A University of Maryland commission charged with finding solutions to the abysmal financial situation of the school's athletic department issued a report Sunday that suggested eliminating at least eight teams. The report caused dismay among the 166 student-athletes who comprise those teams, but it should hardly have been unexpected given the department's projected $4.7 million deficit this year and its embarrassing inability to finance itself last year without borrowing $1.2 million from the university's auxiliary fund.
Yet athletic departments should not have to resort to such drastic downsizing to bring their budgets into line. Rather, they should be smart with their spending during the good times when their revenue teams are successful and the economy is buoyant enough to allow for a steady stream of private donations. This will allow them to maintain a solid slate of non-revenue sports without having to siphon off resources from their universities' core academic functions. The University is a model of how to achieve this balance, but it too must be wary of overextending itself in terms of the resources it devotes to athletics as it strives to compete at a high level both in the Atlantic Coast Conference and nationally.
Maryland and the University face many of the same challenges in working toward the goal of athletic success. Both are public institutions prohibited from using state funds to support their athletic programs. Moreover, they are members of an intensely competitive conference, the ACC, which consistently produces national title contenders not only in football and basketball but also in non-revenue sports such as soccer and lacrosse. These factors make it difficult for the universities to maintain high-quality athletics without either sacrificing the diversity of their offerings or drawing money from sources other than ticket sales, tournament revenues and television contracts.
Whereas Maryland's athletic department recently has been forced to seek institutional revenues for the purpose of sustaining itself, the University has managed to avoid a similar situation through exceptionally strong fundraising. The University's athletic department received $33,975,775 in private contributions during the 2009-10 academic year, according to USA Today's College Athletics Finance Database. This was substantially more than Maryland, which only raised $9,942,684, and it even outpaced other peer institutions with strong athletic programs such as the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan.
Even more impressive is the fact that the private contributions received by the University have gone to benefit a variety of athletic offerings. For example, University alumna Amy Mitchell Griffin donated $5 million last spring for the construction of a new track and field facility. Although not as attention-grabbing as some of the monumental donations that have gone to the University's revenue athletic programs in the past, Mitchell's contribution represents exactly what the athletic department needs. In the absence of direct institutional support or state funding for athletics, private funds earmarked for non-revenue sports are crucial to maintaining a broad selection of athletic offerings while reducing the need for student fee hikes to fill gaps in the athletic department's budget.
The University has taken the right approach to athletics in recent years, but it must view the experience of its northern neighbor as a lesson. With signs pointing to a revival of the University's football and men's basketball teams, there will be pressure in future years to increase spending on those programs to maintain their success. The athletic department will hopefully be able to do so with additional revenue from tournaments and bowl games, but it must remember that its first priority should be providing a balanced assortment of athletic programs that cater to a variety of University students. More importantly, the athletic department should remain cognizant of the fact that if it fails to live within its means it should not expect a bailout from students or the administration at a time when both are coping with additional costs related to the University's core function of education.
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