The University of Utah women's gymnastics program does not pay for itself.
And it's not alone.It loses money despite the fact it's the leading women's collegiate gymnastics program in the country - often getting more than 10,000 people to view its home meets in the Jon M. Huntsman Center.
Still, Utah budgeted $310,000 for gymnastics for the 1991-92 school year and took in about $175,000 from ticket sales and concessions, says Ute athletic director Chris Hill, leaving a $135,000 shortfall.
That example is used to show how tough it is for athletic departments to balance their budgets and why athletic directors are under increasing pressure to be economic wizards.
The only two programs with the potential to produce revenue are football and basketball, and if those programs are shaky, then the whole department is in trouble.
Which explains why sports like track and field for both men and women, and baseball, softball, golf and wrestling are being dropped by universities nationwide in an effort to bring budgets under control.
In May, WAC member San Diego State dropped its men's track team, men's and women's golf teams and wrestling team to cut costs. Then this month it first reduced, then combined the coaching staffs of the men's and women's volleyball teams to save more money. WAC members Wyoming and Colorado State also dropped five programs between them at about the same time.
Using cars as an analogy, there are no gas guzzlers in Utah athletics or anyplace else. They have gone the way of disco. Most are of the compact variety and many are without power windows and/or air conditioning. A few, like Long Beach State, have gone to bicycles, which means things have gotten so bad they've dropped their football program.
Football is like the atom, it can save you or kill you. The potential for revenue is good - providing you put people in the seats and get on television. The expenses are great. Period. For example, in figures provided by the State Board of Regents, out of a total athletic budget of $8.3 million, the University of Utah spends $2.8 million on football or 34 percent of its total budget. Utah State tops that percentage-wise. The Aggies spend $2 million out of a total budget of $3.87 million or 52 percent.
Football scholarships alone at big schools cost from $500,000 to $1 million-plus a year, with that cost rising as the cost of going to school rises.
A major misconception is that football gate receipts pay for the football program and then some. As John McLaughlin of the McLaughlin Group would say, WRONG. "The correct answer is they pay for less than 50 percent."
Using Utah figures again, the gate receipts for all its home athletic events in 1991-92 - and that includes football, basketball and gymnastics - totaled $2.3 million, well under the $2.8 million the football program expends and considerably under the combined $4 million expended by the football and basketball teams.
To increase football revenues, teams can schedule road games with superpowers like Nebraska and Oklahoma (which Utah and Utah State have both done) in exchange for a $200,000 to $300,000 paycheck from both of them. It's like stepping into the ring against Joe Louis in his prime, but the savage beating may well be worth it.
In Utah's case it also gets around $700,000 in television revenues by being a member of the College Football Association (Utah State and the Big West Conference are not members). It also receives about $100,000 as its percentage of Western Athletic Conference bowl-sharing money.
As tuition and other costs go up, so do the expenditures for athletic departments. At Utah, for example, an out of state scholarship for this school year is listed at $12,018, a 62 percent increase over the $7,473 figure in 1985-86. The instate scholarships have increased similarly, from $3,840 in 1985-86 to $6,270 this year.
Getting back to the earlier gymnastics scenario, it cost around $80,000 for the 10 girls on scholarship last season, Hill said. The other $210,000 paid for coaches' salaries, equipment (including uniforms), support staff, rental of facilities, air fare etc. As earlier stated, gate receipts and concessions fell well short of covering those expenses.
Getting some kind of scholarship relief from the state government is something Utah schools are seeking to ease the strain on their athletic budgets. Since the majority of sports do not pay for themselves, state tax monies, student fees, TV and radio monies and booster club funds are needed to keep the athletic departments afloat.
It is difficult to compare figures from the instate schools since they use different budgeting procedures. For example, at Utah, revenues and expenditures have been equal the past six years because when there's a shortfall - like this year (approximately $300,000) - money is taken from a reserve account to balance the books. At Utah State, profits and shortfalls are so noted. The Aggies' revenue exceeded expenditures by $593,218 in 1987-88, while expenditures exceeded revenues by close to that amount in 1986-87. This year's figures show a deficit of $182,409.
Brigham Young University, being a private school, was not included in the statewide figures released by the State Board of Regents, but vice president over athletics R.J. Snow assures us the Cougars are not fat cats. More on that later.
Following, is an interpretation of the state of the various athletic departments based on the State Board of Regents' figures and conversations with various personnel at the respective schools:UTAH - AD Hill would be justified in crying `foul.' While his expenditures have increased from $5.7 million in 1986-87 to $8.3 million this school year, his revenue from state tax funds has actually decreased - from $465,429 in 1986-87 to $458,000 this school year, which is less than 6 percent of his overall budget. Contrast that to the nearly $1 million Utah State receives, more than 25 percent of its $3.7 million budget, and the $1.25 million Weber State receives, more than 30 percent of its $3.3 million budget.
The rationale apparently is that USU, Weber and Southern Utah (which gets almost half - $512,000 - of its $1.06 million budget via state tax funds) don't have the gate receipt or fund-raising capacity the Utes have. Still, it's sort of like cutting Karl Malone's base salary from $3 million to $300,000 with the logic that he can make up the rest with Wheaties and L.A. Gear endorsements.
The Crimson Club provides close to $1 million per year in revenue and the new priority seating plan for basketball is expected to bring in another $200,000 to $300,000.
Hill has the men's basketball program solidly in place with the hiring of Rick Majerus and looks like he's positioned the football team to improve with the hiring of Ron McBride.
The administration adequately funds sports like gymnastics and skiing, which challenge for national championships each year and are therefore high profile, but is hard-pressed to do likewise for baseball, track and field and others.
WHAT UTAH NEEDS TO DO: Increase the size of its football stadium from 35,000 to 50,000 or so. And get to a bowl game. A larger stadium and better football teams will provide considerably more revenue opportunities for a school that really should be big league.UTAH STATE - AD Rod Tueller would be justified in crying, period. A scene from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" describes the Aggies' situation. Butch (played by Paul Newman) and Sundance (played by Robert Redford) are poised on the edge of a cliff with swirling waters 100 feet or so below and a posse to their rear. Newman wonders why Redford won't jump. "I can't swim," Redford says. To which Newman laughingly replies, "The fall will probably kill you."
The Aggies have the most difficult task of all the Utah universities because they're boxed in. They would dearly love to jump out of the box into the Western Athletic Conference, like Fresno State did last year, so that they can grow accordingly and be a major player. But for various reasons, the WAC has ignored them over the years.
To Tueller's credit, he's taken action to protect what he has, pushing for a plan to augment the Big West football program (a consortium including Northern Illinois, Louisiana Tech, Arkansas State and Southwest Louisiana State will compete with current Big West teams beginning in 1993) and to help minor sports (see accompanying story on the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation on page D1). Lack of revenue has resulted in the Aggies dropping women's basketball and wrestling in the last five years.
WHAT UTAH STATE NEEDS: What it really needs is a chance to determine its own destiny, and that's hard to do with the football limitations of the Big West. This is not what Merlin Olsen, Altie Taylor, Eric Hipple and Rulon Jones had in mind. But USU has to deal with the present and not the past. If the future does not get any brighter, really tough decisions regarding the football program will have to be made. Tueller has to walk a tightrope between scheduling games that will provide significant revenue and those that will give the Aggies a significant chance at victory (they haven't had a winning season in over a decade). The basketball team does not have the same restrictions as the football team and its lack of success in recent years is puzzling. With the challenges the football team faces it's imperative that the basketball team has some highly successful seasons. And soon.WEBER STATE - New athletic director Tom Stewart worked at both Utah State and Utah and is therefore familiar with athletic challenges at three instate schools. "There's such a misperception," he says, about how much money ticket sales provide. What isn't a misperception is how the amount at Weber State has dwindled. Gate receipts have gone from $548,000 in 1986-87 to $340,000 this past school year. Stewart is hoping that the exposure quarterback Jamie Martin has received as the Division I-AA Walter Payton Trophy winner will translate to better attendance for this season's games. He's hoping second-year coach Ron Abbeglen starts heading the Wildcats to their prominence of yesteryear on the basketball court.
WHAT WEBER STATE NEEDS TO DO: Jamie Martin notwithstanding, the Wildcats will achieve their most prominence in basketball, as basketball is Division I-A and football is not. Abegglen needs to put the Wildcats in a position to challenge for the Big Sky crown and return to the NCAA tournament. Stewart is trying to find a way for the excitement of the Dick Motta-Phil Johnson-Willie Sojourner days to return to Ogden. A couple of trips to the NCAA tournament will do it.SOUTHERN UTAH - The T-Birds have a modest budget by the standards of the other instate schools but they fight the same battles. The gate receipts of $154,000 pay for less than a quarter of the combined football ($360,000) and men's basketball ($290,000) budgets.
WHAT SOUTHERN UTAH NEEDS TO DO: Continue to push its Division IA basketball program but not try to grow too rapidly in other areas.BRIGHAM YOUNG - The Vision Award goes to BYU athletic director Glen Tuckett. Because of his persistence in thinking big, the Cougars expanded their football stadium from 30,000 to 65,000 in 1982 and put BYU on the college athletic map. BYU is the only school in Utah that can schedule a game with a superpower on its home field. The Cougars have or have had home and home series with Notre Dame, Penn State, Miami and Alabama. Penn State and UCLA come to Provo this year, Notre Dame in 1993 and Alabama in 1995.
So, since BYU fills its stadium for all home games, it's got to be rolling in money, right? If Utah's budget is $8.3 million, then BYU's must be around $15 million. WRONG.
The Cougars' budget is under $10 million and may even be less than Utah's. Different sources indicated that BYU and Utah rank 4-5 in budget dollars - not necessarily in that order - in the WAC, with Air Force, Wyoming and Fresno State being the top three.
Cougar fans fill the stadium but 19,000 of those 65,000 seats are allotted to students at $2 per ticket. Other ticket prices are $8, $11 and $15, Tuckett said.
So, BYU has to be prudent like the other schools and faces similar tough decisions on how to fund its programs.CONCLUSION - Should there be a different approach to funding athletics so that if the football and/or basketball teams go south the whole program isn't torpedoed?
It would seem that should be considered.
Ute gymnastics coach Greg Marsden wasn't happy hearing that his program was $100,000 or so short of paying for itself, but at least it's not going to lose the $500,000 to $1 million annually a struggling football team will. Those are the kind of losses that bring about the elimination of other sports in a department - as is the case at San Diego State, Wyoming and Colorado State, where nine minor sports programs have been scrapped for the coming year.
Winning, of course, seems to do wonders for attendance, but it can exact its own payment.
As Utah's Hill said, "When you put too much pressure on winning to fill the stadium, that's when your program gets in trouble with the NCAA."
BYU's Tuckett passed along this comment from Max Urick, an athletic administrator at Iowa State University: "We're all going broke, it's just a matter of when."
Those comments indicate that a calm, philosophical look at the whole athletic spectrum is needed.
The feeling here, is that what will happen in the short term, anyway, is this statement expressed by Marsden:
"The economy will determine the philosophy."
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(Chart)
Utah
Football $2,852,801
Basketball $1,192,522
Baseball $155,807
Golf $51,752
Swimming $186,863
Tennis $99,747
Track (coed) $135,841
Skiing (coed) $252,807
Basketball $339,245
Volleyball $113,953
Softball $163,376
Swimming $81,461
Gymnastics $310,044
Tennis $73,870
Administration $2,289,843
TOTAL $8,299,932Utah State
Football $2,023,531
Basketball $502,096
Golf $32,930
Tennis $21,459
Track $85,410
Softball $138,076
Volleyball $162,320
Gymnastics $129,529
Track $125,787
Tennis $36,039
Administration $611,259
TOTAL $3,868,436Weber State
Football $888,985
Basketball $460,832
Track $146,171
Golf $78,258
Tennis $70,878
Basketball $200,906
Tennis $72,978
Track $112,656
Volleyball $160,537
Administration $1,140,109
TOTAL $3,332,310Southern Utah
Football $360,214
Basketball $290,768
Baseball $30,135
Golf $18,238
Track (coed) $96,995
Basketball $61,712
Gymnastics $51,781
Softball $57,457
Administration $93,963
TOTAL $1,061,263
Source: State Board of Regents