What is ASU doing with mens swimming ????

Question

Heard they abandoned the Mens swimming program at Arizona State, whats going on there ?

I always thought that swimming was a big thing in American colleges, surely to drop a full program is a big step back in time

Answer 1

There are two main things going on at ASU (and other American colleges).  The first is budget issues.  With costs rising schools are becoming more and more budget conscious.      There are a growing number of non-athletic co-circular activities that are requiring financial support (or other university resources).  Athlete departments are money losers, plain and simple.  The only school in the nation who might be close to breaking even (in terms of revenue and donations brought in because of athletics) is Ohio State.  While many athletic supporters point to the millions brought in by football and basketball they neglect to take into account the support costs - additional security, insurance, maintenance, ticketing offices, etc.  Also the way the NCAA profit sharing agreement is set schools are almost forced to dump as much as possible into their football and basketball programs to get the biggest piece of the pie they can .  All of this adds up to the fact that the athletic department budget is overtaxed and non-revue sports are being eliminated.

The other reason is a law called Title IX.  Title IX was created in the 1970's to open opportunities for women in educational institutions.  While applying to all aspects and all levels of schools, until recently Title IX has been mainly applied to athletics.  The basic rule schools follow is the 'proportionality rule' which states that the school must offer the same number of athletic opportunities to both men and women in relation to the number or male and female students at the school.  The school must also spend proportional amounts of money on those teams in roughly the same manor (ie if the football team gets flies it 100 member team to a game then the athletic department should fly a women's team(s) to an event, totaling 100 tickets.)

In ASU's case specifically, the AD made some dumb decisions.  She hired a football coach with a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract and then fired him, forcing the University to buy out the contract while at the same time hiring a new coach.  While the professional sports teams can get away with doing that, a public institution that relies on donations to meet it's operating budget cannot.  Added to that are other monetary issues.  By dropping men's swimming and men's wrestling the university saves almost $1 million a year.  To my knowledge ASU doesn't have a Title IX issue, dropping the two men's sports (and not any women) is a clear sign that they wanted to avoid any possible issues.

As of right now the ASU program can be saved if they can fund (or mostly fund) a $5 million endowment.  I think every college minor sport team should start creating their own endowments now, so when the cuts come they'll be safer.  ASU is just one school in a trend that stretches back a decade or so.

Answer 2

ASU dropped not only men's swimming, but wrestling and men's tennis as well. They have said that the sports were losing money and do not have the budget to support them. The sports will be reinstated if people can raise enough money to fund them.