Sports are no longer the game in most universities which have had to cut back on their spending and budgets. Many schools have had to cancel teams, away games involving airfare, hotel stays and have had to fire coaching teams. Following a winning three decades of gaining the best athletes and the best coaches, it is now down the drain for many athletes who hoped to get a degree based on their best sporting skill.
Those who are still open to teams and sports have hiked their fees so high and pools are open only at certain hours of certain days. Practice courts are on reserved hours and scholarships for athletes have been slashed. Of course, parents who counted on hefty all-expenses paid scholarships to support their child throughout university are quite angry as are their athlete.
For example the University of Cincinnati removed scholarships for three men’s sports, namely track, cross-country and swimming. Stanford University had to tell its fencing teams to look elsewhere for financing. The University of Massachusetts dropped its ski teams and the University of Washington said it was going to be cutting its swimming teams to save as much as $1.2 million.
The one cash cow that will not be forsaken is the football and basketball teams. They are the teams on any university’s league which bring in money. They draw crowds, alumni money and telecommunication dollars when being televised. Sponsorship money in the way of advertising is also another money maker with these two sports.
Sometimes it works the other way. Instead of being a drain on the university’s budget, football and basketball teams will donate a part of their budget or winnings toward other facets of the school’s budget. This happened when the University of Arkansas athletic department said it would spend $1 million dollars to help avoid a tuition rise for students.
The fact remains that every university has to look at every department in order to save money.