The University of Iowa will get rid of 4 school sports systems after the 2020-21 school year, a direct result of the cancellation of the fall football season and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis and swimming and women’s and women’s nails will be discontinued, Iowa sports director Gary Barta and President Bruce Harreld announced Friday.
These moves increased Iowa’s sports sponsorships from 24 to 20, with 12 women’s and 8 men’s sports remaining. All existing scholarships will be revered upon graduation, the university said.
The affected points where sports were decided for cuts are described in the press release. Among them: ancient competitive success; Impact on compliance with Title IX; “the investment needed for competitive excellence”; and savings expenses.
This last point is what Barta and Harreld quoted in their charter on Friday. Iowa’s projected budget deficit for this fiscal year is between $60 million and $75 million, almost all due to football’s loss of profits. Iowa expects a $100 million loss on football 2020-21.
“A loss of this magnitude will take years to overcome,” Barta and Harreld wrote. “We have a plan to recover, the adventure will be difficult.”
Cutting 4 games is starting to reduce the deficit. Last month, the Register published an investigation into Iowa athletics finances that described what each game costs in Iowa compared to what it brings.
In fiscal year 2019, men’s gymnastics spent $922,773 more than it reported. Reduction of spending deficits relative to income from other systems: $698,809 for men’s tennis; $1,280,146 for swimming/diving for men; and $1,364,698 for swimming/diving for women. Add them up, and the overall “savings” (one to say it) are a nuance of more than $4.25 million consistent with the year. Multiply that number over five years and the total savings would exceed $20 million.
Obviously, that’s no more than $60 million, so more college cuts will come, probably in administrative staff, budgets and licensing/salary cuts.
The explanation for why the elimination of 3 men’s games in combination with a single woman game is to put Iowa in a position to comply with Title IX, the federal law that states that universities that settle for public money will not have to discriminate. In the game frame, this means that the number of men’s scholarships will have to largely reflect the number of women’s scholarships. The maximum FBS for scholarships for men’s gymnastics (6.3), men’s tennis (4.5) and men’s swimming/diving (9.9) is added to scholarships 20.7; The maximum for swimming/diving for women is 14.
Iowa is the first college in the Big Ten Conference to announce cuts to sports programs, but it may not be the last, given the currency crisis the 14 schools will face with last week’s football announcement.