Saturday, December 17, 2011

$PORT$ $PENDING $TORIE$

$everal stories involving spending and sports:

The two grand spending money plan might be dumped by the NCAA. Read more here.

The new rule allowing Division I institutions to give some student-athletes an additional $2,000 miscellaneous expense allowance has been suspended until the Board of Directors convenes in January.

As of Dec. 15, enough schools – 125 – have called for an override of the legislation to prompt the automatic suspension under NCAA bylaws.

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Rutgers Athletics has been an easy target in recent years. They dumped several sports - including men's swimming - a while back, then went on a wild spending spree to keep up with the Joneses in the football world. How's that been workout out? Read more here.

Despite winning on the field this year, Rutgers football and its broader athletic program are among the biggest money losers in the nation, a Star-Ledger analysis shows, and the situation may be getting worse. The shortfall last year forced the university to divert millions of dollars from student fees, tuition and state tax dollars to cover the $64.2 million it spent to run its 24-sport athletic program, records reveal.

You mean football - a so-called "revenue" sport - didn't bring in enough to cover the costs of all those non-revenue sports? They didn't bring in enough to cover even the football expenses? Doesn't that make Rutgers football like almost all football programs? Isn't football actually an "expenditure" sport?

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Hoping to save men's track at Maryland? It's really going to be an uphill battle, fans. You'll need to raise enough to fund eight years of men's track plus eight years of a comparable women's squad. Read more here.

The University of Maryland's continued compliance with the non-negotiable requirements of the federal Title IX law prohibits the ability to make this guarantee. In order to save a men's program, we must also reach the fund raising goal for a women's program with similar squad size and scholarship commitments.

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ESPN and the NCAA agreed to extend their championships agreement through 2024. Read more here.

ESPN is adding coverage of seven NCAA championships: National Collegiate women’s gymnastics, National Collegiate men’s and women’s fencing, Division I women’s lacrosse, Division I men’s and women’s outdoor track & field and National Collegiate women’s bowling (previously sublicensed). ESPN will also air additional preliminary round coverage of selected NCAA championships including Division I football (FCS), Division I women’s volleyball, Division I softball and Division I baseball.

At the rate NCAA members are dumping men's sports, do they actually think there'll even be men's fencing and track championships in 2024? If men's swimming is still around, you'll probably have to set your alarm for 3:00 a.m. to watch the meet. They'll sandwich it in between World's Strongest Man and Cheap Seats...

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Next up? Delaware men's track and cross country. One reason being given for the dumping of the program is Title IX. The problem there? The university doesn't have a Title IX problem!

Another "problem" Delaware claims is money. As is often the case when A.D.'s want to drop a sport, Delaware inflated the cost of supporting the program while ignoring revenue generated by the teams. Read more here.

When there was a men’s indoor track program, expenses for the men’s outdoor track and field team were reported as $110,932. Miraculously, the next year, when there was no men’s indoor track and field, the expenses for the outdoor team exploded to $277,967. How in the wide world of sports that happened, we’d have to ask Dr. Muir and his crack accounting team, but they’re not talking.

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