Many great points are made here and the whole thing about the money spent per athlete increasing being a GOOD THING is entirely bogus. The point was to free up money so that they wouldn't be as in the red. That means the money should not go to the athletes. That means they should stay at $67k per athlete and bring themselves out of the red. Wasn't that the whole point?
It's a bit of a disgrace that the women's basketball team operates at such a net loss. The reason why is obvious: the coaching salaries. The sport loses $1.7 million one year while the coaching salaries account for $700k? Wow. And this is a sport losing $1.7 million just so 10 athletes can play. What about the 166 athletes being cut to free up almost the same amount of money? Incredible!
I would think the fair thing would be to tell every team that they need to resubmit new budgets to make themselves more sustainable. Likely every team would reduce travel costs, unnecessary equipment, and other things that would make them more affordable. It'd be a worthwhile thing across the board. How can you cut cross country -- a sport that costs almost nothing -- without at least giving them a chance to prove it won't cost a dime to keep them on?
So why does cross country cost anything? UMD runners aren't going anywhere fast, so it's not like they need crazy airfare to attend important meets. Coaching salaries are likely the biggest necessary expense. I feel bad for the coaches, but the sport can be kept even if it means practically eliminating the position as a salaried one. Plenty of D3 schools do it. Maryland should be doing everything possible to keep the sport available for students wanting to do it and the Maryland athletic department should find more creative (and legal) ways to help the coaches without them putting the school in debt with salaries.
I'm a graduate of UMD and went their when their Campus Recreation Center was new. The idea of eliminating their swimming and diving teams while having such a beautiful facility is mindboggling to me.
Remember 2001-2005 when the football team was massively popular and profitable? Why was it so profitable? Because they weren't blowing so much money on it year after year when their success began. Like another poster said, they acted like throwing money at it would generate more money. Really they just reduced their profit. They added crappy bleacher seats and useless boxes to the stadium. It was like a moment of panic that they suddenly needed to have a stadium the size of Michigan's just because of a few successful seasons; the success went straight to their brains.
I'm not going to hate on football. If they play their cards right, a profitable football team is what will save all the other athletics at the school. But they need to remember that athletics aren't just about profit, they're about enhancing the breadth of what a student can experience at the flagship university in the state. They're on the verge of forcing the school to have to become a football school when most of its student athletes remember it for different sports.
I'm concerned that there is very little we can do about it at this point. The committee came up with a report that does not make good business sense and did not seem to be going for a solution in the best interest of the several athletic programs. It looks more like they pursued ways to allow the football team to flounder and women's basketball to keep bleeding money.
If you're a Terrapin athlete on the chopping block, it has to hurt this year particularly knowing that millions went towards buying off Friedgen and hiring Edsall. The coaching decisions alone leading to their 2-8 season could have kept 166 students going for another year.