The Cleveland State University men’s basketball team has won 12 straight and sits atop the Horizon League standings. While the campus should be celebrating, the athletic department has announced the elimination of wrestling, softball and women’s golf to offset budget woes. The university’s deficit stands at around $10 million, down from $40 million following a series of cuts last year.
Ideastream Public Media’s sports commentator Terry Pluto said about 30 male athletes and 30 female athletes were on the teams that were eliminated.
“All this sounds bad (and) Cleveland State must be in terrible shape," Pluto said. "But then you open your eyes and look (at) the whole landscape, especially Division I sports, where these schools have declining enrollment, there are cuts everywhere."
Eliminating three sports leaves CSU with 15 athletics programs, enough to keep them participating in Division I.
“Fortunately for Cleveland State … they don't have Division I football, which is very, very costly and I think that will allow them to concentrate on their basketball programs, men's and women." Pluto said. "Both have been exceptional in terms of a place like Cleveland State and what they call the mid-majors of Division I.”
In May 2020, the University of Akron eliminated three sports teams: men's cross country (which was restored in 2023), men's golf, and women's tennis. The prior month, both UA and Kent State University announced 20% cuts to their athletic budgets for the following fiscal year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Pluto said he believes CSU’s recent cuts will be the first among many for ‘mid-major’ colleges.
“Just look out, a year from now we should look back and see what other teams were cut at what other institutions,” Pluto said. “In the end, a lot of people who are gonna get hurt on this are not the top basketball players or whatever. It’s gonna be the people in these quote-unquote lesser or minor sports."
Meanwhile, Cleveland State is soaring in basketball. The men’s team has won 12 straight and sits atop the Horizon League.
Pluto said it was supposed to be a rebuilding year for third-year coach Daniyal Robinson.
“It took a while, but they've gotten hot (and) they're strong defensively,” Pluto said.
Pluto also said the team has discipline on and off the court, with a team grade point average of 3.4.
“In their locker room the players have to make sure when they leave that there's no socks on the floor, no stuff thrown around their lockers," Pluto said. "It has to be neat. Otherwise the whole team does push-ups. So, they police each other."
He also said they follow a strict regimen.
“They show up at the gym in the morning at 8 a .m.," Pluto said. "They eat breakfast together and then the afternoon they go to classes (then) they come back, there's study hall available (then) dinner. The idea being to create structure for them, as Daniyal Robinson says, it's not a boot camp, but there's really a lot of good things to come from this disciplined approach.”
The CSU women’s basketball team is also having a successful season. They’re 8-2 in the Horizon League, 17-4 overall and in third place in the conference.
Pluto circles back to tough decisions ahead for many schools.
“The challenges every year that the athletic departments are going to be facing, they're not going away,” Pluto said. “I just think they're going to be even more, sometimes almost excruciating, in terms of decisions they have to make and what teams go, what teams stay, how many coaches can you have? This is the canary in the academic coal mine. I mean, this is showing that, hey, the oxygen now, in other words the money, is running out on how some of these programs have been run in the past.”
