Re: REPORT: North Dakota cutting women's hockey
Let me tell you a story. Choose to believe it or not. (Phil Harmeson told it to me over coffee one day.)
A while back when Phil Harmeson was acting AD and the decision to move to DI was made, Phil called in all the coaches from the 21 sports. (Harmeson was then a professor in the business school, a lawyer, and then president Kupchella's chief of staff. The man knew budgets and budgeting across the campus.)
He was frank with them: He told them that budgets at UND would not sustain 21 sports and that they should look around the room because in about five years about five sports would be gone to the budget ax. He said, told them, a university of UND's size can not support 21 DI sports.
That Harmeson-led meeting was roughly ten years ago.
UND has gotten by this long because of the Bakken (oil) boom in the state and the Legislature was feeling flush with cash. State monies to UND ramped way up.
Money from the State is now returning to the mean trendline from pre-Bakken.
Harmeson's realities are here.
Anyone who's paid attention to UND Athletics for the last 20 years, not just on the field, but the budgets, saw this coming and knew it had to happen.
Let me tell you a story. Choose to believe it or not. (Phil Harmeson told it to me over coffee one day.)
A while back when Phil Harmeson was acting AD and the decision to move to DI was made, Phil called in all the coaches from the 21 sports. (Harmeson was then a professor in the business school, a lawyer, and then president Kupchella's chief of staff. The man knew budgets and budgeting across the campus.)
He was frank with them: He told them that budgets at UND would not sustain 21 sports and that they should look around the room because in about five years about five sports would be gone to the budget ax. He said, told them, a university of UND's size can not support 21 DI sports.
That Harmeson-led meeting was roughly ten years ago.
UND has gotten by this long because of the Bakken (oil) boom in the state and the Legislature was feeling flush with cash. State monies to UND ramped way up.
Money from the State is now returning to the mean trendline from pre-Bakken.
Harmeson's realities are here.
Anyone who's paid attention to UND Athletics for the last 20 years, not just on the field, but the budgets, saw this coming and knew it had to happen.
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