New budget may spell doom for some CSUB teams
| Wednesday, Jan 06 2010 11:20 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Jan 06 2010 11:21 PM
There's been this uneasy nervousness at Cal State Bakersfield since the start of the academic year as every department on campus waits to see how large a budget cut will hit their respective areas.
In athletics, the primary fear is the possible elimination of some intercollegiate sports.
Athletics Director Rudy Carvajal is "fighting tooth and nail" against cutting any sports, said volleyball coach John Price, whose sport is safe. Price added he's adamantly opposed to dropping any sport.
The CSUB athletics budget was cut about $240,000 from 2008-09 to 2009-10, according to Cindy Goodmon, CSUB's athletic business manager. It's the next round of probable cuts that has some sports' futures in jeopardy.
As for eliminating sports, CSUB President Horace Mitchell has undoubtedly discussed things with various people, including Carvajal and Michael Neal, CSUB's vice president for business and administrative services. Neal was a big-time CSUB athletic booster as a Bakersfield businessman prior to joining the CSUB administration.
But the final decision is Mitchell's.
Mitchell said in a December interview with The Californian's Jorge Barrientos that he won't announce any cuts until after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger releases the 2010-11 fiscal year budget.
That's scheduled for Friday. And everyone is bracing for the worst as the state grapples with its most serious financial shortfall in memory.
Mitchell's campus-wide decisions will follow -- if not Friday, certainly by early next week. As far as the 19-sport athletics program goes, this much is certain:
* The sports of men's and women's basketball, men's and women's soccer, volleyball, baseball and softball are safe.
Those are the so-called "priority" sports required for membership in the Big West Conference.
Mitchell and everyone else associated with CSUB athletics have consistently pointed toward the Big West as CSUB's preferred destination after it becomes a full-fledged NCAA Div. I member June 30.
The Big West has only nine members, so there's an opening. All BWC schools are within driving distance of Bakersfield, which reduces travel costs. That isn't the case with any other conference CSUB could join.
And many BWC schools such as Cal Poly, UC Davis and UC Riverside are traditional rivals of CSUB's dating from the 1970s.
CSUB isn't going to jeopardize its BWC chances. That's why those seven sports are a lock to be retained.
* CSUB must have at least 14 sports -- at least eight women's sports and six men's sports -- to be a Division I institution.
CSUB isn't going to jeopardize its Division I status, so the 14-sports minimum is assured.
The NCAA also requires Division I programs to have at least one team sport for men and at least one team sport for women in each of the three seasons of the academic year: fall, winter and spring.
That's why men's soccer would be the most secure sport on the CSUB menu even if the Big West factor was discarded. Men's soccer is CSUB's lone men's team sport in the fall.
* Another key factor is gender equity. CSUB's ratio of women's athletes to men's athletes have ranged no lower than 60:40 since the October, 1993, consent decree signed by the California State University system with the California chapter of the National Organization for Women.
That decree requires the percentage of women athletes at each CSU institution must fall within five percentage points of the percentage of women students at each institution.
CSUB typically has about 65 percent women students.
CSUB hasn't cut any sports since the spring of 1993 when men's tennis and men's cross country were dropped for gender equity purposes.
So which sports are most endangered? Here's one man's view:
* If Mitchell is looking to save the most money, wrestling and men's and women's swimming figure to be the most endangered.
They are not Big West Conference sports. They have the greatest number of athletes, which means more expense for traveling and per diems. And both annually have competitions out of state, which require flights.
Wrestling coach T.J. Kerr insists wrestling won't be cut. "How can they do that to a sport with 43 (Division I) All-Americans?" he said.
If those sports are dropped, it will generate the loudest howls of protest from the community, much more than if any other sports were dropped.
Ironically, Mitchell is a former college wrestler.
Wrestling and men's swimming have been the most successful CSUB sports.
Wrestling won eight Div. II national team titles and, since 1987, has five top-10 team finishes in Div. I.
Men's swimming won 13 Div. II national team titles, and eight runner-up finishes.
"If you take away all the awards from wrestling and swimming, the Cal State trophy case would be pretty bare," Kerr said.
* Water polo is another sport with a fairly high roster size -- 24 players are listed on the CSUB athletics web site -- but all competitions are within driving distance. The gender equity factor works in this sport's favor.
* Women's tennis has few players compared to other sports so eliminating it saves less money. But it could happen if CSUB officials want to cut down to 14 sports.
These sports would appear to be on more solid ground, but not out of the woods:
* Track and field and women's cross country. I'm listing them together because these count as five sports -- indoor and outdoor track for men and women, plus cross country -- and combined they have only two head coaches: Alan Collatz and Robert Boyles.
Five sports with only two head coaches gives CSUB more bang for its buck. It would be a shock if any combination of them were cut.
* Men's and women's golf. Neither are Big West sports, but they are relatively inexpensive with small squads and most events within driving distance, thus reduced travel and per diem costs.
Should CSUB eliminate any sports, the university figures to do everything possible to help any affected athletes transfer to another school so they could continue their athletic careers.
One would hope any athletic scholarship aid provided to specific athletes would continue should they opt to remain at CSUB.
But now all anyone can do is wait and see what happens in the next few days.
