Pat Forde: Cut To NCAA Athletics

UAH cancels hockey program due to budget cuts

Transcript

00:00One of the worst-case scenarios has started to unfold in the college sports realm in response

00:06to the global pandemic that has got the entire world in its grip right now, and that is schools

00:12canceling sports.

00:14Cincinnati did away with its men's soccer program.

00:18Old Dominion has cut its wrestling program.

00:23And those are assuredly just the beginning of the moves that schools will make in the

00:26face of a very uncertain economic future, difficult times making budgets meet when we

00:33don't have athletics, we don't have crowds, we don't have television revenue.

00:39There's a lot of things that are missing right now that make college sports go from an economic

00:43standpoint.

00:45And we're going to see the response that schools, instead of finding ways to tighten the belt

00:48in King football, King basketball, the areas that make the revenue, they'll take it out

00:54of the non-revenue sports.

00:56In some cases, they will just kill them flat out, as we saw this week.

01:02It's really unfortunate to feel terrible for the student-athletes who are involved there

01:05at both of those schools and the others who are very worried now about what's going to

01:09happen with their sport at their school.

01:12And you can look around, and yes, it's true that football absolutely pays the freight

01:16for these programs, but it's not like the other sports are just spending lavishly.

01:21Cincinnati soccer had a budget of about $800,000.

01:25That is not a lot to run a major college soccer program.

01:29Meanwhile, the amount of food, the amount of money that Cincinnati was spending on training

01:34table, significant just for the football team.

01:37You look at a place like Clemson, which has four people listed in its staff directory

01:42for aviation operations, that is charter jets for the school, the private facility that

01:49was built there for the football program with the miniature golf course, with the napping

01:54pods, that sort of thing.

01:55So football brings a lot, but football spends a whole lot.

02:00And sometimes when the money is not coming in, they're not going to ask those programs

02:05to make the cuts.

02:06It's going to be coming out of someone else's pocket.

02:09Very difficult times, and we'll see how far this goes with the hope that we will still

02:13have football in the fall, because if we don't have that, this could really get ugly in college

02:18athletics.