In case you missed it, it was quite the sports weekend.
There was the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, where the 50-1 longshot Mine That Bird won in the second-biggest upset in the 135-year history of the race. Not a bad start.
Here in Eugene, there was a soccer game and a volleyball match and a baseball game and the spring football game, all in the span of about five hours Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, the Eugene marathon made its third annual trip around the city.
And it all made you feel good, the busy weekend. But what do we take away from this?
Nothing of the above.
No, unfortunately, the most important thing that happened this weekend was that the University of Washington announced it would cut its men’s and women’s swimming programs to save $1.2 million, less than half of its budget shortfall.
Big-time athletics isn’t exempt from the effects of this recession. Now we have to wonder when – and in the best-case scenario, if – it will affect the Casanova Center.
Let’s hope never. But it very well could.
Stanford recently told its fencing teams it couldn’t keep the sport unless if found other ways of financing itself. Division-I Cincinnati has stopped offering scholarships for men’s track and field, cross country and swimming. All the grisly details about the economy’s effect on major sports were wrapped up in a New York Times article Monday.
Oregon wasn’t mentioned, of course. The school has a relatively small offering of sports, with 15. Washington will offer 19 once it drops its swimming programs.
Stanford, a private university, offers 35 sports, including squash and rowing, sports that surely do not pay for themselves. At Oregon, only football and men’s basketball break even or make a profit, and help give back money to other sports. Television deals with Comcast and a marketing agreement signed last spring with IMG worth $67.14 million over 10 years might have seemed extravagant last year, but it could be a lifeline in the future.
Ditto for Oregon’s core of high-level athletic donors, such as Phil and Penny Knight, and acting athletic director Pat Kilkenny. In a fall 2008 Duck Athletic Fund newsletter, a letter from the Fund’s executive director said there are nearly 9,000 donors in the DAF. The University likes to say its athletic department is completely self-sufficient, but it’s been shown in the media the department needed funds from the Oregon Lottery to stay in the black with its budget last year. How much longer can that continue?
Donors willing to give back to the University in these times are something Oregon State athletic director Bob De Carolis doesn’t just want, he needs.
He wrote in an online ‘AD Report’ two weeks ago that he is trying to double his number of donors from 6,700 to 12,000 in the next four years to help keep all of OSU’s programs afloat. Slashing entire programs could be next if fundraising isn’t successful, because the department has looked at cost-cutting already.
“We’re already at the proverbial bone,” he wrote.
Back at Oregon, there is much-publicized discord between members of the Eugene and University communities and Oregon’s largest donors. We all know that. I’m not here to say one group is right and the other is wrong. That’s all subjective. What is pretty concrete is that when programs get cut, they usually have a very hard time coming back. Look at baseball at Oregon. It took 28 years and a group of three or four extremely impassioned boosters to get it back.
So if Oregon does have to cut programs, it won’t be for the better. Not because those programs could win Oregon national titles, but because it will mean the loss of the scholarships that would keep students in school.
And unfortunately, it could be a question of when, and not if.
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