Husky Trails | What About the Little Sports?

In the wake of huge budget shortfalls in the state of Washington, the University of Washington has had to cut it's swimming program in an overall cutback of $2.8 million in the next year. 

The move comes on the back of the University as a whole cutting back nearly $73 million. I'm in the college of Arts and Sciences, and they are getting cut $10.5 million and cutting a lot of the writing centers for students to work on their writing.

However, since this is a sports blog I won't belabor this point too much but try and point out that these are tough times overall.

If you follow my column you will remember a couple pieces ago I talked about how Scott Woodward, the athletic director, needed to turn to private funding for the $300 million dollar Husky Stadium renovation.

At this point, I think that some of the more ambitious plans need to be shelved. Fancy facilities around the stadium aren't nearly as important as making the stadium safe and comfortable. And to be honest, they aren't as important as the writing centers.

I have to be honest, I don't really follow UW swimming, so it's loss won't really leave a gaping hole in my Huskies sports love, but it begs the question what does happen to the little sports.

Football is the major workhorse of every athletic department around the country, and without it many more sports would go under. 

At the same time, a little too much emphasis is placed on it. Just look at the rise in coaching salaries in the past decade.

Winning helps to be sure, because a winning franchise brings in more revenue every fall, but it really has become unreal. Steve Sarkisian is making, as a rookie head coach, nearly $400,000 dollars more than Tyrone Willingham, is by far the highest paid employee in the state of Washington.

Let's face it, I already am sold on Steve Sarkisian, and I hope he brings great success to Washington. But that doesn't change the fact that other sports are struggling to make ends meet, unjustly so.

The UW swimming program wasn't even bad, the women were 15th and the men were 16th, so it is an extremely unfortunate cut. 

Yet, the UW is spending $350,000 to returf the field this month.

These are tough economic times, no one is really safe from it entirely, however you can bet programs like football and basketball will survive because they are such cash cows. Programs like swimming, not so much it seems.

Before you moan and groan about your school not getting a fancy new stadium upgrade or what have you. Remember what a lot of this stuff costs in terms of the rest of the athletics department.

And let's all hope the worst of this economic downturn is behind us, and we can bring back some things to our Universities.