Mid-American Conference’s Eastern Michigan University Cuts Four Sports

Cold Ypsilanti, Michigan is home to Eastern Michigan University, a school that instructs some 23,000 students as of 2017 and consistently hauls in 20,000-plus students on an annual basis.

Eastern Michigan University held a press conference headed by the school’s athletic director, Scott Wetherbee, on Tuesday, March 20, 2018, that shared with the world of college sports and fellow members of the Mid-Atlantic Conference (MAC) its set-in-stone plan to cancel four separate sports programs in the name of budget cuts: men’s diving, wrestling, and swimming; alongside women’s tennis.

Having a diverse range of sports can attract faculty, administrators, students, and high-quality student-athletes to a college or university. EMU administrators felt dropping four of its 21 programs was most appropriate in the name of formulating a financial plan to slice anywhere between $4.5 and $5.5 million for the soon-upcoming 2018 fiscal year.

An unfortunate 17 firings are slated to be carried out in hopes of satisfying budget demands, alongside the elimination of 42 school administrative and faculty positions.

Scholarships and other expenses totaling $2.4 million will be conserved by cutting the four aforementioned programs, collectively involving 25 female and 58 male student-athletes.

Athletic director Scott Wetherbee reportedly informed those four programs’ head coaches of the planned announcement on the evening of Monday, March 19, 2018. Assistant coaches were woken up bright and early for 7:00 a.m. collective meetings on Tuesday morning, with university President James Smith and Wetherbee present to inform all athletes at a 7:30 a.m. convention.

All considered, eight coaches, a graduate assistant, and one part-time coach will lose their positions at Eastern Michigan University as a result of position elimination, a “better” way to be laid off from an employer.

Even though they won’t be able to continue playing those four collegiate sports and representing Eastern Michigan University at the national level, EMU will still honor scholarships as they currently stand until graduation of the degree they’re currently planned to graduate with.

Student and faculty opposition showed through on campus, social media, and in communities after the press conference, as the university’s expensive, underperforming football program wasn’t affected.

Dozens of faculty and students alike have publicly requested Eastern Michigan University to take its football program out of Division I, the highest – and undeniably the most expensive – level of competition of any sports or classification of them. EMU burned through roughly $27 million annually over the past few years on sports.