As a revenue-generating sport, men’s basketball is almost certainly safe. Ditto for football. But other sports may be in peril as part of an athletics department that struggles to generate positive revenue—a common affliction across the NCAA landscape. Should Arizona enact sweeping cuts, it will be following a broader trend at the Division I level, where universities that have built reputations and alumni support on robust athletics have increasingly begun dropping certain programs—often those of the Olympic variety, such as swimming, track and field, and tennis. Stephen Dittmore, dean of the College of Education and Health Sciences at Baldwin Wallace University, has studied the trends in college athletics. According to his analysis, Division I institutions are dropping athletic programs while Division III colleges are adding more sports teams. Stuck in the middle is Division II, the smallest of the three, which Dittmore finds relatively flat.
