That Isn't Scarlet Coming Out of Rutgers

It's red ink from a lack of money at the Rutgers Athletic Department. Barely noted in the euphoria of last season and that Rutgers football was actually making money for the first time, was the fact that Rutgers was cutting 6 Olympic or non-revenue sports from the Athletic Department for budgetary reasons.

Athletic Departments cutting the non-revenue sports is nothing new. Schools have been doing it for years. They usually blame it on Title IX and/or budget issues. Still, it's all new area for Rutgers and after all the positive attention they had been receiving it can be a bit jarring to read as efforts to save the sports failed.

It was a rare defeat in Rutgers' magical sports season. The football team upset No. 3 Louisville en route to its 11-2 record; and the women's basketball team made it to the championship game of the NCAA tournament, an event marred by shock jock Don Imus's on-air ridicule of the women's appearance, leading to his dismissal.

The glow of athletic successes made cutting six teams all the darker. Men's swimming and diving, and tennis, men's and women's fencing, and men's lightweight and heavyweight crew have all ended their tenures at Rutgers as varsity sports. They will continue as club sports, a change not unlike going from baseball's majors to Little League.

The coaches, students and parents affected had organized to try and save the sports. They had received pledges totaling nearly $1 million and had the New Jersey Legislature ready to offer the same.

The efforts failed and offers rebuffed.

Legislative efforts -- led by state Sen. Bob Smith and Assemblymen Patrick Diegnan and Peter Barnes -- failed, at least partly, according to Sen. Smith, because of strong messages from Rutgers that the money would be refused.

"If the legislature passes money for one year, what are you going to do next year, or the year after that," says Rutgers Athletic Director Bob Mulcahy. "As far as all those pledges, nobody ever said here is a list of money that they had in hand."

The Athletic Department now operates 24 sports, but the main focus is on continuing to grow the football program as Mulcahy envisions for the future. Waaayyyyy into the future.

"Football is a separate issue -- I look at it differently from the rest of the sports. It raises far more money, and ultimately the success of football can carry the rest of our programs."

Ultimately is the key word. Football does not now pay its own way, but Mr. Mulcahy is betting that it will. He says he was charged when he was appointed in 1998 to "fix football" after years of losing. His model, he says, were the "big, good" programs of the Big 10, and calls his legacy tied to Mr. Schiano's success.

"You look at schools where football has been successful for 30 or 40 years, and it can carry an athletics program," says Mr. Mulcahy, adding that the last two years of football success head Rutgers in that direction.

That means Rutgers still needs 28 more successful years of football in the next 30 years to get to that point.