Link to SI article about possible cuts at Arizona

[nog]

https://www.si.com/college/2023/11/...iders-cutting-sports-teams-amid-240m-shortage

 

[irichluck21]

Ugh I hope WAG is not at risk.
They are consistently in the top 25-30 but have not been able to produce the success of the late 80s -early 90s when the Wildcats were making NCAAs as a team and had a few individual champions.

 

[blake]

Ugh I hope WAG is not at risk.
They are consistently in the top 25-30 but have not been able to produce the success of the late 80s -early 90s when the Wildcats were making NCAAs as a team and had a few individual champions.

They’ve been on an upward trajectory the last few years. I think it was 2017 or 2018 when they had a meltdown 193 score at Pac-12s and of course that meet where they benched enough team members for violating team rules that they couldn’t field 5 on each event.

Malia Hargrove won vault at the Denver regional, and the team finished 21st this year after being seeded into the play-in round. ASU is the 3rd best team in the new Big 12, but I think Arizona is closing the gap, and a top 3 conference placement is much more likely there than in the Pac-12. Fingers crossed they don’t get cut.

 

[cuuf]

Reading the article sounds more like sensational journalism. As someone in academia, you are always going to find someone on faculty, particularly faculty senate who will always say/believe something to the effect of “athletics should be the first to go! they have no place in a university” The reality of the situation is that Athletic departments have a firewall between the university and the UAA. There is governance attachment, but the budgets and sources of funding are completely separate. In most years athletic department are the the ones donating excess funds back to the university. Reading the article it appears the university made a one-time loan to the UAA that is being paid back.
Now I dont know the specifics of how Arizona is structured, but it would highly unusual if they were a budget item on the university budget and would be inconsistent with pretty much all major universities. Now if the UAA is hemorrhaging money and is consistently going back to the University to ask for loans, then programs are going to be cut. It might happen, with the move to the B12, I think they are going to get less TV money from the conference, soooo.