The Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference recently announced a league-wide cost-reduction plan in response to the current economic climate and resulting budget cuts throughout the University of Wisconsin system.

The goal of the plan is to minimize the need for the conference’s nine members to make significant cuts at the campus level by spreading reductions across the league, while retaining competitive equity.

Most of the cost-cutting initiatives focus on reducing travel costs, by reducing the number of overnight stays by visiting teams and field sizes for postseason championships and by limiting trips outside a defined geographical area, among other steps.

The cuts are in addition to budget-reduction measures already imposed by the state or the university system, including an employee salary freeze and mandated furloughs.

League officials estimate the cuts will save more than $250,000 in direct budget expenditures and a total of nearly $450,000 when factoring in expenses covered from other sources (for example, foundations and booster clubs) and from student-athletes’ own fund-raising efforts.

A few of the more notable cost-reduction initiatives include:

• Establishing later start times for contests so as to minimize the number of overnight stays for visiting teams.
• Limiting postseason tournament brackets in all team sports to a maximum of six teams.
• Restricting teams to taking no more than one trip during the regular-season outside of an established regional perimeter.
• Exploring the feasibility of scheduling one additional WIAC football team as a nonconference game beginning with the 2011 season.
• Suspending the annual conference summer workshop and football and basketball media days for 2009.
• Freezing officiating fees at 2008-09 levels.

“The fact that a conference can reach a consensus on cost-reduction measures that will impact institutions differently speaks highly of the environment of cooperation that characterizes the WIAC,” said Commissioner Gary Karner.

“As an integral part of the overall educational enterprise, we also recognize and accept the fact that athletics is not immune from the economic challenges facing our institutions and we will share in that burden accordingly.”