It’s been a rough year for athletic departments monetarily with a lot of universities having to either layoff staff members, levy furloughs or in worst-case scenarios cut non-revenue programs.

Programs have been cut across the country, even in South Carolina with Clemson dropping three programs this November: men’s track and field, cross country.

That hasn’t happened yet at South Carolina, and president Bob Caslen would like to keep it that way.

“If we can preserve those teams, my desire is because of the goodness they provide our student athletes we would like to do that. There are unintended consequences like cutting pathways to professional or Olympic sports,” Caslen said, addressing the Board of Trustees Tuesday. “I believe it’s the right thing to do. In the end, we may have to do it.”

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The Gamecocks haven’t cut any sports but have taken quite a few cost-saving measures that include mandatory furloughs if an employee made a certain amount of money and cuts to budgets.

Caslen, who played football at Army, mentioned three sports in particular when talking about cutting sports—swimming and diving, men’s soccer and equestrian—but said the goal was to not have to cut sports.

“As much as I love sports and athletics, I have to ask myself, ‘What’s the difference between a woman diver on the 10-meter diving board ready to do a triple flip than the starting quarterback of the Gamecock football team? She’s using her talent for the betterment of herself, her future. She’s getting an education for her talents. She’s doing this for the team, for the university and for the community. Why would we want to deprive her of that of the tremendous opportunity? That’s true for any sport and any athlete out there,” Caslen said.

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“Intercollegiate athletics at this level is tremendously important not only for this university but to bring people together but it’s so important to our athletics that have incredible talents and their using their talents for the betterment of their education. What a great thing that is. If it was up to me, I would try and expand that.”

South Carolina is expected to lose millions this year because of COVID-19 and the loss in home game revenue and losing out on NCAA tournament and TV money in the spring after the basketball championships and spring sports were canceled.

“I would just say, one of the things that contributed to the challenges in the athletic department is we had five home games instead of seven with 15 percent of people in the stands instead of 100 percent,” Caslen said.

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“It’s like having only one home game the entire year. We’re very fortunate in the plan being worked through at the Southeastern Conference, with our management, our cost controls. We talked about some of the solutions to deal with some of the challenges they have.”

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