The University of Montana is considering whether it makes solid economic sense to move to the major ranks of collegiate sports by spurning the Football Championship Subdivision and moving up to the Football Bowl Subdivision.
As I have written here before, there has not been an invitation from the WAC and Athletic Director Jim O’Day said no decision has been made on whether the Grizzlies would be interested if such an invite did arrive before the first of the year. But it is obvious a major decision will be forthcoming.
Unless a stipulation is waived, which is doubtful, in order to qualify for WAC membership a school must have 16 sports. And, because of gender equity issues, UM would be required to add two sports to the 14 it already has.
While I’ve heard rumbling about what sports are being considered or make sense if such a move happens, I have no real idea about what could occur.
What’s interesting to me is the possibility of adding sports comes at a time when other schools are considering, or have announced, they will eliminate some sports as cost-saving measures.
Because football, of course, is the most expensive sport to operate and it involves the majority of an athletic department’s employment budget, it is not unusual to see a school, especially one with little gridiron tradition or success, eliminate the sport.
But I never thought I’d see the day when a school like the University of California would eliminate baseball.
But the budget crisis in that state is forcing institutions to reevaluate whether they can afford to continue with some sports competition.
Cal-Irvine dropped men’s and women’s swimming as part of eliminating five sports, while Pepperdine dropped the hammer on women’s swimming and diving and men’s track.
But it isn’t just in California where tough decisions are being made about the elimination of some sports.
Western Washington University dropped its football program, while Portland State has also eliminated baseball, long a staple in the Rose City, and wrestling.
Baseball and softball were cut at Vermont, soccer and volleyball eliminated at Maine, Delaware State and Carson-Newman eliminated wrestling and even MIT dropped six sports, including alpine skiing, golf and ice hockey.
While institutions are eliminating programs to save money, they also are tightening their belts in other areas, one of which just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Print copies of media guides, long a staple for recruiting but even more important to tell the media the personal side of things in an athletic program, have almost been eliminated and placed exclusively online.
In the Big Sky Conference, for example, I believe Portland State was the only school to release a print copy, although most schools make a few available behind the scenes.
Maybe I am the exception, but I don’t have the time to examine page-by-page an online media guide or, for that matter, spend the time and money to print a copy off-line.
So those interesting tidbits about UM’s opponents don’t see the light of day during a game broadcast. That just seems shortsighted to me and I’ve always believed, if they were marketed effectively, enough copies could be sold to the public to pay for the publication.
The little things about your institution or your players are the things people find interesting when listening or watching a game and might well influence a prospective student to consider your institution as their college of choice.
When all these cuts are being made, does adding new sports make economic sense?
I still don’t have an answer to that.