After battling against an accumulating debt, the athletics department has hit a breaking point, reporting that it is several hundred thousands in debt.
The deficit in the department’s operating budget is now considered severe after the department reported falling approximately $275,000 in the red during the 2004-05 fiscal year, according to Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Joseph W. Watson.
The gap between revenues and expenses can be linked to many factors, including the increased expenses the department faced after moving from NCAA Division III to Division II, according to Watson.
“At the national level, the difference [between the costs] is about $2 million,” Watson said. “Of course the cost for a particular program varies with a number of factors … schedule and travel costs, size of the program, mix of teams, local cost of living, etc.”
Watson also said that additional financial strains lie in NCAA and California Collegiate Athletic Association requirements, budget reductions, lack of inflation adjustments and slower-than-anticipated growth in revenues.
The NCAA and CCAA charge regular and postseason travel costs, conference dues, regulatory compliance and reporting costs, along with the recent requirement mandating athletic scholarships — the motivation behind Watson’s grant-in-aid proposal, which would give each student athlete a $500 scholarship. The proposal is currently under Academic Senate review.
Both the student affairs and athletics departments also admit that UCSD intercollegiate athletics began as an underfunded Division-III program and, in spite of budget increases, the challenge is still very evident at the Division-II level. Due to initially inadequate revenues for the size and nature of UCSD’s program, the cost adjustments for inflation did not keep up with the increased expenses the department faced, according to Watson.
The athletics department has a $2.6 million budget for 23 sports, whereas other Division-II schools average $2.3 million for 13 sports, according to Director of Athletics Earl W. Edwards.
While athletic programs have been functioning minimally within financial constraints, budget cuts have caused even more problems for the department. In the 2003-04 fiscal year, state funding of registration-fee supported services — such as athletics — dropped by 20 percent.
“Several offices with the potential to raise gift funds, including [athletics], were assigned 30-percent budget reductions in order to minimize budget [cuts] on other student services,” Watson said.
That year brought a one-time cut of $200,000 to the department, on top of the $300,000 in required annual NCAA fees.
“It obviously impacted us quite a bit in the negative way in terms of what we could and could not do,” Edwards said.
Insufficient funds also mean less competitive sports teams, according to Edwards.
“We don’t have the funding to play all the teams in the conference,” Edwards said. “UCSD teams have to raise their own money to play the top-ranked teams. If they don’t play those teams, there is a stronger possibility not to be selected [for] postseason.”
The athletic department’s debt also results in lower staff and coaching salaries compared to UCSD’s Division-II counterparts, according to Associate Director of Athletics Ken Grosse.
“University staff [members] are your best salespeople,” Grosse said. “The people that should be your best salespeople are becoming negatives instead of positives and that lack of passion among the staff permeates to students.”
Along with the impact to university staff, the debt also affects students, funneling funds away from other student-life activities, which are also funded by the student affairs office, according to A.S. President Christopher Sweeten.
Nevertheless, Watson said that the student affairs department has committed to providing athletics with temporary funds for the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years in order to avoid budget reductions that would adversely affect athletes or program competitiveness.
In addition, a program review will be conducted this year that will provide several options for a long-term solution to the deficit.
Readers can contact Serena Renner at [email protected].
