Again with these false dichotomies.
Gutting the non-revenue does not mean cutting the support staff for things like someone driving the football bus, which is undoubtedly already under the football expenses
If we’re truly spending that much on things like WBB, then either Pollard has done an awful job splurging on non-revenue sports, or it is that simple
This isn’t a new problem. He’s been spending too much on non-revenue for at least 15 years, when it became apparent that college athletics was changing.
I don't really have any interest in discussing your feelings on Pollard. The topic here is how do we get from today to a place where we fully fund the revenue sharing limit?
My concern is - where do you find the money? It's already been pointed out that there is not a lot you can cut from the non-revenue sports. We can't just cut all non-revenue sports. Maybe if the rules change later on we can, but for now we can cut at most 2 sports.
The tone I heard from the podcast is that we're not just $1-2M short - we're several million short in the current environment. The point I (and others) are making is that if you cut the two "best case" non-revenue sports (assuming you can't touch WBB and Wrestling) you're not getting close to the money you need. So what do you do then? Start cutting out the AD administrative staff? There might be a few people you could cut, but cut too deep and other things are going to start feeling the effects. Obviously MBB and FB bring in the most money, but they have the most spending too. Does the football team now take borrowed city of Ames school buses driven by Grad Assistants to the stadium instead of charters? Bus instead of fly? The nonrevenue sports are already driving around in vans and flying commercial to their events.
Borrowing irresponsibly isn't the solution either. Maybe you do it if you are worried it all falls apart if you don't, but that's living on borrowed time and making a debt you won't be able to dig out of.
All I'm saying is - you can't squeeze blood from a stone.
