Austin Dussold – move aside young man.  You are no longer the best punter on the UND campus.

Thunder Lake Lodge

That title now belongs to the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (IAC).

With a firm wind at their back, the IAC decided to punt, I mean “recommend” that UND keep all 20 sports and try to raise revenues to replace the 1.4 million dollar shortfall.

Here’s the problem, IAC:  We have a feeling President Mark Kennedy is going to field that punt and return it for a touchdown.  UPDATE:  Mark Kennedy decided to do nothing and accept their recommendation.  

But the IAC already knew that.  They didn’t want to be on the hook for any negative feelings around campus so they put it on the return man to get smoked.

Here are our thoughts on this situation with some facts from the meeting sprinkled in:

  • “The proposal calls, in part, for an increase in institutional support from UND, an increase in student fees, increase in ticket prices and restructuring the contracts with the Ralph Engelstad Arena and the Alerus Center.”   Rather than make cuts that need to be made they took the easy way out and told the UND Athletic Department & Champions Club to raise more revenue.
  • “Add scholarships to fully fund each sport at the allotment of scholarships permitted by NCAA.”  So not only do they want to keep all sports, they now want to FULLY FUND all sports by adding scholarships, which also adds FCOA to each scholarship.
  • “Increase the student fee for athletics from $10.69 per credit hour to $14.50 per credit hour.”  Let’s go to the state legislature and tell them you are planning to increase fees and need more money.  Good luck with that.  Will be interesting to see the response there.
  • The “elite” of academia told us last spring & into the summer that the UND Athletic Department was a bloated, sacred cow and needed to provide more transparency for the rest of academia to evaluate.  So Mark Kennedy gave them multiple seats at the table.
  • We have news for the UND Faculty:  you just had your chance to evaluate the transparent numbers and then slice & dice that ‘sacred cow’.  What was your suggestion?  To add expenses and beef that fat cow up even more?
  • Why would the IAC suggest to actually add expenses instead of cutting like they were tasked to do?  We have a few ideas and takeaways.
    • We think they realized that Mark Kennedy is going to make the decision himself anyway, no matter their suggestion.
    • The IAC and its multiple faculty members didn’t want to be on the hook for taking away student-athletes opportunities and scholarships (which is what they signed up for, essentially).
    • Mark Kennedy just extended himself the right to tell the faculty on campus, “I gave you the transparency and inclusion you wanted this whole time and look what you did with it.  Nothing”.  Rightfully so, he tried to go in the opposite direction of Kelley & Schafer with the faculty and include them.  He is now in control and gets the benefit of the doubt there.

Let’s also remember a few key parts of this whole situation.

  1. Conference affiliation is a major, major part of the decision.  Core sports needed for the Big Sky and Summit League are different.
  2. The Big Sky Presidents meet tomorrow, October 19th, for their annual meetings.  You know UND’s membership is going to be discussed (more than likely off the record).  We believe the Big Sky Athletic Directors have already met and discussed UND’s membership from a ‘full’ and ‘affiliate’ standpoint.
  3. We think Kennedy is going to know which conference direction UND is heading by the time he announces his decision on what to cut, etc. on or around Nov. 1st (once again, off the record and behind the scenes).
  4. It seems plausible but not absolute, that UND has already been in serious discussions with the Summit and MVFC to figure out their interest, a potential timetable, and how it could work out.  If so, Kennedy could end up looking like a strategic planning genius after it is all said and done.

Nothing involved in this process is easy and we certainly respect and take that into account.  This is a very sensitive and divisive issue, yet again.  We certainly understand the emotion behind all of it.

In a perfect world, you keep everything and move on.  But the state of North Dakota, unfortunately, has fiscal issues that need to be accounted for and acted on.

If nothing is done now we will inevitably be dealing with it, yet again, in the near future.  As we stated in April when they cut baseball and golf, the cuts should have been deeper at that time.  What they did in April was a short-term band-aid.

Now here we are in the same situation for the 2nd time in six months and we have a recommendation to cut nothing and add more expenses from the faculty-led IAC.

It is our opinion that the UND Athletic Department has too many sports programs.  We believe they need to get in line with their peers – a tough decision for anyone to make, no doubt.