Alabama football. KU basketball. Texas A&M track and field. FOR THE BIGWIG schools, sports are a lucrative business. K-State’s Bill Snyder has a five-year contract worth $14.75 million. KU’s Bill Self brings down $4.7 million a year. No doubt, they’ll both bring many times more than that to university coffers.
These athletic programs are a big part of their university’s identities, and as such provide a windfall of profits.
Most colleges, however, don’t reap much benefit from their sports programs and in fact, athletic offerings are a drain on their budgets. Increasingly, institutions of higher education are culling specific sports from their athletic programs. In the past 10 years, nine Division I universities and colleges have dropped their football programs. It was in 1986, that Wichita State University dropped football.
More and more, colleges are taking critical looks at their entire athletics departments and whether they are worth retaining.
Such is with Spellman College, an all-women’s Division III college outside of Atlanta. Next week will be the last for its tennis program when it competes at the Great South Athletic Conference tournament.
After that, the college will direct its $900,000 athletic budget elsewhere.
Part of the reasoning for the departure was the disproportionate amount of students who benefited from the sports programs. At Spellman, only 80 of 2,100 students participated in collegiate sports, resulting in a big investment per athlete as compared to their fellow students.
Another factor, maybe not as much at Spellman, but certainly at Division I schools, is the public outcry about the lower academic standards allowed for athletes. At the heart of that debate is athletes are given special preference to admission. Average SAT scores for student athletes at major universities are about 200 points below those of nonathletes.
Helping Spellman administrators make the decision were the departures of other schools from the Great South conference, meaning Spellman athletes would have to travel farther distances for competitions, not to mention adding additional sports to its offerings. Spellman’s antiquated facilities also would require major cash infusions to come up to par.
Perhaps the tipping point was the administration’s realization that it was not serving its student body and its health care needs. As a historically all-black female college, Spellman alumnae were witnessing an alarming rate of early deaths due to diabetes, heart disease and other ailments linked to poor diet and lack of exercise. As an institution of higher learning, Spellman was failing at teaching its students how to live in a healthy manner.
Its former NCAA-sanctioned gym, courts and fields were turned into venues for wellness programs that all students could enjoy. Fitness and intramural programs are taking a higher priority and lifelong activities such as golf, swimming, tennis, yoga and Pilates are being taught.
All these programs are far and away less expensive to provide, as well as reach a wider audience.
The savings from disbanding its athletic program may even trickle down to the classroom. But let’s not get carried away.
But for the smaller fry, perhaps it’s time to rethink athletic departments and their true benefit to higher education.
— Susan Lynn
Spellman puts fitness above sports program
