Liz Robertshaw realizes there is no going back to business as usual, that a post-COVID-19 college sports landscape likely will not look the same as that which preceded the pandemic.
But as cash-strapped universities and athletic departments look for ways to compensate for revenue shortfalls caused by school closures, the cancelation of the NCAA basketball tournament and the threat of a similar shutdown of football in the fall, Robertshaw and other college coaches association leaders are lobbying Indianapolis to make sure the new normal does not come at the expense of non-revenue sports.
“Olympic sports student-athletes have generated $3.6 billion in tuition and fees for universities. We’re also teaching life lessons, how important the opportunity to play college athletics is for these students at all levels,” said Robertshaw, the former Boston University women’s lacrosse coach and current executive director of the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association. “We really want to avoid that easy [solution to] cut the sport and shift [resources] to another one, because it’s cutting opportunities.”
The IWLCA and IMLCA are among 20 coaches associations that signed an open letter to the NCAA Division I Council last week opposing a request by the Group of Five conference commissioners to relax the rule requiring Football Bowl Subdivision schools to field a minimum of 16 varsity athletic teams. A decision to do so would allow cash-strapped athletic departments to cut non-revenue sports like lacrosse while preserving their FBS status in light of the financial difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The commissioners of the AAC, Mountain West, MAC, Sun Belt and Conference USA sent a joint letter to NCAA commissioner Mark Emmert earlier this month seeking “temporary relief from several regulatory requirements for a period of up to four years.”
Cincinnati (AAC) and Old Dominion (Conference USA) have already cut men’s soccer and wrestling, respectively.
J.B. Clarke, Limestone coach and president of the Intercollegiate Men’s Lacrosse Coaches Association, said the elimination of those programs served as a wake-up call to many coaches associations around the country.
“It really brought a sense of urgency to us to say, ‘This is real,’” Clarke said. “Whether it’s equestrian, rifling, lacrosse or gymnastics or field hockey, these sports have a lot in common with our sport. It wasn’t shocking, but it was a real eye-opener.”
“We’re asking universities to be creative in their budgeting,” Robertshaw said, rather than cutting sports.
In response to the G5 commissioners’ request, the new Intercollegiate Coach Association Coalition mobilized and launched the website savecollegesports.com. It includes a link to a petition that has more than 65,000 signatures, as well as video testimonials from Olympic athletes and coaches.
“If we eliminate them, we’d be killing the pipeline that could produce our next World Cup soccer star. We’d be benching baseball players who might turn into little league coaches or even major leaguers. And we’d be sidelining volleyballers who might have stood tall on gold medal pedestals,” ICAC representatives wrote in an op-ed for University Business on Monday. “Now is not the time for the NCAA to cut off yet another critical institution that makes university life so special.”
Robertshaw said other conferences joined the Group of Five in requesting that the NCAA relax the minimum sport requirement. ESPN reported as much last week, saying the remaining 22 Division I conferences outside of the Power 5 were part of an addendum to the letter extending the request to also ease sport sponsorship rules on Football Championship Subdivision and other Division I schools.
The Division I Council met Friday and said in an NCAA.org news release that it had reviewed a letter asking for a blanket waiver for a period of at least two years to allow schools to recover from the financial difficulties imposed on them by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“While several legislative changes will be considered for blanket waivers, the Council indicated that sport sponsorship minimums should be removed from that list,” the release stated. “Schools still can request sport sponsorship requirement waivers on an individual basis.”
The Division I Council kept the blanket waiver on the table as it relates to scheduling and summer access requirements, among other rules. Removing the sport sponsorship minimum from consideration signaled a victory for the ICAC, but the coaches associations will continue to gather signatures and oppose institutions that see eliminating sports as a way out of the current crisis.
“Talking to my peers in the ICAC, when there’s silence, that tends to make everyone worry,” Robertshaw said. “We wanted to make sure we did draw attention to it and voice opposition.”
“In the back of all of our coaches’ minds, we still know that lacrosse is a small sport,” Clarke said. “We relish in the fact that we’ve been the fastest growing sport in America for years, but with this kind of money and people talking how many days until college football starts and what are we going to do if we don’t have it, it put a little bit of extra fear in our minds.”
Matt Hamilton contributed to this article.