Some things of note that I've copied & pasted here from the article:
***
But as it tries to stare down a wicked recession, baseball is starting to blink. Two universities - Northern Iowa and Vermont - have already announced that they will eliminate their programs after this season. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which started its team in 1877 and has placed 18 players in the major leagues, drew headlines for considering the idea. (It says the sport is safe for now.)Experts predict more contraction in coming years. "A year ago, I never heard any of this. Now it's a great concern for everyone," says Dave Keilitz, executive director of the American Baseball Coaches Association. "This thing just melted down in a matter of months."
What makes baseball a potential candidate for cuts? For starters, athletic directors don't have many $900,000 line items in their budgets, a ballpark estimate of many college-baseball programs. Dozens of colleges have trimmed their overall athletics expenses - traveling less (or less expensively), reducing off-season competition, eliminating nonessential expenses like media guides. A handful have frozen jobs or laid off workers.
***Baseball observers worry that the sport's financial struggles will lead to similar reductions in scholarships and travel opportunities, even if teams are not eliminated.
Of the Division I programs that field baseball teams, only about half offer the full 11.7 scholarships allowed by the NCAA, according to a recent survey by the American Baseball Coaches Association.
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst offers just 2.5 baseball scholarships and has about a $500,000 budget for the sport, putting it in the lower half of budgets in the Atlantic 10 Conference, says the athletic director, John McCutcheon. Still, he believes the program can compete for conference titles, which helped spare it from elimination during cutbacks announced last month.
***
Baseball loses more money than any other big-time mens sport, according to an NCAA report on teams median revenues and expenses in 2004-6.
