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Leadership Foul

Originally Published in the Frederick News-Post

Economic & Fiscal Policy

by Marta Hummel Mossburg

OP-EDS

University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loh announced a week ago Monday that he would cut eight of the school's 27 varsity sports.

He called it a "day of enormous sadness" and said not acting "puts at risk the entire Maryland athletics program" in an attempt to paint the decision as something over which he had no choice and for which no one holds responsibility.

What a joke. Bad leadership of the athletic department is the reason the school is chopping three men's track teams and men's and women's swimming and diving, among other sports.

As The Washington Post reported in July, the athletics department is $83 million in debt and has only been able to balance its books for years by dipping into special independent foundation accounts.

Sounds like members of the General Assembly were moonlighting as consultants to the department on how to "balance a budget" by transferring money around, doesn't it?

The main reason for the enormous debt is a loan for a football stadium expansion predicated on the belief that a rise in attendance would more than finance the debt. But attendance has dropped, and according to ESPN.com, 19 of 63 suites that go for $36,000 a pop were unsold as of July this year.

That debt, combined with plummeting profits from football in the last five years and lower profits from men's basketball, leaves little money to pay for other sports.

This could have been remedied by coming clean years ago and really balancing the athletic department budget. Instead, officials kicked the can down the road and are telling athletes from the cut sports to get busy fundraising. Ten years ago they would have had a chance to achieve self-sufficiency. Now, it's virtually impossible, and the chief architect of the problems is in North Carolina.

Deborah Yow, director of athletics at the University of Maryland for 16 years until July 2010, holds an identical position at N.C. State University. A press release about her tenure said this:

"During her service at Maryland, a 16-year period in which a remarkable 54 percent of Maryland's 37 national championships have been won, the department has completed a $180 million expansion and upgrade of facilities, has had steadily improving academic results among its student-athletes, has balanced each of its 16 budgets and has won a remarkable 20 team national championships -- among the top programs in the nation."

Maybe Yow saw the writing on the wall and decided to leave before the facade of fiscal prudence came crashing down around her. But she is the one dropped athletes should be going to for answers.

Athletes at N.C. State University should also demand a full accounting of how their monies are distributed and where they came from.

As a former college athlete, I feel terrible for those students whose talents are being wasted by the University of Maryland. But one thing should be clear: Taxpayers should not be on the hook for yet another public-sector boondoggle when the state can't even cover basic services without raising taxes.