After the most recent home wrestling meet against Cal State Bakersfield, I waited for almost a half hour in the McArthur Court media room to talk with head coach Chuck Kearney and some of the wrestlers. Wondering why I was waiting so long, I peeked my head out and saw that the team was actually taking the mats back down into the basement. I was surprised. Surely the athletic department’s facilities people take care of that as part of setting the arena up, right?
That the athletes – fresh off a meet and done cleaning up after themselves – made time to come and talk to me is a testament to their character.
Those who do not know history are only doomed to repeat it. And it’s only appropriate that, as one athletic department mistake is corrected by the addition of baseball, Oregon is committing the exact same error by removing wrestling. It’s not the fault of baseball fans or supporters; the onus lies solely in the Casanova Center.
The last time the University cut a major men’s sport was when baseball – the first intercollegiate sport at Oregon – was removed in 1981. Looking through the Emerald archives last summer for articles about baseball’s final days in 1981, I found that the athletic department came across as hurried to ingloriously dismiss baseball with as little fanfare as possible.
Sound familiar? The athletic department has cited lack of competition as a reason to cut wrestling, and the fact that it isn’t exactly a sport that attracts a huge following to home meets at McArthur Court.
That doesn’t matter. If home crowds and revenue generation were the true measuring stick of a sport’s worth, then only football and men’s basketball would survive the axe, as they are the only two sports at Oregon that come close to breaking even. Keep in mind that the athletic department runs a budget in the area north of $45 million per year, while the wrestling team, according to Pat Kilkenny’s own estimations, requires $650,000 for a season.
Considering the size of the budget – and the $100 million war chest funded by Phil and Penny Knight – somebody should be able to scrounge for quarters and put together a budget, right?
Especially for a team like the wrestling team. For a team that, despite having its head in the guillotine since July, has pushed through with a strong season. For a team that, despite having a disproportionate number of underclassmen, could send a number of athletes to the NCAA Championships in March and currently has five athletes ranked in the top five of their weight class in the Pacific-10 Conference. For a team lead by Kearney, who tries not only to mold athletes, but create better citizens and representatives of the University of Oregon.
Oregon made a tough choice in 1981 when it was forced to cut baseball due to Title IX. But this is a completely different era, both for NCAA sports and the University’s athletic department. In 1981, Oregon lacked the funds to add women’s sports without cutting somewhere; in 2008, they have a yearly budget of more than $45 million and a $100 million financial backstop.
$100 million can certainly build and fund a lot. Why can’t the University have baseball and wrestling while adding another women’s sport? How can they argue that it’s financially untenable while sitting on $100 million?
Oregon wrestling deserves better.
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