By dropping Fresno State wrestling, Castro owns up to one of his biggest mistakes
The largely successful tenure of Fresno State President Joseph Castro isn’t without a few missteps.
Last week, the California State University system’s soon-to-be chancellor owned up to one of his biggest. Castro pulled the plug on Bulldogs wrestling, part of a three-sport purge that will allow an overextended athletic department to net $2.5 million in annual savings.
Eliminating wrestling four years after he personally brought the program back to life must have been a fraught decision for Castro, along with men’s tennis and lacrosse. But it was a necessary one — well before COVID-19 infected the finances.
I can point to the exact day when it became obvious that Castro erred by reinstating wrestling following an 11-year campus absence: Jan. 14, 2018.
On that date, The Bee’s Robert Kuwada broke the news that Fresno State was shelving its fundraising campaign to renovate Bulldog Stadium.
How are the two events linked? Because the bold optimism Castro showed by adding wrestling and women’s water polo (for Title IX complicity reasons) hinged on his athletic department being able to foot the larger bill.
Crumbling stadium
Adding two sports in the middle of an economic recession was, to say the least, an extravagance. Castro’s directive to then-athletic director Jim Bartko was clear: Find a way to pay for it.
Bartko’s best recourse was a spiffy facelift of his aging, crumbling football stadium. To recharge tapped out revenue sources, Fresno State needed the allure of new luxury suites, club seating and other big-ticket amenities lacking in the 40-year-old facility.
(A surge of fan interest that translated to ticket sales surely would have helped. But as proven during the 2018 football season, when a 12-win team never came close to a sellout, that wasn’t happening, either.)
Bartko’s eventual downfall — and his stadium renovation plan along with it — left the Bulldogs with a lopsided balance sheet they’ve been scrambling to cover ever since.
Athletics in the red
Even with $20.9 million of university support in the 2019 budget — $16.5 million in direct funding and $4.4 million from student fees — the athletic department still ran $2 million in the red. The deficits for 2017 and ‘18 are similar.
Those kinds of annual overruns aren’t sustainable. Which left cutting sports as the only option available to Castro and current AD Terry Tumey when the coronavirus pandemic further muddied the financial picture.
Among Castro’s first acts as Fresno State president was to announce that wrestling was being brought back. It was a promise Castro made to Pete Mehas, the four-term Fresno County schools superintendent who chaired the search committee that hired him.
During a Zoom call with local media, Castro was asked about the promise and to elaborate on his relationship with Mehas, who died in 2013 months after Castro was hired.
“I spoke to (Mehas’ wife) Demi this morning to brief her on this decision,” Castro said. “We shared the pain together and I know Pete would’ve found today very difficult because we were all so excited to bring this sport back.
“All I can say is that we looked at different options, and this was the most viable option for us given the circumstances and given the magnitude of the challenge at hand. … I leaned into this in 2013 because so many Valley students are served by this sport, so I am feeling that pain today.”
Just treading water
There is no questioning Castro’s sincerity or his good intentions. Fresno State athletics and academics “rising together” has been one of the constant mantras of his tenure.
Looking back, it’s clear that didn’t happen. While the university continues to gain rankings steam for its graduation rates and other academic metrics — plaudits that surely helped Castro land the job of CSU chancellor — athletics barely treaded water.
Fresno State lived beyond its means as a 21-sport program, and it remains to be seen how long the Bulldogs can afford 18. Without ticket revenues from football and possibly men’s basketball, I don’t see how the days of belt-tightening and program-shuttering are over.
Of course, that won’t be Castro’s responsibility much longer. He’ll have larger issues awaiting him in Long Beach. But in eliminating wrestling along with two other sports, Fresno State’s outgoing president closed the loop on one of his biggest, boldest mistakes.
