Kirby Smart sounds alarm, says schools are ‘1 to 2 years away’ from cutting sports
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Kirby Smart said in an interview with Paul Finebaum on Wednesday that college athletics is “1 to 2 years away” from seeing schools make major cuts to their athletics offerings.
Former Alabama coach Nick Saban made waves on Wednesday when he questioned the need for a presidential commission to address issues in college football — a commission he’ll reportedly be on. Saban said the issues facing college athletics are known; they don’t need to be identified, they need to be solved. Smart said later on The Paul Finebaum Show that relying on Congress to institute guidelines isn’t the most efficient method to go about fixing the sport. Nevertheless, parameters need to be put in place by someone to make the current environment sustainable.
If things continue at the current rate, Smart believes athletic departments will start cutting sports.
“We just want it to be in a way that’s sustainable. I just want to be able to have a freshman come in and not make more than a senior and I’d like for other sports to be able to still survive,” Kirby Smart said. “You know, we’re on the brink of probably one to two years away from a lot of schools cutting sports. What’s the pushback going to be then when you start cutting non-revenue sports? I don’t want that to happen.”
The Georgia head coach reiterated that players making money isn’t the root issue facing college athletics.
“The issue is the inability to pinpoint what the rules are and what we can do,” Smart told Finebaum. “We just want to know the parameters with which we’re playing by and be able to sustain a budget. … There’s no old-school, young-school, there’s none of that. We’re comfortable paying the players.”
Most athletic departments operate with only a handful of money-makers as is. Football props up the rest of the department. At some schools, basketball fuels the operation. Elite programs in traditionally non-revenue sports support themselves in rare cases — i.e. Nebraska volleyball, Oklahoma softball. But more often than not, football drives everything. If departments have to spend more and more to remain competitive in football, some might feel a real squeeze.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
