After the Big East defections and a 7-5 football season, Syracuse University’s Department of Athletics is feeling the pinch in its pocketbook and has had a negative effect on the university’s bottom line. The University Senate met Wednesday to discuss ways of dealing with these financial woes, including boosting ticket prices for athletic events and raising tuition at a rate even greater than expected.

Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw addressed senators about the future of SU athletics. Shaw said that the departure of the University of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College from the Big East will cause the Department of Athletics to post a net loss of between $2.7 million and $3.5 million in the 2005 fiscal year. If SU loses its affiliation with the Bowl Championship Series, it could suffer an additional loss of around $1.5 million.

Shaw pointed out that most schools lose money on their sports programs.

‘I don’t think there’s anyone that believes that there’s more than about 30 that break even,’ he said.

To help deal with the deficit, Shaw recommended the department receive some combination of a subsidy from the general university budget and internal measures to increase revenue.

Director of Athletics Jake Crouthamel said that those self-help measures would include an increase in ticket prices and a campaign to boost ticket sales.

Following Shaw’s remarks, the senators took a look at how the athletic deficit would change the university’s long-term budget plan. Eric Schiff, an associate dean in The College of Arts and Sciences and chairman of the committee on budget and fiscal affairs, presented the committee’s January report. The committee developed the report after reviewing Shaw’s budget proposal.

Among the notable changes to the university’s five-year budget plan in the report were an extra increase in tuition rates for the 2005 fiscal year, taking the total increase from 6 percent for undergraduates to 6.4 percent. This increase was made necessary in part by the addition of the $450,000 subsidy to cover the athletic deficit.

The planned vote on the report was held up by a long-running debate over the athletics deficit and the future of SU sports. Several senators expressed concerns that the proposed subsidy would take funds away from already-struggling academic programs. Graduate School Dean John Mercer proposed an amendment, which was ultimately passed, that would have required the Department of Athletics to cover its own deficit in 2005.

Schiff said he was unsure how Mercer’s amendment would change the report, if at all. Since the senate’s report is merely a recommendation to the Board of Trustees, which has the final say on the budget, the amendment’s impact will not likely be large, Schiff said.

‘Generally speaking, the budgeting process is fairly conservative,’ he said.

Published on January 14, 2004 at 12:00 pm