Should Tennis Be Among First NCAA D-I Sports Cut Post-pandemic? Pepperdine's Lahey Decides to Return for Fifth Year; ITA Will Present Annual Awards

This article, written by University of Arkansas professor Steve Dittmore for Athletic Director U, explores the likelihood that the Olympic sports sponsored by schools will suffer most from the funding shortfall caused by the recent cancellation of the basketball tournament.

It's a lengthy piece that is centered on the need for the universities and United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to figure out how to support each other in these non-revenue sports.

What if, in a post-coronavirus world, Division I athletic administrators say, “finances are squeezed. What is it we really do? We really are in the entertainment business, and while we would like to support student-athletes in a variety of programs, it no longer makes fiscal sense to do that.”

Among these sports, is of course, tennis, and Dittmore pays special attention to Division I tennis, because it is not producing athletes who go on to represent the United States in the Summer Olympics. College tennis has produced Olympians, of course, but not in big numbers, so Dittmore proposes a radical solution.

Back to the hypothetical questions… What if athletic directors decide it is no longer their responsibility to aid the U.S. Olympic team by sponsoring “Olympic” sports such as field hockey, gymnastics, wrestling, and water polo? We could certainly see more sports suffer the same fate as Old Dominion’s wrestling program, which brings me back to tennis. If ever there was a college sport which could be eliminated it is tennis. 

Dittmore goes on to explain the high cost per student-athlete for tennis, and notes that a majority of the scholarships in the SEC are to awarded to international players (although with men's tennis having 4.5 scholarships, which can be sliced in any fashion, the actual dollar value of each scholarship can't be readily determined). Interesting that he didn't use his own employer as an example, where 9 of 11 roster spots in the men's program are taken with international players.  But Dittmore is mostly right when he says:

Consider this. The U.S. Tennis Association does not need universities to help train future Olympians, the rare Olympic sport that does not need college athletics. Further, the vast majority of collegiate tennis athletes in Power 5 schools come from outside the United States. Scholarships are not going to American high school seniors.

Vast majority is probably overstating it, and I think the USTA does appreciate having college tennis as a pathway, but no, the USTA does not need college tennis (the US Golf Association doesn't either, for that matter) to field an Olympic team in the sport.

With his framing that preparing athletes for the Olympic Games is, or should be, the goal of university athletic departments, Dittmore is following his own logic, but I don't think you would find a single athletic director agreeing with that framing. For all the well-earned cynicism around the NCAA, they do believe that playing college athletics has benefits for the student-athletes and the school that extend beyond serving as a minor league for Olympic sports. A chance to play on a team, to mature, to expand one's horizons, to balance competing obligations, all these are worthwhile parts of the educational experience and can't be based solely on revenue produced or spent.

Do I think more tennis programs will be cut after this latest crisis? I do, but for the same reasons they are always cut, because the financial obligations necessary to support them are too much. It will not be for failing to supply tennis players to the US Olympic team.

To get an idea of how much playing college tennis can mean to a student-athlete, you don't have to look much further than Ashley Lahey, a Pepperdine senior who has announced her intention to return to the Waves for the dual match season in 2021. Like reigning NCAA champion Estela Perez-Somarriba of Miami, Lahey has decided it makes sense to return, particularly when she can play Pro Circuit events in the fall (pandemic permitting). Lahey, who started college early and is graduating at age 20, was an NCAA singles finalist in 2018 and was No. 1 in the last published ITA national singles rankings.

The ITA announced today that despite an incomplete season, it will present its annual awards and name All-America teams, although no date is mentioned. There will be no final rankings for the year, but the ITA will do a double-run to produce private rankings that can be used for the upcoming fall season. For more on that see @College10sRanks on twitter.