The decision by the California State University system to do most classes in the fall online sent a shiver down my spine. Through all of this disruption, like many people I was holding out some optimism that the disruption to colleges would be a spring-summer phenomenon. Now it wouldn’t surprise me if many follow California’s suit.
College swimming, especially Men’s college swimming, was already in a precarious position. In many athletic departments, even Division 1 programs, teams were understaffed, coaches were underpaid and scholarships were underfunded. Many athletic directors judged their swimming and diving programs with absolutely no skin in the game.
Basically, if the programs did everything right and the student athletes did excellent in school, were model citizens and performed well, they might get to continue on. Make a mistake on any one of those and it could easily be a used as pretext for snipping swimming away.
Or a school could just decide they need to throw 10% more into paying their football or basketball coach to gamble on some more revenue. Such is life. Now things get even more complicated
Higher Education Bubble
I have long believed there is a higher education bubble. When I attended a private, overly expensive liberal arts college from 2002-2006, the yearly cost of attendance was around $40-45k. Now that cost has ballooned to over $70k.
This tracks across the board in the US higher education system. Setting aside the political discussion of how we got there, to me it’s really simple. If someone asked me if it was worth it to send their kid to my alma mater, I would say ABSOLUTELY NOT, at that cost.
The reason why is despite ballooning costs and fundraising campaigns that have left rich schools sitting on unimaginable wealth, very little of that has found its way to the average person involved in the school. Your average person who is actually teaching students is poorly paid. Your average student gains little to nothing educationally from ridiculous amenities in a student center or nicer dorms.
At some point, I do think there will be a tipping point in colleges where the rapidly rising costs meets economic doom of the dwindling middle class of America. That time could be now.
Athletics follows
Why do universities have athletic teams in the first place? Again, there are a lot of things about the US higher education system that don’t exist in most of the rest of the first world. Because American universities and colleges operate mostly as silly non-profits, they need to market themselves in order to make themselves attractive to prospective students.
Sports teams can serve this purpose. Think about whether or not you ever would have heard of Austin Peay had they not made the NCAA Basketball tournament. Over time, however, it became not enough to “represent the school”. There was money to be made, particularly on football and basketball.
I don’t particularly blame athletic directors for chasing football and basketball revenue. Having a well performing, revenue generating team in one of those sports is probably one of the best ways to advance your career as an athletic director.
What it means though is that for a long time swimming has been incongruent to the actual value that many schools place on their athletic departments. They’ve been a “nice to have” thing on campus in the eyes of many.
And they’re about to have way less funding to apply to “nice to have” things.
Not All Hope is Lost
I don’t expect a complete apocalypse for college swimming, particularly at the D3 level where the core mission is still pretty close to the origins of college sports. But a major decline in D1 and D2 is very possible.
Many programs survival will hinge in the near future on their ability to balance both advocating for their program and delivering a great experience on a lower budget. Especially in Division 1 budgets that I’ve seen there are lots of opportunity for cutting costs.
I’ll go into greater depth in another post, but here is a short list of things I would stop spending any money on immediately if they were existing parts of my budget:
Training trips.
Silly equipment
Doubles (I know what you’re thinking, this one is a bit more of a second order cost than an actual line item)
Anybody on your staff that lacks the creativity to do more with less (and I’m NOT talking about compensation here. I would rather have a decent assistant coach making 40k on limited hours because that pay still sucks than a couple of overworked and not capable cheaper coaches).
Unfortunately, the sport of swimming and academia writ large has for a long time had the worst elements insulated from the consequences of their poor decisions and the best elements mostly unrewarded for their good, hard work. If there’s any silver lining in a blow up, its that those circumstances may change.