Swarbrick: Eliminating Some ND Secondary Sports Under ‘Consideration’
Even while Notre Dame vice president and director of athletics Jack Swarbrick sits alone in his office these days, he still has an endless call-waiting and call-back list of folks incessantly asking for guidance and updates on what the future of Irish sports will look like in the coming months and years.
And to this point, Swarbrick — and no other AD in the country — have any good answers, especially financially.
“I think we’ll come out of this having to look at every element of our budget,” Swarbrick said, “both the revenue and the expense side.”
COVID-19 has disrupted college sports more than any event in American history. And sadly, there’s a growing chance that we ain’t seen nothing yet.
College athletic programs around the country link their livelihoods to the earning power of their football programs.
And with the real possibility of no 2020 football season, a partial 2020 football season, or a football season with no fans or only limited attendance, the revenue trickle-down could leave Olympic sports programs running on financial fumes or completely shuttered if cost-cutting measures are not addressed immediately.
“Out of this, regardless of what this year holds will come a significant need to readdress budgeting issues across colleges and universities,” Swarbrick said Tuesday during a Zoom conference with the media.
What Swarbrick is trying to avoid is completely eliminating any of his secondary sports programs. But again, with the disruption and uncertainty this pandemic is creating, nothing is off the table monetarily at any university.
Notre Dame fields 19 non-revenue sports programs outside of football, men’s and women’s basketball, and ice hockey.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that the reduction in sports [programs] will be the leading edge of cost savings,” Swarbrick said. “But I do think it would be disingenuous not to say that they have to be part of the consideration.”
The recession of 2008-09 forced more than 200 collegiate Olympic sports programs to be eliminated around the country. And no actual events were even canceled during that financial crisis.
“I don’t know whether Notre Dame will have to consider cutting programs,” Swarbrick said, “and I don’t anticipate that happening during the course of this as we try to figure out our way through it right now.”
Adding more uncertainty to these troubling financial times for colleges and universities, USA Today reported that the cancellation of the 2020 men’s and women’s NCAA Basketball Tournaments shrunk the annual profit pie from about $600 million to $225 million for schools to share, a 63 percent reduction from what was projected just two months ago.
That revenue blow caused Swarbrick to warn all of his coaches that times are changing.
Irish head men’s basketball coach Mike Brey said that adopting a different schedule model will be one cost-cutting measure he’ll use this summer when construction begins.
Brey said to expect a more regional look to trim travel costs and there to be fewer of the pricy one-and-done “buy games” on the schedule.
“Are these now home-and-homes, are they bus rides if they are road games? Those are all things that we have been talking about,” Brey said last month. “I’m conscious of this and [Swarbrick] has said to all the coaches in every department that this [pandemic] is greatly going to affect our budget.”
So while trimming travel expense is the driving initiative for cutting costs, scheduling is another measure that will be examined.
Playing schools from Syracuse in the north to Miami in the south as an ACC member makes some travel unavoidable. But smarter scheduling might mean greater savings.
Do league teams sometimes consolidate and coordinate their schedules to meet and play each other at one location rather than traveling back and forth to multiple cities and venues?
“You have more opportunities to travel once and play twice or three times as opposed to traveling from city to city,” Swarbrick explained.
Do regional ACC teams play each other more frequently and cut back on games against the more distant league opponents?
“You could still have a conference championship where the teams from the conference come together and compete,” Swarbrick said.
Whatever the solutions, expect sports at Notre Dame and around the country to look much different this fall and beyond.
“I think there may be even changes made within conferences about how many conference games are required, or what conference postseason tournaments look like, all designed to reduce travel,” Swarbrick said. “And I think that would be a positive development for college athletics.”
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