Female College Sports, Budget Cuts, Who Will Survive?

August 2, 2020,

Casualties are everywhere in the coronavirus pandemic era.

Something has to give if businesses and schools are sheltering in, shutting down or in some cases permanently closing.

Who is going to fund the taxes for cities, counties and states?

What is going to be a major source of revenue in the boys cannot play college football in 2020?

How will female sports budgets, which is some cases may have been already marginalized, fair under a new budget slicing environment?

In unprecedented times leaders keep coming up with answers one day at a time.

The informative group at insider.com analyze, “Without NCAA March Madness — one of college athletics' biggest moneymakers of the year — to line their pockets, athletics programs across the country suddenly faced significant budget cuts. Add the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming college football season into the mix, and many programs are bracing for a full-blown disaster.”

Forbes Magazine brings the declining revenue for colleges into harsh perspective. By their count, college football's 25 most valuable teams generate a combined $2.5 billion per year in revenue, and they clear more than $1.4 billion annually after expenses.

The NCAA adds, “The total revenue generated among all NCAA athletics departments in 2018 was $10.3 billion, leaving nearly $8 billion that had to be subsidized by other sources at schools across the Association. Autonomy schools accounted for 73% of all those revenues and only 43% of the total spending.”

Will there be a college football season in 2020 and if so, what will it look like and how much money can it generate with social distancing in the stands? Or maybe no fans in the stands at all.

ESPN notes, “Before a new normal can begin to take shape, colleges and universities will have to find a safe way to reopen campuses. Complex, high-stakes public health issues need to be dealt with before there is a good sense of what college sports will look like.”

The news reports are coming in and they are alarming.

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At insidehighered.com they informed, “Old Dominion wrestling and the University of Cincinnati men’s soccer program are the early victims of what are likely to be more sports program cuts as the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc on the budgets of universities across the country. More “nonrevenue” athletic programs such as these, which have high operating costs and typically do not bring in any funds for athletic departments, could be on the chopping block as institutions assess the financial damage in the coming weeks and months.”

Non-revenue are the two operative words here.

If you watch the Hollywood movies and actually believe that schools love their young student heroes in non-revenue generating sports, like say women’s tennis or in a situation we are familiar with, Track and Field, you may be living in a fantasy world.

We know of someone in our circle who had a son who could literally finish number one in the state in his sport of interest. You would think that the school would be excited about that.

They weren’t.

All they could see is the cost associated with sending him and the team to the state finals. They even tried to bar him from running. His father had to pay an attorney to fend them off.

That is the reality of non-revenue generating sports. In many cases the schools wish that they didn’t have to spend money on them.

With the pandemic crisis in full swing, now some of them are getting their wish, even if it is not quite the way they wanted it.

More news on the budget cutting front.

The team at National Public Radio informed on July 8, 2020, “Stanford officials announced on Wednesday that the university will discontinue 11 of its varsity sports programs after the 2020-2021 academic year, citing financial challenges exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. The affected sports are men's and women's fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men's rowing, co-ed and women's sailing, squash, synchronized swimming and men's volleyball and wrestling.”

NPR adds that Stanford projects a cumulative shortfall of nearly $70 million over the next three years, and expects its deficits to grow if upcoming sports seasons are suspended or modified because of the pandemic.

Which makes us wonder what will become of women’s freestyle wrestling? Up until the pandemic hit, it was one the nation’s red hot sports in terms of growth.

The global news leader ESPN reports, “Since 2001, the number of girls in high school wrestling has soared from 3,405 to nearly 17,000, buoyed by the introduction of women to Olympic wrestling in 2004 and the rise of MMA, a sport dominated by strong wrestlers. In the past year, six states have sanctioned the sport, making it one of the nation's fastest-growing high school girls' programs.”

We hope that continues. The leadership at teamusa.org is mindful of the future challenges facing wrestling and here is what they stated on May 14, 2020, “USA Wrestling, the national governing body for wrestling in the United States, has formed four committees to deal with specific issues facing the organization and the sport caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

These committees include numerous experienced professionals in a variety of industries who have chosen to volunteer their time and expertise to assist USA Wrestling and the sport of wrestling as it navigates through these extraordinary times.”

Extraordinary and unprecedented.

“Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”…Stephen Hawking

Girls wrestling has come such a long way from obscurity and, at least in the past, a feeling that it is not civilized or lady like for girls to wrestle, we would hate to see this great sport lose momentum. The girls are finally receiving the attention they always deserved and we hope that continues.

Human nature is the mind tends to be confused when comparing the unprecedented with the improbable.

In our everyday life experience, if something has never occurred before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future.

A frightening virus pandemic is reality.

Once it was something that many of us have only seen in apocalyptic zombie movies which now appears to have leaped from the screen and into our living rooms.

Literally.

Female grappling finally being accepted is too important.

We have to figure this out. We must.