Programs can be saved if enough money raised In response to a rapidly growing deficit in athletics, Maryland president Wallace Loh has agreed with a commission’s recommendation to drop eight sports teams. The cuts would go into effect on July 1, 2012, for men’s and women’s swimming and diving, men’s indoor and outdoor track, men’s cross country and track, men’s tennis, women’s acrobatics and tumbling and women’s water polo.
However, there is a way for the teams to save themselves. At the suggestion of athletic director Kevin Anderson, Loh will allow the teams to continue if they can generate eight years’ worth of program costs.
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Anderson outlined what it would take to save swimming and diving ($11 million), acrobatics and tumbling ($5.3 million), men’s track ($4.2 million), women’s water polo ($4.2 million) and men’s tennis ($3.8 million), a total of $29 million.
Anderson said he will dedicate two senior development staff members to fundraising. The M Club booster organization has committed $1 million to the effort.
“Raising $11 million is certainly a lofty goal, but that will not deter us from working with the athletics department to find ways to raise the money, cut unnecessary costs and endow the program permanently,” Jeff Riordan of Save Maryland Swimming said via email. “We will need the help of donors and corporations everywhere, large and small.”
For fundraising purposes, in order to remain compliant with Title IX, women’s acrobatics and tumbling has been paired with men’s cross country and track. Water polo and tennis have also been packaged.
Anderson pointed out in a news conference on Monday that a similar effort was undertaken last year at the University of California, Berkeley with some success. By generating more than $12 million, the school was able to save men’s rugby and women’s gymnastics and lacrosse. UC Berkeley, however, lost a men’s gymnastics program that had captured four NCAA championships. It also abolished baseball, becoming the state’s lone Division I school without a team.
“Over 90 percent of Division I programs are in deficit,” Loh said. “But we are different from many other public research universities in that we receive no state support. We have a financial model for [football and basketball], which have to subsidize all the rest of the sports. It is a national model that is faulty, that is inequitable, and that is unsustainable.”
Maryland athletics will end this school year with a deficit of more than $4 million, which is projected to grow to more than $6.7 million in two years, even with the cuts.
Fundraising has dipped from $15.3 in fiscal year 2008 to $9.1 in FY 2011. Loh and Anderson blamed the economic decline. But the declining fortunes of the basketball and football teams have played a role as well.
Net revenues from basketball have decreased from $6.7 million in FY 2006 to $4.5 million in FY 2011. Over the same period, net revenues from football decreased from $3.5 million to $1.8 million.
The recent hire of coaches Mark Turgeon in basketball and Randy Edsall in football will be critical to the overall financial health of Maryland athletics.
“Without success in those, we’re not going to have a great deal of income to work with,” said President’s Commission co-chair Barry Gossett. “We felt the teams were at their low ebb. We have made an investment in coaches and facilities to get us back to the levels of national prominence.”
