Departments
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Week of 30 October 1998 |
Vol. II, No. 12 |
Feature
Article
New athletics plan seenbenefiting many arenas
By Eric McHenry
One year ago, Boston University's Board of Trustees approved a new Athletics Plan whose overall goals were to strengthen key sports and to increase the opportunities for members of the University community to participate in athletic activity. A controversial aspect of the Plan was eliminating the football program in order to reallocate funds to a range of other uses.
According to Director of Athletics Gary Strickler, the plan has already produced results ranging from improved athletic facilities and more scholarships for a wider range of sports to salary increases for coaches and better compliance to the requirements of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which requires any institution receiving federal funding to ensure sports participation and spending levels commensurate with the gender makeup of its student body.
"Money that was being spent on football has made it possible for us to improve many programs across the department," says Strickler. "It hasn't just been treated as savings to be put back in the University's coffers. It's been used as intended: for reallocation of athletic support."
Nearly two-thirds of the $3 million spent annually on football was earmarked for 63 full scholarships. Much of that money is still committed to honoring the scholarships of the 27 former football players who have chosen to complete their undergraduate education at BU. Of the remaining scholarship dollars, "some have been reallocated to other sports, particularly women's sports, and some are going into a general scholarship allotment for other students," says University Provost and Dean of Arts and Sciences Dennis Berkey, who oversees athletics at BU.
New scholarships have been made available to five sports, he notes, and scholarship funding will be provided to the full NCAA limit for all women's sports except golf within two academic years. The redistribution of football money is also helping the University to meet its obligations under Title IX. Under the new plan, Berkey adds, the female rate of participation in sports is rising from 46 percent to 54 percent, and financial support for women's teams is increasing from 44 percent to 62 percent of the overall athletics budget.
Football's operating outlay of about $700,000 annually has been meted out among the 23 other varsity sports, Berkey says, to help bring about adjustments in coaches' salaries, the addition of assistant coaches to understaffed programs, and increases in the operating budgets of several sports to strengthen recruitment and enable team travel.
"Some of the head coaches' salaries have really been out of line with competitive rates," says Strickler. "This has allowed us to correct that. We've had assistant coaches receive salary increases because their pay rates also needed to be brought in line, and we've had several new assistant coaching positions, mostly but not all part-time, created because of the football money."
A total of 11 sports have received additional funding for recruitment and operations, Strickler adds, helping to solidify Division I athletic status for a number of previously marginal teams.
"That's why we made the request that led to the reallocation in the first place," he says.
Under the new plan, money raised for future construction of facilities will be divided between the department of athletics and the department of physical education, recreation, and dance -- a reflection, Berkey says, of BU's two-pronged athletics priority.
"We want to emphasize quality facilities, programs, recreat