USU trails WAC financially
The USU athletic program has the lowest operating budget in the Western Athletic Conference and can barely afford the sports it sponsors, said Aggie athletic director Randy Spetman.
“If you look at our position as we head into the WAC, we are lowest program operationally budget-wise,” Spetman said. “We have quite a bit to make up.”
Spetman said the biggest problem USU has is that no program is currently carrying its own weight financially.
“There is no program that supports itself with the money it raises,” he said. “That’s the problem. Normally football raises enough money to pay for most of the other programs. Because the football program hasn’t been successful, we haven’t been able to do that.”
Spetman added that men’s basketball is close to supporting itself, but it still comes up short.
The biggest three club sports, men’s lacrosse, men’s rugby and ice hockey would not be able to generate enough money to support themselves at the intercollegiate level, Spetman said.
“The cost of coaches is the biggest,” he said. “We’d have to pay the coach and all the assistants. We’d probably pay over $50,000 to the coach plus assistant coaches and then we’d have to pay the trainer.”
The other issue with promoting a sport from club to intercollegiate status is gender equity.
“That’s often the problem when you add a men’s sport is that you also have to add a women’s sport,” Spetman said. “That’s where the cost gets high.”
Spetman said if the school started sponsoring men’s lacrosse, for example, it would probably also have to sponsor women’s lacrosse.
Gender equity regulations come from Title IX which was a bill passed by the U.S. Congress in 1972 which prohibited discrimination based on gender. This has translated to sports in the form of equal opportunities for men and women.
Spetman said there are three pillars the NCAA uses to enforce the regulations: the amount of dollars spent, the amount of scholarships available and the ratio of men and women athletes.
“It’s very complicated,” he said. “Right now I think we’re OK.”
Spetman said the school might not have to sponsor another women’s sport if another men’s sport is added.
“We would have to look at the numbers of scholarships on each side,” he said.
Spetman said the biggest problem is not gender equity, but getting enough money to support the sports.
“If I had an infinite budget, I would add more teams,” he said. “I think it would be great if we could support all those sports.”
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu