Radio deal reveals UM money issue

You knew the negotiations for University of Maine sports radio rights had gone haywire when Stephen King was the victim of a horror story instead of its author.

For me, that radio tussle symbolizes a larger issue – the university’s athletic department existing beyond its financial means, a luxury we in the private sector don’t share.

How else to explain the desperation in selling off local control of its identity for $450,000 over six years – or $75,000 a year – from an out-of-state marketing firm with no history in the region and the lone goal of maximizing the return on its investment?

Just what multiple of $75,000 do you suppose King has donated to the university over the years? And who’s to blame the owner of WZON – not to mention the school’s most famous graduate – if he’s a bit more reticent about the next $75,000.

Perhaps the athletic department should look within to address its financial challenges.

As just one example, if it’s going to take a mandate from America East to provide athletic scholarship funding for men’s soccer at a Division I level, maybe it’s time to reconsider the wisdom of playing that sport at a Division I level.

And that could be the starting point of a larger discussion, because it’s certainly not easy for athletic programs like Maine to survive in a low-major, I-AA sporting world that consumes far more money rather than it makes.

Some time spent revisiting just what the state university’s flagship campus truly can afford for intercollegiate sports might be the best short-term investment of all.

NCAA president Myles Brand is talking about pushing the women’s basketball Final Four back a week to get it out of the shadow of the men’s Final Four. If that happens, what’s to become of the Frozen Four, which has already beat the women’s basketball folks to that scheduling trick?

Even the delayed Frozen Four competes against the Masters and the opening week of the baseball season – and if Maine hadn’t been playing Michigan State on Thursday, how many Black Bear fans can truly say they would have been watching somebody else play in the Frozen Four instead of Daisuke Matsuzaka’s first start for the Red Sox?

The sports world is busy every weekend, and the men’s Final Four is becoming a convenient excuse for other entities that can’t gain a consistent foothold in the nation’s viewing habits. Maybe it would help basketball if some of the teams could shoot better than 40 percent from the field.

Got a flyer in the mail from New Hampshire International Speedway, saying tickets were still available for July’s NASCAR Nextel Cup race. That came soon after seeing an ad in NASCAR Speedway Scene magazine offering tickets for both of this year’s Cup races at the Magic Mile.

That’s not a good sign for NASCAR in general, which has raced to some empty seats at several venues this year, and NHIS in particular. The Loudon flat track long has been one of the least desirable circuits for Cup drivers, and often a source of race-date extraction rumors when Cup officials cast a wandering eye on other locales in the relentless quest to expand their reach to all corners of the United States and beyond.

So far, however, NASCAR has come up empty in efforts to have tracks built for them near New York City and in the Northwest. It may be merely a matter of time, however, particularly if NHIS doesn’t maintain its reputation for filling 101,000 seats twice a year.

Ernie Clark may be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or eclark@bangordailynews.net