With that much area under C-USA’s belt, the member schools are faced with the dilemma of paying for its teams to travel, literally, all over the country. Gas prices have been a hindrance to most, if not all, colleges travel expenses, but the sheer distance the teams have to travel sets C-USA apart.
The Dallas Morning News recently ran a story on C-USA’s financial concerns, highlighting some of the steps the Irvin, Texas based conference has taken or plans to take in order to curtail some of the expenses. According to the article, some C-USA schools have done things such as freeze hiring in athletic departments. Another move made by C-USA was to cut the number of players that travel to away football games from 70 to 66.
C-USA commissioner Britton Banowsky told the DMN that the cuts C-USA would have to make would be some of the most significant in college sports to date.
“Our universities are challenged; they have to work harder to stay competitive,” Banowsky told the DMN. “If you really compare how well some of them do, it’s remarkable.”
The Ultimate Sports Insider blog details some of the steps C-USA is taking to cut costs. These steps include combining the men and women’s basketball tournaments in the same city (Tulsa, Okla., in 2010), having divisional play in basketball and reducing the number of teams that qualify for the conference’s post-season tournaments (men and women’s soccer, baseball, softball and volleyball). One drastic measure mentioned in the blog is the possibility of eliminating the volleyball tournament.
Michael Cross is the owner of the Ultimate Sports Insider blog and is the Executive Associate Director of Athletics at Princeton University. Cross said the current economy has many universities, including those in the Ivy League, having budgetary concerns in athletics.
“There are different things at play. Declining ticket sales, declining donor participation, declining sponsorship revenue – all those things are down largely because of the economy.” Cross said. “As a result people are trying to figure out how they can fund the things they had previously funded. The Ivy League is not immune to that.”
Cross said he thinks the gas prices have some impact, but are not the main cause of the problems.
“Fuel prices are higher, so that is going to increase the cost somewhat,” Cross said. “I think the reduction of travel squads is more a reflection of fewer airplane seats, fewer meals and fewer hotel rooms as opposed to fuel costs.”
Conference-wide budget cuts aside; the question of what Marshall is doing still remains.
David Steele is Marshall’s Associate Director of Athletics for Administration and Business. Steele said scheduling plays a big role in Marshall’s athletic budget concerns.
“Non-conference scheduling is something we are definitely looking at,” Steele said. “It’s our philosophy to schedule as many non-conference games with regional competition when that’s feasible.”
That philosophy is reflected in Marshall’s football schedule for the 2009 season. Marshall will play at West Virginia and Virginia Tech. Both trips will be made by bus, reducing the number of games the team has to travel to by airplane. Marshall has also recently played a series of games against the University of Cincinnati and has a deal in place to being playing Ohio University from nearby Athens, Ohio (approximately 80 miles from Huntington according to Google Maps) in 2010.
“In cases where we might have flown in the past we’re looking at it to see if it’s possible to bus,” Steele said. “This is something that everybody is doing nationally, and we are no different.”
According to a June 1 article in the Orlando Sentinel, another C-USA school, the University of Central Florida, is looking at the possibility of playing more games against in-state competition. UCF is in a unique position to be able to do that with the sheer number of NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision teams that call the state of Florida home (7). Other C-USA schools like Marshall (two FBS schools in West Virginia) or Southern Miss (three FBS schools in Mississippi) do not have that option.
Steele said he does not think C-USA is at a competitive disadvantage compared to the larger conferences, the Southeastern Conference and the Big XII specifically, even though the universities in those conferences have much larger athletic budgets and make more money from television revenue and the Bowl Championship Series than schools in C-USA and the Mountain West Conference.
“Regardless of the size (of the conference), we are all facing challenges,” Steele said. “We all want to fund the programs at a level that will keep us competitive. The larger schools from the BCS conferences might have more room to make adjustments, but every conference is unique in its own right. We are all facing challenges and looking at different ways to operate.”
Numerous attempts to find out Marshall’s athletic budget too see exactly what the university was/is spending on athletic travel failed.
The issue of moving entire teams across the country and paying for it, not just gas prices specifically, is what has colleges concerned.
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