Cougars feel budget pinch

PULLMAN – The economic tsunami that swamped Washington state’s academic institutions, resulting in budget deficits and tuition increases, will have an impact on Washington State University athletics.

But probably not as big of one as originally feared.

“It’s a little bit better than what I had thought,” WSU athletic director Jim Sterk said Thursday, when the athletic department announced a group of budget cuts for the 2009-10 fiscal year that started July 1. “However, some revenues are down, the annual fund, ticket renewals. … Those are things we knew were going to be down, we just had hoped they would stay strong, and they have for the most part.”

Washington State is trying to cover a revenue shortfall of around $1 million, a number not completely defined despite the onset of a new fiscal year.

“I hate to be evasive and I apologize,” Sterk said when pressed for concrete budget numbers, “but you could safely say, as we looked at our budget last year and then this upcoming year, we were looking at probably over a million dollars.

“It’s going to be a work in progress. Going into our budgets we have a lot of unknowns.”

Much of those revolve around the economy and how it will affect the school’s athletic revenue streams.

“We are kind of in uncharted territory,” Sterk said.

The nationwide downturn has already been felt. Part of the department’s shortfall comes from a $350,000 decrease in support from the university in the form of tuition waivers. Another aspect is a university-wide tuition increase of 14 percent. Add in an estimated $400,000 decrease in athletic scholarship fund donations and a conservative budget for football ticket sales – season-ticket orders are at 11,000, down about 1,700 from this point last year when 13,232 were ultimately sold – and the department has a hole to fill.

The athletic department, according to Sterk, had already instituted cost-cutting measures – “We’ve got a hit list about a page long of things we’ve done,” he said – and those will continue. They include leaving open positions unfilled; cutting back on travel for international recruiting and professional development; using ground transportation to competitions within 400 miles of Pullman (including Seattle football games); limiting the number of athletic publications and possibly cutting travel-squad sizes.

But the school, with the Pac-10’s smallest budget of around $30 million, will continue to offer seven sports for men and 10 for women. It is avoiding the elimination of programs, something other conference schools, including the University of Washington, had to implement this year.

The positions left unfilled are not coaches or employees who work directly with athletes.

“It’s not like we are stopping operations,” Sterk said, using the training staff as an example. “We had two people on temporary appointments and they’re going to full time. And then we’re hiring three more. That’s an area we can’t back away from and we can’t short.”