Had the message been posted a day earlier, it might have been seen as a horrible joke.
As it was, the April 2 announcement on the Carson-Newman College athletics Web site made a lot of people feel horrible. Athletic director David Barger revealed that the Jefferson City, Tenn., school was dropping its 30-year-old wrestling program.
“The difficult decision to discontinue wrestling came out of a desire to ensure the fiscal viability of the overall athletic program,” Barger stated in the posting.
Supporters of coach Don Elia’s program quickly challenged that reasoning. They cite figures showing that wrestling is a substantial money-maker for the school.
Contacted Friday, Barger — a Red Bank High School graduate and a CN athletic administration official since 1980 — pointed out that budget adjustments are “campuswide” and dropping a sport just happens to be the most publicly visible one. Beyond that, he wouldn’t say much.
“Our trustees will be meeting April 30 (and May 1), and we will make no further public comment until they meet,” he said.
This is a regularly scheduled board meeting, but the trustees must sign off on the cuts. Barger said they would be given “full disclosure” about all the decisions.
The trustees’ place in the process would seem to give hope to the quickly launched “save Carson-Newman wrestling” campaign (largely through Facebook networking), and reportedly some of the trustees were surprised by the wrestling news.
Still, would you go ahead and tell a team and a longtime coach “so long” without being sure their time was over?
“Sometime back we were charged with the responsibility of downsizing the budget,” Barger said. “It comes down to the financial health of the institution and the requisite savings that needed to be garnered from athletics.
“Such harsh economic times lend themselves to a very, very painful process. It makes you miserable to have to go through it.”
Elia fended off a threat to Eagles wrestling at least once before by showing how it was a tap rather than a drain for dollars.
Ron Case, the former athletic director who hired Elia from Maryville College, and his son are among the many who have sent letters to Barger and new Carson-Newman president Randall O’Brien on behalf of the program.
Wrote David Case, a University of Mississippi School of Law associate professor who worked for Barger in the sports information office in the early 1980s: “The wrestling program brings anywhere from 35 to 50-plus students ... every year that would otherwise not attend the college. The program only awards between five and six athletic scholarships at any given time. After all expenses of the program are considered, there is a net revenue gain to the college of between $350,000 and $500,000 every year. This is just from tuition and does not factor in whatever money the college would gain from these students paying for college-provided room and board, books, student fees, etc.”
This year’s roster has 37 wrestlers, including five from Ringgold, Soddy-Daisy, Madisonville and Cleveland, and Elia said Saturday that none plan to return for the fall semester except one set to graduate in December.
One is Matthew Sharp, a freshman from Cleveland.
“That’s a lot of students for a place like Carson-Newman,” former Cleveland coach Al Miller said. “It just doesn’t add up to me. Wrestling brings in more money and kids that will pay their way than any group on campus. Why would you drop that?”
Cleveland’s Nathan Jones, now in dental school in Memphis, was an All-American wrestler and CN’s most outstanding male senior athlete two years ago. TSSAA record-setter Tim Voiles from Lookout Valley was another Eagles standout.
Miller was very interested in succeeding Elia, who already had stepped down as financial-aid director when Miller had a long visit with fellow Red Bank alum Barger in the spring of 2007.
He said Barger expressed his support then for wrestling but confided that there was some grumbling to drop it.
“A lot of my wrestlers have gone there. My oldest son (Brett) went there and wrestled for Don,” Miller said. “Even though I didn’t go there, I’m really emotionally involved in this thing.”
He noted that many of the best wrestling coaches in East Tennessee, particularly north of Cleveland, are former Carson-Newman wrestlers. So is Jeff Pratt, recently hired as national chairman for Fellowship of Christian Athletes wrestling.
And while only Newberry College besides Carson-Newman among current South Atlantic Conference members has wrestling, future member Anderson (S.C.) and potential future member King also do. King’s coach wrestled for Elia at CN, by the way.
A few other NCAA Division II and NAIA colleges have added wrestling in recent years, but CN’s long tradition of national champions and All-Americans still give it a recruiting edge, even with a budget long overdue for a big upgrade.
“It’s almost embarrassing to see Don’s budget compared to King’s,” Miller said.
Maybe that’s really the reason for the new decision. Maybe Carson-Newman officials decided that if they can’t put up they need to shut down, and in this economic climate there could be no budget increase.
We’ll see what the trustees do next week.