California College Athletics Feeling Budget Crunch

Ouch.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-college-budget-cuts7-2009aug07,0,3954228,full.story

Some schools are cutting entire sports. So basically, even if some youngsters retain their scholarships, future opportunities to get school paid for may have evaporated.

 

Re: California College Atheltics Feeling Budget Crunch

One thing the NCAA is going to have to do, even with the can of worms it will open, is re-visit the minimum amount of sports it takes to qualify as a Division I school. Many, many schools are at the minimum right now and are swimming in the red.

 

Instead of paying your football coach $4 million, maybe you could take a few hundred thou and try to keep some other sports afloat. As someone far smarter than I once said, "A million here, a million there and before you know it you're talking about real money."

 

UC Irvine doesn't have a football team. And, as the story points out, football and basketball boosts revenue at the larger schools.

There are only two BCS-level public school football programs in California and the football coach at one of them (along with the basketball coach & AD) is voluntarily taking a 10 percent pay cut.

 

How many schools in the country pay their football coach $4 million a year? One? Two? And neither of those schools is in danger of dropping anything.

As has been said, public schools such as UC Santa Barbara, Cal State Fullerton, and Long Beach State dropped football within the past 20 years (so did UOP, St. Mary's, and Santa Clara, but they're private). This isn't about schools overpaying their FB coach. It's about a serious money crunch, and perhaps having to sponsor some sports that no one cares about just to maintain Division I membership.

 

USC is a private school. They can do whatever they please with their money after collecting the exhorbitant tuition.

See, this is what happens when people refer to USC as "Southern Cal," makes it sound like it's affiliated with Cal.

 

Yep, Cal and UCLA are the only BCS public schools in the state.

 

I wasn't referring to any California schools in particular, and I'm guessing institutions in California aren't the only ones facing this kind of financial problem. My one and only point is, when you're in a situation where every dollar counts, act like it.

 

Might this be what forces the Pac-10 to add two more teams and stage a football title game?

 

BYU, Utah and Colorado come to mind. Don't think they could choke down Boise State from an academic standpoint.

 

This is just wrong. Without those coaches they can't afford any other sports. The market sets the value of coaches, not wishful thinking.