INDIANAPOLIS — The NCAA wants member schools to get a little extra cash. So college sports’ largest governing body is cutting back.
On Wednesday, the NCAA announced it would suspend membership dues for the next school year, plans to give schools an additional $5 million and intends to trim about $500,000 in travel expenses for committee meetings. How much the moves will help isn’t clear.
Annual dues run from $900 to $1,800, depending on which of the NCAA’s three divisions the school participates. The NCAA calculates the collective savings to be roughly $1.3 million.
And with about 1,000 member schools, the total pool of $6.3 million being returned averages out to roughly $6,300 per school — though the payouts will not be done evenly across the board. Still, those numbers pale in comparison to the multimillion-dollar athletic department budgets at many Division I schools.
It’s just a start, though.
“There’s a multipronged approach to help schools, and these are the beginning steps in a plan to relieve some of the financial pressure,” NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson said. “Our members believe every bit helps.”
The NCAA has already implemented a “soft” hiring freeze, meaning the organization will wait longer to fill vacancies. It will also use video conferencing and teleconferences more frequently to conduct meetings and will hold future in-person meetings primarily in Indianapolis, where hotels are generally cheap.
