Rutgers to eliminate men's swimming

Blame Texas. Athletic department budgets are up 35 percent the last few years and it is becoming harder to keep up. The very few big time programs are collecting a larger and larger portion of the revenue adding to the problem. The current path has an inevitable conclusion. In 20 years there will be 10-20 division 1 swim programs. Two things have to change to stop this: 1 revenue sharing. The reason the big 12 has 3 swim teams is because Texas' football program makes so much more money than all the other programs in the conference that the others have to scrap swimming to compete with Texas on the football field. 2. NCAA needs to implement strict salary and staffing guidelines. Although I am uncertain how to fix this - I agree that Texas is the best example of what is going wrong with college sports. They have the biggest budget (~$140M) and their so-called drive for excellence is fueled by money. They pay Mack Brown $5.1M per year and gave him a huge raise above what his contract states - even though he is not be recruited to go anywhere. Rick Barnes makes $2M. Gail Goestenkors (women's bbal) makes $1M. Texas shows absolutely no interest in driving costs down. All they do is try to distance themselves from everyone else. Because football is so expensive to compete in - all the other schools are forced to allocate ever increasing amounts of $$ to their football programs. That is why Texas Tech, OU, etc. haven't had swimming programs in many years. The link below is pretty interesting. Eddie Reese isn't paid very much compared to his peers at Texas. I suspect Eddie's total comp is greater (swim camps?). www.texastribune.org/.../

Blame Texas. Athletic department budgets are up 35 percent the last few years and it is becoming harder to keep up. The very few big time programs are collecting a larger and larger portion of the revenue adding to the problem. The current path has an inevitable conclusion. In 20 years there will be 10-20 division 1 swim programs. Two things have to change to stop this: 1 revenue sharing. The reason the big 12 has 3 swim teams is because Texas' football program makes so much more money than all the other programs in the conference that the others have to scrap swimming to compete with Texas on the football field. 2. NCAA needs to implement strict salary and staffing guidelines. Although I am uncertain how to fix this - I agree that Texas is the best example of what is going wrong with college sports. They have the biggest budget (~$140M) and their so-called drive for excellence is fueled by money. They pay Mack Brown $5.1M per year and gave him a huge raise above what his contract states - even though he is not be recruited to go anywhere. Rick Barnes makes $2M. Gail Goestenkors (women's bbal) makes $1M. Texas shows absolutely no interest in driving costs down. All they do is try to distance themselves from everyone else. Because football is so expensive to compete in - all the other schools are forced to allocate ever increasing amounts of $$ to their football programs. That is why Texas Tech, OU, etc. haven't had swimming programs in many years. The link below is pretty interesting. Eddie Reese isn't paid very much compared to his peers at Texas. I suspect Eddie's total comp is greater (swim camps?). www.texastribune.org/.../