Arapahoe High School tennis coach Pete Brayton knows a fault when he sees one. And he definitely sees one in Boulder, where the University of Colorado is preparing to axe its men’s tennis program even as it finishes off its best season in decades. CU ended the year with its highest-ever NCAA ranking (23rd) and played in the NCAA tournament for the first time in eight years.
“From that perspective, it really stinks,” says Brayton, a science teacher who coaches boys and girls teams at Arapahoe. “You don’t cut off the programs that are doing well.”
At least, that’s what common sense suggests. But the problems facing CU athletic director Mike Bohn won’t be solved by doing what’s fair. They’ll be solved by doing what makes money.
Tennis is what they call in collegiate athletics a “non revenue producing” sport. It taketh away, but it doesn’t giveth. That alone isn’t news. What’s different now is that Bohn is supposed to rein in millions of dollars of anticipated losses stemming partly from a golden (Buffalo) parachute university administrators handed out to Gary Barnett as a reward for getting fired.
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