel Hershiser.
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Orel? LOL. If your program has not produced an MLB player since the 1970s, your program does not produce MLB players
 
B

bobleenov1963

Hall of Fame
red rook said:
Yup...ECU just cut men’s and women’s tennis programs.
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ECU is not done yet. There will be more cut: https://www.witn.com/content/sports...hletics-amid-COVID-19-pandemic-570578911.html

According to the article:
Prior to the outbreak, ECU says their athletics department had a $7.5 million deficit this fiscal year. The pandemic increased that to $10.2 million while the university says it hopes to save $4.9 million with today's announced cuts.

ECU says it will honor all scholarships of those athletes who want to continue at the university.

ECU athletics department still has 5.3M deficit this fiscal year. It means they will have to make more cut or reductions or both to balance the budget. I read "honor all scholarships" means only for the upcoming 2020-2021 but nothing beyond that.
 
R

red rook

Guest
bobleenov1963 said:
ECU is not done yet. There will be more cut: https://www.witn.com/content/sports...hletics-amid-COVID-19-pandemic-570578911.html

According to the article:
Prior to the outbreak, ECU says their athletics department had a $7.5 million deficit this fiscal year. The pandemic increased that to $10.2 million while the university says it hopes to save $4.9 million with today's announced cuts.

ECU says it will honor all scholarships of those athletes who want to continue at the university.

ECU athletics department still has 5.3M deficit this fiscal year. It means they will have to make more cut or reductions or both to balance the budget. I read "honor all scholarships" means only for the upcoming 2020-2021 but nothing beyond that.
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They cut the men’s and women’s swim and diving programs as well. Four overall.
 
C

CJ Tennis

Rookie
I am a tennis advocate but this is the issue trying to save tennis programs. You need student support, faculty support, administration support, and general public support.

But look at the roster at Eastern Carolina. Every single male tennis player is foreign, 6 out of 8 women are non US. The American taxpayer pays to help support the college. The American taxpayer pays for the infrastructure that supports the college, the roads, police, fire departments. American students pay tuition. And the tennis program costs money.

Its not an easy sell to rally support for tennis programs that lose money when the coaches do not have any or few American players on the roster.
 
B

bluetrain4

G.O.A.T.
HBK4life said:
I work for a college. If people think CEOs of corporations are overpaid they should look at the leadership of colleges. Bloated and overpaid academics whose solutions are either throw more money at the problem or have a meeting about diversity/inclusion. Sometimes both.
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And beyond the high salary for any one particular member of the leadership - there's just a lot of administrative bloat. The number of deans, assistant deans, etc. has grown so much so much over the past couple of decades.
 
HBK4life

HBK4life

Hall of Fame
bluetrain4 said:
And beyond the high salary for any one particular member of the leadership - there's just a lot of administrative bloat. The number of deans, assistant deans, etc. has grown so much so much over the past couple of decades.
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You got that right. Here is the project our administration had going before the pandemic shut down the campuses. They were having the offices for the higher ups made bigger and shoving lower staff in open cubicles. Meanwhile a nationally ranked program that helped kids with learning disabilities was given the ax. No money.
 
A

andfor

Legend
ClarkC said:
ZooTennis reports that Appalachian State has dropped men's tennis.
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That stinks. The men's tennis team being dropped has 4 Americans listed, the woman's team not being dropped only has two. All 4 sports dropped by App St. are men's teams. Men's soccer, men's tennis and men's indoor track & field all got axed. Contrary to popular belief by the anti-internationals in college tennis (cause my kid is not good enough) these cuts are now and have been for years about budgets and Title IX.
 
C

chrisb

Professional
Maybe we have to do non revenue sports as a D3 enterprise. Part time coaches, local opponents no schollys and 1 sports season. Isnt college supposed to be to get education anyway
 
Collegetennisrules

Collegetennisrules

Rookie
bobleenov1963 said:
I am a capitalist person and here is my thought on this:

- If private colleges/universities want to recruit non-US players, I have no issues with that because there are NO US tax payers in play here. Well, not quite because donations to private colleges/universities are tax exempts. Whatever they give to non US players should NOT be tax exempt,

- There should be a law at the US Federal to severely limit the number scholarships of non-US players in ALL sports, like no more than 20% because WE THE TAX PAYERS ARE SUBSIDIZING public institutions. The US Federal law will make this uniform for all public institutions.

Try to imagine if both the fooftball (85 scholarships) and basketball team (13 scholarships) are 100% non-US players. If that happens, you will riots on the street that will be ten times worse than the one you see in Minneapolis last night.
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You have shown your lack of knowledge on so many levels. Some colleges and universities want diversity including international students. So the presidents there see this as a positive. Also are you proposing discrimination be implemented? The riots you suggest should be in your backyard when you make uneducated comments about discrimination.
 
B

bobleenov1963

Hall of Fame
Collegetennisrules said:
You have shown your lack of knowledge on so many levels. Some colleges and universities want diversity including international students. So the presidents there see this as a positive. Also are you proposing discrimination be implemented? The riots you suggest should be in your backyard when you make uneducated comments about discrimination.
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If they want "diversity", good for them. Just do NOT do it at the tax payers' expense.
 
3

3kids

Rookie
bobleenov1963 said:
I am a capitalist person and here is my thought on this:

- If private colleges/universities want to recruit non-US players, I have no issues with that because there are NO US tax payers in play here. Well, not quite because donations to private colleges/universities are tax exempts. Whatever they give to non US players should NOT be tax exempt,

- There should be a law at the US Federal to severely limit the number scholarships of non-US players in ALL sports, like no more than 20% because WE THE TAX PAYERS ARE SUBSIDIZING public institutions. The US Federal law will make this uniform for all public institutions.

Try to imagine if both the fooftball (85 scholarships) and basketball team (13 scholarships) are 100% non-US players. If that happens, you will riots on the street that will be ten times worse than the one you see in Minneapolis last night.
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Hmmm... :rolleyes:


bobleenov1963 said:
If you feel so strongly about this, you should get a job like becoming a university president so that you can make decisions like this. The NCAA decision makers are comprised of University presidents.

I said something similar like this in a company meeting. I told my boss that I disagreed with his decision regarding a particular project. His response: "if you feel strongly about it, you should apply for a position so that you can become my boss, then you can make that decision. Until you need to STFU" :confused:
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A

andfor

Legend
bobleenov1963 said:
If they want "diversity", good for them. Just do NOT do it at the tax payers' expense.
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The NJCAA tried limiting international scholarships to 20% a few years ago. The rule only lasted 3 seasons before they decided it went against their diversity and inclusion mission and ended it. I believe there was a lawsuit against the NCAA back in the 70's when they either limited or tried to limit international student athletes and lost. Wish I could find it. I also believe that's why they don't limit internationals knowing its subject to defeat in the courts.

Here's a list of international student athletic participation. While tennis has the most, international participation is across all sports. https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/research/demographics/2019RES_ISATrendsDivSprt.pdf
 
W

WCB

New User
Interesting paper and good to see actual data. On a % basis tennis is by far the most international....if I read correctly, 63% of tennis participants are international... #2 is ice hockey at 36% and soccer at 34%, then golf at 21%. In terms of actual students it is basically tied with soccer (I guess b/c the soccer teams are so much bigger. Seems to be consistent for Division II as well
 
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