Former Kansas University swimmers’ hopes of salvaging the men’s swim team suffered a major setback Monday.
KU athletics director Bob Frederick notified the group that to save the program, it would need to raise $740,000 by June 30 and round up “solid pledges” for another $1.36 million.
“This is a much taller mountain than we expected to climb,” said Tom Bowser, a spokesman for the swim team alumni.
Bowser said the group would discuss its response to Frederick’s notice during a telephone conference today.
“It would be premature to pronounce this dead,” Bowser said, “but to raise that kind of money we’d have to line up corporate sponsorship. It’s highly unlikely that we could raise that much among former swimmers.”
Last week, the alumni offered to raise $100,000 by July 1 and to begin work on an endowment to support minor KU sports that don’t generate enough revenue to pay their own way.
The offer was in response to Frederick’s March 4 decision to drop the men’s swimming and tennis programs after this year. The move, he said, was driven by a projected $3.6 million shortfall in the athletics department’s budget over the next five years.
By cutting the men’s swimming and tennis programs, the department expects to save about $600,000 a year.
The department will continue to honor its commitments to the 36 scholarship athletes on both teams, Frederick said.
“Anyone (on the men’s swimming and tennis teams) who chooses to remain at KU will continue at the same (scholarship) level they’re on now until they receive an undergraduate degree or complete their fifth year, whichever comes first,” Frederick said.
Coaches will be paid through Sept. 30, 2001, he said.
“I admire their loyalty, their spirit and their willingness to do this,” Frederick said of the swim team alumni, “but I have to give them real numbers. And we’re not in a position to operate on a year-to-year basis, so we asked for a five-year plan.”
The initial $740,000 would cover the swim team’s expenses for two years, Frederick said. The $1.36 million endowment would carry the team through the 2006 season.
In his letter to the swim team alumni, Frederick said plans for the endowment reaching $10 million would need to be in place by June 30, 2002.
Frederick blamed much of the funding shortfall on the costs of the department’s 280 scholarships.
“In the past three years, our scholarship costs have gone up $958,000 and that just keeps us even with where we were,” Frederick said.
“And people tend to forget that tuition went up 8.32 percent last year,” he said. “For a lot of departments that meant more money; for us it meant more expense.”
Travel costs also have increased 115 percent since 1996, he said.
After the cuts, KU will support 18 team sports, involving more than 500 student athletes, including walk-ons.
On Monday, University of Nebraska announced that it, too, was dropping its men’s swim team after this year. The decision is expected to save the athletics department there about $500,000 a year.
Without the Nebraska and KU programs, the Big 12 Conference will be down to four universities with men’s swim teams: Missouri, Iowa, Texas, and Texas A&M.
