Au revoir, UW Swimming

On Friday, May 1st, the sport nearest and dearest to my heart, college swimming, took another step in its steady march to extinction when the University of Washington cut both its teams, citing budgetary concerns in this troubled economic climate. Said UW Athletic Director Scott Woodward, “…it was imperative to help fix the long-term financial picture of our department.” The cuts came despite the women finishing 15th and the men 16th at this year’s respective NCAA championships. That’s the highest finish for any Husky men’s squad so far this year, and 2nd highest for the women (the XC team having won it all). Does Woodward have any idea how impressive that achievement was? The NCAAs are the 3rd fastest meets in the sport (and fastest of any conducted annually), behind only the world championships and Olympics. Woodward cited the fact that the Huskies have only a 6 lane pool, with no diving capability, to train and host dual meets in, but obviously that hasn’t stopped Head Coach Whitney Hite’s squads from quickly rising up the PAC-10 and national rankings to prominence. Why, then, did they find themselves on the chopping block? Woodward has probably been thanked by the Rector already for “saving” the university $1.2 million annually. But was this cut really necessary? UW has sunk millions upon millions into renovating Husky Stadium, ostensibly to lure better recruits in. Yeah, I can see how the perfect stadium really needed improvements…

Supposedly they need to make “safety upgrades.” Fine. But why are $350 million in “additional improvements” necessary? No doubt they include XBOXes in every locker.

I attend the University of South Carolina. The football facilities here are, to be blunt, ugly as hell. I know because I live next door to them. They sit in the middle of a multi-square-mile industrial complex. It’s hot as hell much of the school year. Yet Steve Spurrier somehow manages to bring in highly-regarded recruiting classes year after year (then manages to make them worse, but more on that come August). Here’s an idea, UW: Win A SINGLE GAME and maybe more recruits will start to show up.

Perhaps saddest of all is the total lack of sympathy from the entire UW community. Obviously these are hard economic times for all, but the comments following a Seattle Times op-ed column by Steve Kelly border on the gleeful. “At the end of the day if you cant [sic] pay your way you should be cut. The swimming program brings no revenue into the University,” writes ‘setht.’ Well, Seth, I guess that will leave the Huskies with two teams, Men’s Basketball and Football.
Because that’s the dirty little secret of college sports: On the whole, they aren’t terribly profitable. Yes, there’s enormous money to be made in those two sports. But the fact of the matter is that those sports also piss away money like it’s going out of style. Think about it - $350 million! That is an enormous sum of Washington taxpayer money to throw at a stadium that is used, essentially, 7 times a year.

I know everybody loves college football and basketball, but aren’t things a little out of hand? Are college athletics supposed to be all about the almighty dollar? Evidently. Yet there was a time where universities sponsored sports because they believed in the principle of mens sana in corpora sano: A sound mind in a sound body. The athletes were supposed to be, hello, students! They didn’t just represent the university; they were representative of the student body. But now the tail is wagging the dog. University presidents have to make dealing with sports, which should be the smallest of their concerns, their top priority far too often. Why? Because while the educational value provided to students at our institutions of higher learning continues to go down the drain, that issue doesn’t rile up the average American like whether or not “we” are going to beat “them” in the rivalry game come late November, and go to an over-commercialized, non-prestigious bowl game.

Of course, in the state of Washington, the only game that matters is that rivalry game, the annual Apple Bowl between UW and WSU. This past year, the main reason it mattered more than any other game is because both teams were winless going in – each school was the only opponent the other had a chance of beating. This is what the AD is paid to preserve: A team so awful that it can’t win a game. Yet two teams with some of the most dedicated athletes you will ever see, training in less-than-ideal circumstances and without the support of their own department, each made the top 20 in one of the most challenging sports. Then they found themselves cut because they’re “non-revenue.”

The sad truth is that this will never stop, because our sports culture becomes more narrowly focused each and every year. Hell, if the NBA is struggling to retain its market share, what chance does any sport other than pro and college football have? Are we going to start to care when China beats the pants off of us in the Summer Olympics each and every time, because we only encourage our athletes to go to the gridiron? Probably not.

Each fall, the cycle will continue: Alums will throw ridiculous amounts of money at a football team that has only a 50% shot of winning each game, most of them will fail to meet expectations, a lot of coaches will get bought out of their bloated contracts and somebody else will get hired as the new highest-paid-employee of the state. And each year, dozens and dozens of non-revenue teams in swimming, wrestling, crew, etc. will be cut because the budget just can’t tolerate them.

I know that this isn't a hot-button issue for most sports fans. Simply put, most of us agree with 'setht' in Seattle. We don't, on the whole, care what happens to the "lesser" sports so long as our 7 annual Saturday bacchanals are preserved. But we should care. We shouldn't let our love of a few particular sports contribute, nay, lead to the inevitable downfall of all the others. We should reel back in the reigns of college athletic departments, get them under control and put the focus back on education rather than the "beer and circus" that most large universities provide to their undergraduates.

Will we ever wake up? Will we ever see that college sports weren’t conceived as a fundraising mechanism? Will we ever go back to the days in which teams were supported because they brought pride to the university, pride in their reaching the top echelon in their sport? Or will we just keep on letting the tail wag the dog? You know and I know that the answer is the latter.

But hey, look on the bright side! The college football preview magazines should be coming out pretty soon…