A&M and UAH Athletics Tackle Financial Challenges During Pandemic

The pandemic created unique challenges for college athletic programs throughout the country, and the Division I Southwestern Athletic Conference came up with an original answer for its football programs.

The SWAC moved the regular season to this spring.

Players at Alabama A&M – the school is a member of the SWAC – reported for COVID-19 testing the week of Jan. 11-15 and football operations began Jan. 18.

The Bulldogs open a six-game schedule at home Feb. 27 against Alcorn State. They have only one more home game when Grambling State visits the Hill on March 27.

Bryan Hicks, Alabama A&M’s director of athletics, said the coronavirus could dictate the success or lack thereof of regular-season spring football.

“It all depends on where we are as it relates to the pandemic,’’ he said. “That’s the really big concern. We’re looking forward to the opportunity to play. T

“The question is, ‘Is it safe and secure?’ And ‘can we provide the safety that is required?’ We’re gonna do the best we can under the circumstances.’’

A&M has already restarted its athletic program in other sports such as basketball. All collegiate sports activity was halted last March.

The same is true across town at UAH, a member of the Division II Gulf South Conference.

During the shutdown, the two city schools underwent separate paths to financial survival since neither have the independent financial resources in reserve as Power Five and Group of Five programs do.

Dr. Cade Smith, UAH’s director of athletics, said one key to surviving for the Chargers during stoppage of play was to rein in all spending and plan accordingly.

“It was trying to be as prepared while dealing with it, working with our overall institutional administration and with the different leagues that we are involved in,’’ he said. “I think all those commissioners and other athletic directors all really work together. And we just met a lot to share ideas and talk about how to get through it. We spent months not playing and just talking about, ‘What is it gonna look like’? (When play resumed).

“Then, as we got closer to playing it was a lot of developing policy, looking at what we’re going to do working through and how is this going to impact eligibility and seasons of competition and things like that? But it’s definitely been collective, and no one knew how to do it at the beginning. We’ve all just kind of learned as we worked together.’’

Being in a Division I conference helped A&M overcome financial shortfalls, particularly in the area of COVID-19 testing.

“Along with our conference office, the state and the programs that we have with the university, we’ve been able to find enough money to have testing available,’’ Hicks said. “So that hasn’t had an impact on us as much. And we have enough to test the students going forward.’’

Though seasons have resumed, the dark cloud of postponements or cancellations because of multiple positive virus tests on a given team looms. With crowd capacities already limited, that could create taller obstacles for schools outside of those with TV contracts and such.

“The key is communicating with your staff and proper monitoring and testing, I think,’’ Hicks said. “We have an excellent medical team that assists us with this unbelievable protocol and we’re really able to support our student/athletes and our staff that are working in this environment.

“We make every effort; we take no risk at all. We’re very conservative trying to ensure the safety of our student/athletes.’’

UAH and A&M won’t recoup lost gate money despite resumption of play because of the crowd limitations.

There are also future monetary concerns when it comes to scholarships — the NCAA has granted all athletes another year of eligibility because of the pandemic, something that could squeeze a budget like the one at UAH.

But, Smith said, that’s something that will be dealt with in time.

“That’s trying to take care of the student/athletes, so I appreciate that,’’ he said.

There are silver linings.

Though the Von Braun Center is restricted to 30 percent capacity for hockey, and Chargers basketball season tickets (500 are usually sold) have been reduced to 90, the Chargers men and women’s basketball teams play on separate dates instead of playing doubleheaders as in the past.

“I think we’re going to work through our universities, which have been really supportive,’’ Smith said. “Our university has been good to us. And we’ve done a good job of being good stewards of the budgets that we have and not spending in some areas that we normally would spend in. We’ve decreased our budgets overall for the year, trying to save money as we go forward.

“So, I think we’re going to be OK when we get to the other end of this. We’re just hoping that comes soon.’’