‘ Strange times’?
Connecticut college athletic programs in flux amid pandemic
College athletics programs across the state are preparing for the return of live sports as they try to move through the coronavirus shutdown.
The words that David Benedict, UConn’s director of athletics, uttered to Hearst Connecticut Media sports columnist Jeff Jacobs are enough to make any of his fellow athletic directors shudder.
“Everything has to be on the table at this point,” Benedict said when asked about the need to reduce UConn’s athletic department subsidy by 25 percent.
Benedict was quick to point out that the hard decisions don’t need to be made by July 1, but for three years. Still, the message is clear that sports could be eliminated at UConn.
It is a move that no athletic department wants to consider. A temporary life without live sports has been challenging for so many people affiliated with athletics at every level. However, there are positive signs of sporting events being held in the U. S. perhaps in the next couple of months. Just imagine the finality of realizing that the team that a student- athlete played on before COVID- 19 will no longer exist.
Cincinnati and East Carolina, former UConn rivals in the American Athletic Conference, have announced plans to eliminate sports. Akron, Brown, Bowling Green and Central Michigan will be doing the same. Florida Tech, which played in the NCAA Division II playoffs in 2018, decided to end its football program earlier this month.
Bridgeport, which dropped the men’s and women’s swimming programs last year, and Sacred Heart have placed some members of their athletic department on furloughs. Hearst Connecticut Media reached out to senior athletic department officials at all the Division I and II programs in New Haven and Fairfield counties to get a sense of how COVID- 19 is impacting their programs.
One athletic director succinctly called it “strange and challenging” times. The seven universities have different circumstances. Bridgeport, Fairfield and Quinnipiac don’t field football programs and while Sacred Heart and Yale play at the Football Championship Subdivision level, they face challenges as unique as their collective recruiting bases. Even Division II rivals New Haven and Southern Connecticut have their own way of conducting business.
“The greatest challenge we are facing is ensuring that our studentathletes are doing well mentally and feeling connected to their coaches and teammates,” said Yale’s Deputy Director of Athletics Ann- Marie Guglieri. “In addition, we are working hard to be as prepared as possible for the new normal that is coming as a result of COVID- 19.
“Financial strains are an obvious reality that all athletic departments need to face during this pandemic. We are going to be as resourceful and creative as possible to continue to do our best to provide our student- athletes with a first- in- class experience.”
Optimism abounds
Each person interviewed expressed optimism that there would be a fall sports season. Will it start on time? Will fans be allowed in the stands? Will overnight trips be allowed? It is still too early to tell, although the recent news that Quinnipiac intends to have oncampus classes in the fall semester certainly can be put in the “light at the end of the tunnel” category.
“The sense is right now is that the universities are trying to get [ students] back on campus whether it is in full force or in a hybrid model. I am sure they are still deciding that,” Southern Connecticut State Director of Athletics Jay Moran said. “What we are doing is ( figuring out) what does athletics look like? Does it mean with or without fans, what’s the answer to that? Does it mean locker rooms and how we make them ( safe with) social distancing? How we clean them? How we clean all of our facilities? Our bathrooms. It is all the stuff ... How are we going to come back and do physicals? How do we treat athletes in the training room now with social distancing.
“I am pretty confident that we are going to have fall sports, the new norm may be without fans, with less travel, no overnights because of COVID and of course for financial reasons, cutting back on competitions, making sure we get the league games in and those are all discussions we are having right now.”
The NCAA, after consulting
“What we are doing is [ figuring out] what does athletics look like? Does it mean with or without fans? ... Does it mean locker rooms?”
Jay Moran, director of athletics, Southern Connecticut State University
with officials from Division II programs, decided to cut back on the maximum number of allowable games in the upcoming season in an attempt to help the member schools navigate the rugged financial times. It is going to make for some interesting scheduling dilemmas for athletic departments.
“You are waiting to see what each state and region does and then we will all act within that,” University of New Haven Director of Athletics and Recreation Sheahon Zenger said.
Not only did Zenger say that New Haven is not planning on dropping sports, he suggested that some sports could be added in the future. It goes with much of what he said when he was hired as he is looking to help New Haven move from Division II to Division I.
“The first priority right now is the health and safety of our campus and our students,” Zenger said. “President ( Steven) Kaplan has not taken his eye off the ball. He has asked me to pursue that with energy. He publically states and I did too, we have an unanimous vote from our board in February to continue to pursue that. It is more enrollment driven, there is not a lot of difference from where we are now and the conferences we have been looking at. It is more about giving more student- athletes the opportunity to participate in athletics at the University of New Haven.”
Zenger also said that not only has fundraising — especially for a new strength and conditioning program — not been impacted, but some of the donors have increased their financial commitment to the project.
The story is the same at other Connecticut universities.
“Our donor base and particularly our incredible alumni network is really passionate about Fairfield,” Fairfield Director of Athletics Paul Schlickmann said. “There are factors at play that impact people's shortterm ability to contribute but we have done a really thoughtful job about understanding that and being sympathetic to that. Our spring fundraising efforts have been adjusted accordingly philosophically and pragmatically so I still think we are going to achieve some good results from that.”
Sacred Heart is building a hockey arena, and Fairfield plans on constructing a new on- campus basketball facility. Despite construction projects impacted by the state guidelines in the last couple of months, officials expect both projects to be completed on time.
“University- wide there were furloughs, but our university’s senior staff have done a good job of managing the challenges and, ironically, things are really moving on,” said Charlie Dowd, Sacred Heart’s deputy director of athletics. “We have deposits on what would be our biggest freshman class ever, construction continues on campus, work continues on the arena. The end result is that we are looking up and just moving forward.”
The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, which includes Fairfield and Quinnipiac, released dates for its postseason tournament on Thursday, including for fall sports. That is another positive sign.
“I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel,” Schlickmann said. “We are laser focused on the higher ed commission report that came out on the parameters and guidelines ... on the reopening of schools, so we are focusing on a plan to do that.”
Enrollment, enrollment, enrollment
A program like UConn needs a viable and money- making football program for its athletic department to thrive, but that is not the case for the other universities.
Sacred Heart’s five home football dates drew an average attendance of 3,639 fans in 2019. Yale, even during a run to a share of the Ivy League title, averaged 5,561 fans in the first five home games before the thrilling double- overtime win over rival Harvard drew nearly 45,000 fans to the Yale Bowl.
“People get caught up in DI, DII or DIII, within DI there is high major, mid- major, low major, different levels have different impetuses behind why they have sports,” Zenger said. “At our level right now, sports is less about the dollar and making money than it is providing opportunities for students. The flip side for us is it is more about enrollment than it is making money off gate receipts and TV.
“There are some high- major and midmajor programs out there who have dropped some sports, but when you have 30,000 students and you have a team with 30 members, they are not as concerned about those 30 students being enrolled at their school; they are more concerned about spending $ 2 million on their program. We don’t spend that kind of money on our programs. We have a record number of studentathletes coming. It is one of the reasons I came here. New Haven has a unique niche. I feel like a pied piper for people around here saying, ‘ look at what you have.’ ”
Southern Connecticut State joins Division I Central Connecticut State and Division III Eastern Connecticut and Western Connecticut as part of the Connecticut State College & Universities system, meaning decisions on furloughs, and adding or dropping sports, comes at the state level. Things are status quo at SCSU, with focus on preparing for the 2020 fall season. Still, there will be some decisions that will need to be made.
“We understand that budgets are going to be tight and we are going to have to cut back,” Moran said. “We aren’t like Big 10 football, we aren’t losing a million dollars. For us it is enrollment and we need kids on campus to keep student- athletes around and enrolled. We understand that our budget is being cut, too, so we will have to fit in less travel; some piece of equipment we don’t need this year, we are going to have to wait a year or two.”
The uncertainty is prevalent not only in Connecticut, but throughout the country. The hope is that in June and perhaps early July, things will start to come into focus on a timeline to begin preparing for the fall sports season.
“I think we meet ( virtually) more than we have ever met,” Dowd said. “We are fortunate, we have a great group of people in athletics that enjoy working with one another. Our perspective is that Sacred Heart is doing really, really well and once we get to whatever normal is going to be, we are really excited about what the future holds. I think one of the challenges that people face is the uncertainties and now you start focusing on some stuff, hopefully you get more and more details and start to move forward.”
Zenger recalled a recent conversation with his good friend Jim Leavitt, the former head coach at South Florida and now the defensive coordinator at Florida Atlantic. Leavitt mentioned a quote he saw on ESPN that if anybody said they know what the shortterm future looks like in college athletics, don’t believe them.
“You never know what new piece of information you are going to get tomorrow, so you have to be careful not to make drastic statements today about how we are going to do this, or we aren’t going to do that,” Zenger said. “There may be a vaccine, there might be an antidote, there may be new information. I think it is important that we give nature time before we run out there and say we are definitely going to do this or that.”