Athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners and student-athletes await a clear vision of what the future holds.
Campuses throughout the U.S. are closed except for essential staff and, in some cases, a limited number of students who are allowed to remain in the dorms due to lack of anywhere else to go. Classes are being taught online and no athletic competition is taking place. Student-athletes are trying to follow workout regimens provided by coaches. Everyone involved in intercollegiate athletics wants to know what’s next, but no one has the answer.
“There has to be an economic plan as to how we sustain ourselves through this period, but we don’t know how long this period is going to be,” says Kery Davis, director of athletics at Howard University, which competes in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), made up of all HBCU schools. “We’re trying to cut as much as possible with the idea that we have to keep an eye on how we look when we get to the other side of this. We don’t want to decimate our department … so that we can no longer compete.”
One thing known for sure is that the annual disbursement of funds from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to Division I institutions based on revenue from the Men’s Basketball Tournament has been drastically reduced. In late March, the NCAA announced the distribution to Division I conferences and institutions would total $225 million, which is less than half of what was anticipated prior to the cancellation of the tournament.
“None of our budgets really have a lot of fat in them,” says Teresa Phillips, director of athletics at Tennessee State University, the lone HBCU in the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC). “When you lose $300,000 or $400,000 from your NCAA distribution — even if it’s just for this year — you have to think, ‘Where are we going to get this $400,000 from?’”
By the numbers
