Wright State University Cuts Swimming as Cost-Cutting Measure

????

It’s always swimming!!! ?

Oh boy

To announce this now and say they can transfer”without penalty” is a joke. All the scholarship money is gone at other schools! This is a disgrace!

If the schools want to cut costs, they should cut football. It’s the most expensive sport and despite what the athletic directors may say, very few colleges actually make a profit on that sport.

Read about this school. It’s having some real issues. Poor kids.

Sad to see the loss of ANY athletic program. One must ask why athletic programs exist in the first place if they are such a drain on university budgets. Perhaps costs and expenditures in other areas have risen disproportionately? Granted, WSU has been facing budget issues for the past several years, but cutting an entire program at a university again?

From a July 15, 2016 article in the Dayton Daily News, which is hardly surprising:

“The practice of subsidizing college athletics through student fees or general funds is not unusual. In fact, Ohio State is the only self-supporting university in the state — and one of just two-dozen across the nation — that operates without subsidies, according to a USA Today database of athletic finances at public universities.”

So, what’s the solution for intercollegiate athletic programs? The trend seems to be externally-funded endowments to fund the program needs in perpetuity, such as has been initiated for swimming and diving at The University of Texas and other institutions.

Citing needs to trim budgets by cutting entire programs instead of scaling back across the board seems rather drastic. I looked at Nebraska’s athletic program budget when it cut men’s swimming in 2001. They reported at the time they needed to save 1.3% from the athletic budget. So instead of perhaps trimming 1.3% across all budgets, they cut men’s swimming. I railed about it in the NISCA Journal at the time, and it still astounds me that the decision was made to kill an entire program instead of asking everyone to tighten their belts a little. And the “savings” seemed to be distributed in increased salaries to the (guess what?) football and basketball programs. Budget-tightening, indeed.

Sad for all the young men at WSU, North Dakota, and Buffalo. Sad indeed. What’s sadder is that more will follow because of all the precedents.

Well, it -seems- that the excuse of needing to trim budgets as a rationale for dropping a program doesn’t ring as very honest. WSU claimed it needed to save money and would realize a $500k savings by dropping swimming and diving. But then they turn around and increase the athletic budget by $1.6M. Something is fishy in Denmark, and it isn’t herring.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/sports-casualty-wright-state-cuts-swimming-diving-programs/ka7JEhUxjc9neahpqhS2lM/