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WHEN powerful Boise State takes a hit during the football season there is a measure of enjoyment from the rest of the Mountain West Conference, rare as the occasions might be.
But what happened Thursday in Boise should have brought chills to the rest of the MWC, including Hawaii, a football-only member.
Because if the Broncos feel compelled to plead poverty in cutting two sports, then it doesn’t augur well for everybody else’s piggy bank.
Boise State announced it is dropping baseball and women’s swimming and diving in an attempt to save $3 million on its budget and as the first conference member to make cuts, that probably isn’t the end of it.
You know things are bad when the school brings back its baseball program after a 40-year absence and then shuts down the program after its first season. One that was just 14 games long, thanks to the impact of COVID-19.
What makes it all the more sobering is that Boise State brings in the most TV money in the conference ($2.9 million annually) and is the highest-drawing football team in the league.
The Broncos averaged 32,070 in Albertsons Stadium this past season, fourth-highest among the 65 teams in the Group of Five conferences and have perhaps the conference’s most dedicated fan base.
Of course, the Broncos pour the lion’s share of all that back into football, including more than $4 million just in coaches salaries.
But not even another banner MWC championship football season and earlier rounds of pay cuts and furloughs has been enough to hold back the tide of red ink wrought by the pandemic.
“I would be untruthful if I told you this is over,” Boise athletic director Curt Apsey said in a virtual media session Thursday.
“I don’t know exactly what that looks like, I don’t know if that includes other programs or bigger cost-savings or whatever that may be,” Apsey said. “We’re anticipating more. I think it’s irresponsible not to anticipate that. But I don’t have the exact way to say ‘this (is what) else we’re looking for.’ We’re looking at everything in our department and we have been over the last four months. That’s not going to change.”
Other schools across the NCAA landscape are smarting, too. Some, UH among them, you suspect, just haven’t been hit yet by the full impact of the COVID-19 financial fallout.
The ’Bows should have a better idea after the Legislature concludes its session this month and UH finds out how much it has to work with. On Monday, UH kicked off a GoBows Crowdfunding drive at uhfoundation.org/gobows.
Seventeen Division I schools have combined to dump 45 sports teams. Many more have instituted furloughs or whacked salaries. Everybody is doing the math of what might have to be trimmed.
It has, of course, been the so-called non-revenue Olympic sports such as swimming, track, tennis and wrestling, along with baseball, that have taken the brunt of the ax.
There was a reason that the Group of Five commissioners, including the MWC, petitioned the NCAA early on in the pandemic to relax the minimum number of sports a school must offer to maintain its Division I standing.
To date UH has, thankfully, avoided the last resort of team cuts. But as the Mountain West was reminded on Thursday, if they can come in Boise, they can happen anywhere.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
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