The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Can UConn’s on-court success secure more funds?
Lawmakers don’t say so but they do show pride for the Huskies
Connecticut Speaker of the House Matt Ritter is clear: the University of Connecticut’s basketball success this spring will not affect negotiations over how the school is funded in the state budget.
“Our caucus has long supported UConn,” said Ritter, a Hartford Democrat and UConn Law alum. “We don’t base our funding based on winning national championships.”
And yet... “Would I say basketball gives the state a sense of pride? Absolutely. Does it remind people how far UConn has come? Absolutely,” Ritter said. “It is a reminder of how valuable and how great of a university it is.”
Both UConn’s men’s and women’s basketball teams have reached the Final Four of their respective NCAA Tournaments, galvanizing the state just as lawmakers prepare to negotiate next year’s budget — and as
university president Radenka Maric pleads for more funding to avoid having to cut programs.
And if these two things — basketball success and state funding — sound unrelated to each other, research suggests otherwise. One 2010 study found that state legislatures appear more likely to support public universities after they’ve experienced athletic success, particularly in high-level basketball and football.
Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economist
who has studied the link between college athletic success and state funding, has reached a similar conclusion.
“My guess is that overall there should be more of an inclination to support the school,” Zimbalist said last year, after the UConn men’s team won its fifth national championship. “That’s the kind of role that sports plays in our society. People get excited, and it makes them more willing to spend money — especially other people’s money, which is
what legislators do.”
Certainly, UConn’s basketball teams have fans in the state Capitol. Numerous lawmakers attended UConn, and even more root for the school’s sports programs. During at least one recent committee meeting, legislators promised their remarks would be brief because the Huskies were playing in the Big East Tournament and they wanted to watch.
On Tuesday, after the UConn men’s and women’s hoops teams clinched their Final Four spots, Gov. Ned Lamont arrived at a news conference wearing a Huskies basketball T-shirt, while Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz donned a UConn hat. Two days later Lamont proclaimed a weekend in honor of UConn basketball.
The governor plans to visit Cleveland for the women’s Final Four, followed by Phoenix for the men’s Final Four, cheering UConn at both stops.
As he did last year, Lamont is likely to spend time with Maric, and one imagines the state budget might come up in conversation.
Still, spokesperson Julia Bergman said, Lamont’s enthusiasm for Huskies basketball won’t affect funding talks between his office and legislative leaders.
“While the teams’ success brings positive light to our great state, it has no bearing on state budget negotiations,” Bergman said in an email. “However, we may have to start thinking about a larger budget for confetti next year.”
Basketball aside, higher education is likely to be among the most contentious subjects as lawmakers hash out adjustments to the 2025 state budget. UConn has asked for an additional $47.3 million beyond what Lamont proposed in February, while the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system has requested an extra $47.6 million.
In both cases, faculty unions say the schools need even more than that, not only to prevent future cuts but to reverse austerity measures that have already been implemented.
Lamont, a fiscally moderate Democrat, has resisted calls for more higher education funding, noting that state support is already at record-high levels, at least by some measures. Top lawmakers have proposed more money for UConn and the CSCU system, calling it a top priority of the legislative system.
Sports have occasionally entered the debate, with some onlookers wondering whether UConn could mitigate its budget issues by trimming its athletic department, which operates at a financial deficit of tens of millions of dollars each year.
In an email this week, UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said athletics “clearly played a role in helping UConn to grow into the university it is today and is an important part of our identity.” Still, she said, when it comes to state funding, the school is more likely to emphasize academic and research achievements than basketball ones.
“We do not tie athletic success to budget requests,” Reitz said. “When Connecticut invests in UConn, it is investing in a world-class university which happens to be home to outstanding athletics programs, rather than the other way around.”
Even if UConn and its supporters won’t directly link basketball success with funding asks, they often note the ways hoops success has benefited the school and the state as a whole, generating name recognition, positive headlines and even spikes in applications.
For Ritter, who has been vocal in supporting more money for UConn and other public colleges, basketball may not be top-of-mind, but it also isn’t far from it. Especially this time of year.
“If you tell someone you’re from Connecticut, the odds are half the time they’re going to mention the basketball program,” Ritter said. “What has made UConn such an attractive school over the last three decades is a combination of: academic powerhouse, new buildings, new facilities — and that cachet that comes with being a really good athletic school and really good at basketball.”