With the overall university budget facing cutbacks again next year, Ohio's athletic budget, which remains one of the smallest in the MAC, faces more cutbacks. The Post's Mike Cottrill and Paul Shugar caught up with Ohio President Robert Glidden to ask him about sports and how they are funded at Ohio.
The Post: You get pretty worked up at basketball games. Are you a big sports fan?
Glidden: I come from a pretty good background. I came from Iowa, and I was in the marching band. I was the band director at Indiana the only year they ever went to the Rose Bowl. I played baseball and basketball in school. I love competitive sports. I continued to play recreational basketball for a number of years, until my knees kind of gave out on me.
The Post: What role do sports play in the school's fundraising?
Glidden: The thing that delivers loyalty to schools is intercollegiate athletics. Athletics create such a loyalty to schools that even people who aren't sports fans are affected by it. We couldn't raise the money we do if people didn't have that type of bonding to their alma mater. In terms of the business of the university and maintaining its identity, intercollegiate athletics are integral.
The Post: With a smaller budget, how do you compare Ohio's role in Division I athletics with big schools like Ohio State?
Glidden: Quite frankly, our level of competition in Division I athletics is much healthier than the (Bowl Championship Series) schools. They become so tied into money that they have to dedicate everything to getting more money. In our case, our athletic department is like a publicly held corporation and the stockholders are the students because they are the ones paying for it (with the general fees that students pay).
The Post: How are decisions made as to how the sports budget gets cut?
Glidden: One way to measure yourself is to look at other schools of the same elk from the conference. Of course this can be a problem because not everyone keeps the books the same way. Miami, for example, doesn't do as good as we do at attracting students to games, but they count the general fees in their ticket sales. So when you look at overall sports revenue, they look like they are doing a better job than us. What I do know is that we are 10th in the MAC in athletic spending, and I think that is shameful.
The Post: If athletics help with fundraising then why is the athletic budget so low?
Glidden: Because you have to take it away from someone else to give it to them. When you look at the university's priorities, things like our research and our campus engagement are more important to fund. So while I think athletics are important, when I have to add up the priorities, I am more concerned with our being a first rate academic institution.
The Post: What role do you play in the decisions about athletics?
Glidden: I'm not as unilaterally involved in budget decisions as people think I am. There are so many committees and groups that do research on the budget, and we generally go with their ideas. On the student-athlete level, I hired Tom Boeh with the idea that we would not recruit a single athlete here that cannot graduate from Ohio University. Our academic standards are high, and we make no exceptions for athletes. If you look at our graduation rate compared with other MAC schools, it's near double. Some say that's too idealistic, but I feel that's the way athletics should be done.
The Post: Is it realistic to think that with higher academic standards and less budget allotment that we will ever be able to compete on a higher level?
Glidden: It may not be. But schools like Duke do it don't they? I definitely think that we could do it in basketball. Football is a little tougher because you have to have such a big squad. It helped us a lot when they brought the scholarship limit down to 85. If they would bring it down to something like 75 we could definitely compete.
The Post: The final decision to cut an athletic program would come down to you. With the budget as tight as it is, do you see that on the horizon?
Glidden: We try to avoid it at all costs. I think we face challenges over the next couple of years with the state budget that will make it tough, but if you stop and look at sports that are cut, like track, how much money can you really save cutting those programs?
The Post: A lot of people blame athletic budget problems on Title IX compliance. What is your take on that?
Glidden: What I think is that you should take football out of the mix and then really make all schools comply. Everybody is using their football budget as an excuse for their problems, if you cut that out you can really make everyone comply.
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Mike Cottrill and Paul Shugar
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Robert Glidden
