In pandemic, colleges cutting sports programs

Fouryear colleges facing budget shortfalls stemming from the pandemic are approaching an unwelcome milestone: The number of eliminated sports programs will almost surely pass 100.

Research by the Associated Press found 97 teams eliminated at fouryear schools through Friday, including 14 programs across two Bay Area Division II schools — Notre Dame de Namur in Belmont, which has decided to drop its intercollegiate athletics program, and Sonoma State, which is cutting two of its nine women’s programs (but keeping all five men’s programs).

Of the 78 teams lost in Divisions II and III and the NAIA, 44 were from three schools that closed at least in part because of financial fallout from the pandemic. No Power Five conference school is known to have dropped any sports.

Some of the cuts might not have been made, critics say, if decisionmakers had considered the benefits those sports brought to the schools.

“College presidents are just not thinking this through,” former University of Idaho President Chuck Staben said. “I cannot believe they are making all these probably bad financial decisions for their university when what we need them to do in the face of this pandemic and pending budget cuts from tuition shortfalls and state funding shortfalls is to make good financial decisions that benefit students.”

Staben argues athletes often pay more than the value of their partial scholarships for tuition, room and board and books, and in many cases bring diversity to campuses. This, he said, is especially important at a time when enrollment declines are accelerating as budget woes hit higher education. He said small colleges have long used sports as an enrollment driver.

Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said he worries about schools cutting Olympic sports. A former member of the U.S. Olympic Committee, he said colleges play a big role in the development of internationallevel athletes.

“There are only 17 men’s gymnastics programs in the country,” he said. “If those go away, our Olympic efforts in men’s gymnastics will be devastated. Similarly, with different numbers, the same is true with women’s gymnastics and swimming, wrestling and a whole array of other things like water polo.”