The Athletics department lost its status as a group guaranteed funding, but that didn’t stop it from asking for more money than years before.
UNM Athletics requested $3.5 million in student fees this year from the Student Fee Review Board, up from about $1.9 million it recieved in fiscal year 2012.
Tim Cass, senior associate director of Athletics, said the large increase in funding from students could propel the University into the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), a group of six big-name conferences that generate funds for Athletics primarily through television deals.
During the SFRB hearing Sunday, Cass said securing a spot for UNM in the BCS would make Athletics financially sustainable and could even fund the University’s academic mission.
“I think with the recent movement in terms of the University of Houston (and other teams) which are similar universities, it’s much more likely than it was a couple of years ago for UNM to get in,” he said. “The close-knit fraternity is becoming more open, and with the improvements we’ve made in our facilities and the level our programs are competing at nationally I do think there is a good chance we could get in.”
Cass said the funding from student fees would help improve facilities, coaching and recruitment to help improve UNM’s sport teams.
The Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East, Southeastern Conference, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 make up the six Division I conferences of the BCS.
In the last few years, Mountain West schools Utah, Boise State and Texas Christian accepted invitations into the BCS conferences.
Cass said entrance into the BCS would make UNM Athletics financially self-sufficient.
“It would generate $10-20 million, mainly from television revenues,” he said.
Henry Villegas, the assistant athletic director overseeing academics, said the poor performance of the football team’s losing record made it difficult to gain entrance into BCS.
UNM Athletics reported a total budget of about $30 million to SFRB, including the possible $3.5 million in student fees, which would make up about 11 percent of the budget.
SFRB Chair Katie Richardson, who questioned the Athletics representatives about its funding sources, said she is skeptical about funding an organization that does not directly contribute to the academic mission.
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SFRB member Japji Hundal said he would like to see more commitment from the Athletics department to fund sports other than the primary revenue-drawing programs.
“I want to know, ‘What is the status of the other programs besides football,’” he said. “There is a lot of student participation in … these programs like soccer, and volleyball … how does that contribute to the University?”
Cass said although other programs see high levels of success, many are not ticketed, and do not produce funding and are supported by the larger sports like football.
“We do wonderfully in other sports like volleyball, but we have to depend on our ticketed sports for revenue,” Cass said. “Six out of eight of our ticketed sports rank in the top 25 percent of the nation for attendance.”
On Thursday, UNM President David Schmidly approved Student Fee Review Board’s recommendation to eliminate the “protected status” of nine groups that receive guaranteed funding from student fees, including Athletics.
While the program will not be guaranteed an amount by SFRB, the program still receives a guaranteed amount of student fees which will be set by the President’s Strategic Budget Leadership Team, an organization that takes recommendations from the SFRB.
