Ball State President Blaine Brownell and Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham announced Wednesday they will cut three of Ball State's 22 sports programs.
"We will offer as broad of a program as we can afford," Cunningham said. "However, fundamentally, we must operate within our means. For those reasons, my recommendation that has been endorsed is that we will eliminate the men's cross country program, indoor track and outdoor track. We will compete as we move forward with 19 programs."
In addition, budgetary restructuring will take place, recovering $260,000 for the department in 2004-2005. Cunningham said the program cuts will take effect at the beginning of the 2004-2005 season, allowing the teams to compete in the 2003-2004 season. Athletes on the cut programs will retain scholarship money for the length of their eligibility, he said.
The university will reduce the budgets and scholarship allocations for men's swimming and diving and men's volleyball.
In addition to reduction of scholarship allocations, men's swimming will be combined with the women's swimming and diving program. Bob Thomas, currently the men's coach, will oversee men's and women's swimming while Laura Seibold-Caudill, current women's coach, will oversee men's and women's diving. The combined program will have a reduced budget of $42,000, Cunningham said.
The men's volleyball scholarship funding will be reduced from $78,400 to $50,000. The men's volleyball operating budget will be reduced from $26,000 to $15,000.
Cunningham said the decisions announced Wednesday were made based only on economic downfalls.
"When I interviewed for this position a year ago, I stated that there are three basic issues in intercollegiate athletics -- balance between academics and athletics, compliance and economics," Cunningham said. "I think we have handled two of those exceptionally well. Today, we are addressing the economic realities and putting ourselves in the position to create new resources to enhance our program long term."
Aside from budgetary concerns, Cunningham said his decision to cut those three teams was because it would affect the fewest people -- 54 students and two coaches.
"I felt this recommendation had the least impact on our entire athletic program but put us in the position to meet our budget," Cunningham said.
After some skepticism throughout the past two months, Wednesday it became clear that the decision to cut teams was up to Brownell, not the board of trustees.
"I believe we must act now," Brownell said. "We must do what we need to do and move on to have the best athletics program at Ball State that we can."
Brownell also addressed the role of the board in this decision.
"I have provided information to individual board of trustees members as it has evolved," he said. "But, it will not be decided by the board and will not appear on the board agenda at the meeting this Friday. Thus, there will be no opportunity for comment on this matter at the board meeting since it is not on the agenda."
Brownell said even though he is making the ultimate decision, he feels he is making a decision in line with the board.
"All of the board members that I have spoken with have been aware of the difficulty of the decision," he said. "They have asked questions but I think I can say that no board members have expressed an objection to this plan. You should rest assure that I wouldn't be out here doing this if I didn't have reasonable assurance that the board was supportive of our process and ultimate decision."
Wednesday's announcement comes after recommendations from both the athletic committee and the senate agenda committee to retain 22 programs and take more time to further investigate the problems. The athletic committee suggested a six- to 12-month period of discussion while the agenda committee suggested a shorter three- to six-month extension to develop a plan.
"We are making this decision because we don't feel it is in the best interest of the individuals affected or potentially affected for us to wait for another three to six months to talk about this," Brownell said. "It is also clear that in these discussions, we are not getting any new ideas. I don't think continuing the discussion had much of a prospect of generating new ideas."
Near the end of Wednesday's press conference, Cunningham said this is not a problem that plagues only Ball State.
"The cost of higher education just continues to rise," Cunningham said. "We are the sixth school in the Mid-American Conference to reduce the sport offerings in the past couple of years. There have been 30 institutions in the last two years that have had to cut sports in the past two years."
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