Power to the People

When the pandemic hit, college sports were obviously heavily impacted.  Schools shutting down meant no athletics, effective immediately.  Most significantly, that meant the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA Basketball Tournament, which is their biggest source of revenue.  That NCAA then distributes that money among its members, so that left a number of athletic departments with a major shortfall in their budgets.

This is all (fairly) common knowledge, so why am I bringing it up?  Because those schools had to find ways to make up the difference.  Some did it through furloughs or layoffs and voluntary pay reductions.  But others did something more drastic.  They announced that they were dropping sports entirely.  And not just mid-majors.  We're talking about big-time Power 5 schools!

Stanford dropped 11 sports.  So did Brown.  William & Mary cut seven.  Dartmouth dropped five.  Iowa and UConn both dropped four.  Clemson eliminated three sports but only one program.  It was a big one, though...men's track & field.  According to this tracker, it's a total of 110 sports at 35 Division I schools that were cut during the pandemic.  (That doesn't include the University of Hartford, which recently announced that its dropping its entire athletic program to Division III.)

To be fair, not all of these were pandemic-related decisions.  Some were the result of years-long feasibility studies that determined it was the best course for the athletic department moving forward.  Nevertheless, the number of teams and the number of major schools involved was staggering.

It's also worth noting which sports.  None of the revenue-producers that often have the highest budgets.  Instead, it was the sports that are generally less expensive and have smaller teams.  Tennis was the biggest casualty, with 15 men's and 10 women's programs dropped.  There were also a good number of golf, swimming & diving and track & field teams.  Not surprisingly, it was disproportionately men's teams (Title IX still had to be considered).

Anytime a school drops sports, there's going to be the inevitable backlash.  You'll have the angry and disappointed alumni, supporters, parents and, of course, people on the team.  These groups are sometimes given the chance to fundraise in hopes of keeping the program alive, but, more often than not, those decisions are final.

Perhaps the best example of a successful fundraising campaign that saved a program was Cal baseball.  The 119-year-old team was supposed to be eliminated after the 2011 season.  Over the next nine months, more than $10 million in donations to save the program led the school to reverse its decision.  And, to give that story the ultimate happy ending, Cal advanced to the College World Series that year!  Ten years later, Cal baseball is still thriving.

The same thing happened at Bowling Green.  Their baseball team was one of the first pandemic-related cuts last May.  Less than three weeks later, the program was reinstated after alumni and donors raised $1.5 million, which is enough to keep it going for at least three years while they look for a long-term solution.

Throughout the course of this year, we saw plenty of the impacted teams react to their schools' decisions in different ways.  They wanted more immediate action than simply the time to fundraise.  Some demanded meetings with the president or the chance to see the exact financials.  The women's track team at William & Mary took it a step further.  They refused to compete until the men's team was reinstated.  The softball team at Hartford, meanwhile, blacked out the school's name on their uniforms in a picture that has gone viral.

Others have taken their battle to a different kind of court.  There have been numerous lawsuits filed on behalf of numerous teams asking to block or delay the moves.  Michigan State women's swimming and UConn women's rowing are seeking reinstatement based on Title IX grounds.  Both are currently pending.

Here's the crazy thing about some of those the protests, though: they worked!  They achieved their goal.  They forced school presidents and boards to listen to them.  They forced them to open their books and explain the financial motivation for these moves.  That allowed them to successfully prove their counterpoints.  The money being "saved" is nothing in comparison to the amount being spent on other teams or could be trimmed elsewhere.  For the programs with no or few scholarships, there's also the money that the school stood to lose by having these potential tuition-paying students choose to go somewhere else instead.

As a result, we've seen something remarkable happen!  Nine different schools have reinstated 35 sports.  Four of them have backtracked on their decision entirely!  The Clemson men's track team was saved.  So were all five teams set to be cut by Dartmouth.  And all seven at William & Mary.  And, perhaps most significantly, all 11 at Stanford.

What this shows, to me, is that cutting sports is not always the answer to financial troubles.  I applaud the groups that led the fundraising efforts to get these programs reinstated.  I also applaud the administrations that realized their decision wasn't necessarily the right one.  That wouldn't have happened if they weren't willing to listen.  It also wouldn't have happened if the supporters of these programs hadn't been so passionate and dedicated.

Unfortunately, not every program that's been cut by every school will be reinstated.  But it's great that so many are.  It shows the power of perseverance.  And it shows how much a team's supporters can make a difference.