The Roanoke Times

File February Malcolm Delaney and his Virginia Tech basketball teammates have played at places such as Alaska and Puerto Rico in past seasons. However, the Hokies will try to put together a nonconference schedule this year that keeps them closer to home.

Virginia Tech's football team will be traveling to its game at Maryland by bus instead of a charter flight.

Teams at VMI and Radford will often be hitting the road the morning of an away game, rather than getting into town the day before and spending the night at a hotel.

At Virginia, athletes have been told to keep their showers short.

Welcome to the new reality of college sports.

The athletic departments of those four universities are cutting costs in the upcoming school year as they deal with the recession.

Because schools fear a decline in revenue, less money will be spent on travel, salaries have been frozen and some jobs have not been filled.

Tech has slashed $840,000 from its athletic budget, while UVa will be making $1.6 million in cuts. VMI and Radford have smaller budgets than their big brothers, but VMI will be cutting $390,000 and Radford will be slicing $300,000.

"I think everybody is ... looking at some level of revenue that might be short of what we all experienced historically, whether it's because of ticket sales, whether it's because of fund raising," UVa athletic director Craig Littlepage said. "We're all anticipating some shortfall.

"It's much better to be proactive [with cuts]. If you don't do it now, you're going to have a much more difficult time down the road."

The economy has already hurt schools' athletic fund-raising efforts.

Tech is going forward with plans to build a football locker-room facility by the 2010 opener, but athletic development director Lu Merritt knows it will take longer to raise money for it than he had once hoped.

"If I talk to a donor, it's going to be interesting to see how comfortable he's going to be in making a pledge," Merritt said. "He may say, 'Come back and see me in a year.'"

Travel restrictions for Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech athletics will have an operating budget of $34.2 million for the 2009-10 fiscal year that begins Wednesday. The budget would have been larger, but athletic director Jim Weaver was worried that ticket or advertising revenue might dip.

He has told teams to stick to nonleague games east of the Mississippi in the upcoming school year, and to try to go no farther than two states away from Virginia for nonleague action.

The guideline is one reason the men's basketball team will begin a home-and-home series with Penn State. There will be a few exceptions to the restrictions, such as the men's basketball game at Iowa for the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

Each team will be held to the same operating budget it had in 2008-09, instead of the usual increases. That will save about $500,000 from what was planned.

As was the case across the university, most athletic employees did not get raises in 2008-09 -- except for a handful who were guaranteed them in their contracts, such as football coach Frank Beamer and men's basketball coach Seth Greenberg. Most athletic employees won't be getting raises in the upcoming school year, either. That will save the department $140,000.

The department's operating budget does not include scholarships, which will cost $9 million in 2009-10.

The Hokie Club raised $21.6 million through the first 11 months of the 2008-09 fiscal year (through May) for scholarships and capital projects. That's down more than $1 million from the same point a year ago.

Much of that decline is in pledge payments for capital projects.

"I've basically told the donors I've worked with, 'Please don't sell stocks at a loss now. Let's wait and let the market come back,'" Merritt said.

About $400,000 of the decline is in giving to the annual fund, which foots the bill for scholarships and other needs. That drop is because some people have decreased their annual donations.

Football ticket sales have remained strong, though. Tech has sold more than 40,000 season tickets for 2009, including a sellout of the regular seats. Tech still has some season tickets available for the more expensive club seats in the west-side addition.

Football ticket sales down at Virginia

Although Tech athletics finished $284,012 in the black in 2007-08, UVa finished $1.4 million in the red for that fiscal year.

Littlepage intends to cut 5 percent of the operating budget he had planned for the upcoming school year, and bring it down to $31.4 million.

While Tech will be leaving one job unfilled, UVa will be leaving 14 unfilled.

UVa also will be reducing the size of the travel parties for some teams' road games. Media guides might have fewer pages. Renovations to facilities might be delayed.

Teams might be traveling via bus instead of plane on certain trips, or take commercial flights instead of charters. The length of some road trips will be shortened. Foreign travel will be limited.

As at Tech, there will be no raises except in a few cases.

UVa has sold about 30,000 season tickets for the upcoming football season, after selling about 35,000 for the 2008 season. Associate athletic director Dirk Katstra attributes part of that drop to the economy and part to the football team's poor 2008 season.

Fund-raising is also down at UVa. The Virginia Athletics Foundation, which operates by calendar year, had raised $13.2 million for its annual campaign through mid-June. That's down from about $15 million at the same time last year.

"It's a combination of things, like people who have had to reduce their gift," Katstra said. "Some people have had to delay their decision because they're still trying to sort things out. ... And last year we were so heavily skewed earlier in the year with our giving because of our new ticket policy."

The annual campaign excludes the millions raised for capital projects, such as ex-Cav Ryan Zimmerman's recent $250,000 donation to help build a new ballpark.

VMI hurt because of stock market

With just 1,300 students, VMI has one of the smallest enrollments in Division I. That doesn't give VMI a big pool of student fees to help fund the athletic budget.

So the department annually gets more than $1 million in revenue from the college's endowments. But it will be getting less next year.

"We know our endowments are going to be down, ... based on what has happened in the [stock] market," athletic director Donny White said.

The department will have an operating budget of $5 million in 2009-10, which is $390,000 less than planned.

Teams will have less money to spend on travel, equipment and uniforms. No one in the department will get raises, and some jobs will go unfilled.

Fund-raising is down at VMI, like it is at the other three colleges. The Keydet Club hopes to meet its 2008-09 goal of $3.5 million, though.

VMI will spend $3 million on scholarships in 2009-10. White is already wondering if he will have to make scholarship cuts for 2010-11.

"We're prepared to look at that," he said.

Guarantee money will help Radford

Money is also an issue at Radford, which will have a $6.6 million operations budget in 2009-10.

Like Tech, Radford will freeze teams' budgets. That will save $125,000. The department will save another $100,000 because employees won't get raises. One job will go unfilled, and travel costs will be reduced.

"Unless it's an absolute necessity, we would prefer that we don't go on an airplane right now," athletic director Robert Lineburg said.

Radford might have had to whittle some more, but RU teams will be bringing in $60,000 more in game guarantees than in 2008-09.

The men's basketball team will reap $240,000 in guarantees from games at national powers Kansas, Duke and Louisville next season. That team has been told to bring in at least $200,000 in guarantees each season.