Rutgers coach Kyle Flood, center, stands with his players as they sing Rutgers’ alma mater after defeating Syracuse in an NCAA college football game in Piscataway, N.J., in this Oct. 13, 2012, file photo.The meeting was brief. A few minutes tops.
Temple athletic director Kevin Clark didn’t mince words. Standing inside the football team’s indoor practice facility earlier this month, Clark scanned the crowd of dozens of student-athletes — none of them football players — and told them the financially strapped athletic department was cutting their sport at the end of the 2013-14 academic year.
There weren’t a lot of details. No lengthy question and answer session. Sitting alongside his 16 teammates on the men’s gymnastics team, sophomore Evan Eigner sat in stunned silence.
“When I heard the news,” Eigner said, “I kind of went numb a little bit.”
Temple’s announcement that it’s going from 24 sports to 17 next fall, a move that will eventually save about $3-3.5 million a year, was just the latest in a growing line of colleges and universities that are reshaping overextended athletic programs by shuttering smaller sports to help make those that remain — particularly those designed to bring in revenue — more competitive.