The AU Athletics Department announced Thursday that it will discontinue the Men's Golf and Men's and Women's Tennis programs after this season ends. Though the decision was deliberated for more than a year, the Athletics Department never made the AU community aware until after the decision was made.
AU Athletics said it has been running a deficit for the last five years, last year's at about a half-million dollars. With that in mind, it's hard to criticize AU for doing what needs to be done to keep from losing money. However, unlike what most schools do when they want to cut a program (and unlike what AU has done in similar past situations), AU did not offer the teams a chance to raise money to save the program.
One might wonder why AU chose to cut tennis and golf, considering the money and effort that are put into Men's Basketball. AU Athletics sends out mass e-mails and messages to phones on campus advertising men's hoops games, but does not do any advertising for any other sports. The reason is clear: Men's Basketball brings money into AU. It's hard to blame people who say AU only speaks the language of money.
The communication of the decision was awful. No one on the teams were made aware of the deliberations until the final decision was made. This was blatantly unfair on the part of administration. Students signed on to attend AU, and coaches recruited new kids to come here, on the premise that they would be able to play tennis or golf for their tenure here.
Of course, AU didn't want to scare away any athletes in case it elected not to cut the teams. But now, thanks to AU's selfishness, students are stranded here, with the deadline to transfer coming in just a few days. (Fortunately, the NCAA bends its own transfer rules in the event of a program being discontinued.)
Now students must choose between the school they're attending and the sport they love playing: a choice they wouldn't have to make if AU was honest with them. With communication skills like that, no wonder AU Athletics is in such debt.
