MW’s Craig Thompson thinks football is key to other sports playing
If no college football is played next season, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said he thinks the other college sports seasons would be canceled, too.
Thompson made those comments in the first of a two-part interview posted Monday on the conference website. The second part, which will go into more detail regarding college football, will be posted Tuesday.
He said the reason he wasn’t hopeful that other sports would be played was “because 85 percent of revenue derived from college athletics comes from the sport of football.”
The sports world is on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic, which forced the cancellations of the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
Thompson said each Mountain West school lost more than $1 million as a result, but his conference wasn’t as affected as other leagues because it played its conference tournaments. The Mountain West moved up its men’s and women’s tournaments by a week so they would not conflict with a major construction convention in Las Vegas.
“I see conferences that lost millions of dollars not having their conference tournaments,” Thompson said.
He said the Mountain West is in relatively good financial shape for now, but is planning for a more dire future and expects to slash the conference operating budget by 15 to 20 percent. Thompson said the College Football Playoff budget is being cut by 16 to 20 percent.
The conference is having multiple calls each week with the league’s athletic directors, and options being considered to lower costs include reducing the number of game participants, scheduling fewer games and cutting down on the number of road trips. Thompson said the hope is to not eliminate any sports.
What had been in-person meetings with other officials in college sports are being handled virtually, and Thompson said that could become more permanent even after the pandemic ends.
“Maybe it’s a new way of doing business,” he said.
Contact reporter Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.
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