The college sports landscape moving forward
As we near the end of the spring semester for college students, no one is quite sure what to expect moving forward.
Will the students be back on campus for the fall?
How soon will international students be able to return to campus?
When will collegiate sports pick back up?
There are so many factors that tie those questions together. How will the answers change how we look at collegiate sports moving forward?
According to a piece at www.universitybusiness.com by Kathy DeBoer, Greg Earhart, Rob Kehoe and Mike Moyer, there is talk that the Group of Five (G5) schools want the NCAA to allow them to cut some sports to allocate more money for sports like football and basketball.
How would this work?
For a school to currently maintain its Division-I membership status, it must have 16 athletic programs.
If the proposed rule change takes place, could sports such as volleyball, soccer and baseball, to name a few, be cut to eliminate budget costs?
Most of the sports programs that would be cut would be a cost-saving move, but as it states in the piece, 鈥渟uch a move would deal a devastating blow to thousands of student-athletes鈥nd would amount to a permanent solution to a temporary problem, with lasting and shattering effects to those who love college sports.鈥�
Most of the sports that would be cut feature student-athletes who are not on scholarship and pay tuition.
The piece states that last year, 141,483 students in the 鈥淥lympic鈥� sports, or non-revenue sports, generated $3.6 billion in tuition and fees to their respective universities.
Considering how the current pandemic has cost universities a lot of money, some of which are anticipating a quarter of a billion dollars in losses, can universities afford to cut the programs?
Old Dominion has already cut its wrestling team while Cincinnati has eliminated its men鈥檚 soccer team and there will be more to come.
Even some Power Five (P5) schools are looking at cost-cutting measures.
Kansas announced on Monday that athletic director Jeff Long, football coach Les Miles and men鈥檚 basketball coach Bill Self have taken a 10% salary reduction for the next six months in an effort to save the athletic department nearly $500,000.
How dire will things get if the college football season, the NCAA鈥檚 true cash cow, is not able to take place this fall, or if it does, without fans in attendance?
Major programs would lose millions in television and attendance revenue.
Look at schools like Penn State and Ohio State, for example.
Their respective football programs, like many others, fund their complete athletic departments and losing the season would cripple many, if not most, programs.
None of them are made of Teflon when it comes to the current situation.
Let鈥檚 say Penn State and Ohio State sell and average of 100,000 tickets per seven home games at an average of $75 per ticket.
That is $7.5 million per game and it comes out to $52.5 million over the course of seven games for each athletic department.
Granted, most schools would not lose that kind of revenue as those two fan bases are almost always among the top five in terms of attendance per year, but still.
If fall sports are canceled, will the NCAA play them in the spring?
This opens up a whole new Pandora鈥檚 box.
Would the top football prospects risk injury when a spring season would run into April and the NFL Draft happens the same month?
There are so many factors in play and a whole lot more that still haven鈥檛 been considered.
However, one thing is for sure when it comes to college athletics moving forward.
The landscape is being altered daily and no one knows the right answer when it comes to what choices to make other than to play the waiting game.
Email questions/comments to powerhousehughes@gmail.com or Tweet them to @BillHughes_III.