Lisa Stone of Parenting Aces had an interview yesterday with Tim Russell, the CEO of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA). She mentioned my recent post on match format in asking whether simultaneous format was a way to preserve college tennis during the impending COVID funding crisis for education and collegiate athletics. Mr. Russell’s answer was thoughtful and touched on several points including the fact that simultaneous format received serious ITA consideration in the past. He said it was an interesting idea and he liked it from a fan perspective. However, one thing Mr. Russell said concerned me: “Simultaneous format doesn’t address the issues [athletic directors] are facing, which are financial.”
That’s not quite correct. One of the benefits of simultaneous format, of course, is that dual matches would run even faster than the current “diminished doubles/no-ad” format. That allows for several fundamental shifts that have true impact on an athletics budget.
The ability to play more than one dual match per day or to use courts multiple times between men’s and women’s matches provides flexibility in scheduling. That has an economic impact. Playing doubleheaders, like baseball or volleyball, or scheduling a men’s/women’s doubleheader is much more feasible with a shorter event. Even with recent changes to speed up contests, turning over courts (doubles followed by six singles matches) makes it impossible to play doubleheaders of competitive significance. Nowadays, when teams schedule doubleheaders, they are not playing their strongest competition (it would be a competitive risk) and they are usually precluding the other team on campus from playing at home that day.
With simultaneous format, a team match is short enough that tennis could start scheduling doubleheaders, tri-meets and more! This could effectively reduce total dates of competition and reduce expenditure.
Every time an athletic department hosts a match, there is money being spent. Event staff, utilities, security, cleaning, officials’ per diem, student workers, meals, everything an event space must prepare to host the public, amounts to an expense. Tennis becomes less wasteful if that expenditure is going into two, three, four events split between two teams (men and women) in a single day. The value of that expenditure expands by holding more than one event per day and reducing the total number of days these expenditures are needed.
This concept comes into stark relief when you consider travel for away matches. If college tennis has a format that allows tri-matches, coaches can schedule fewer dates of travel while potentially playing more road matches than they do currently. Fewer road trips, fewer hotels, fewer meals, shorter distances to face opponents at tri-match sites are all good for budgets and good for the game.
When you consider the major financial obligations of a college tennis budget, the two most significant pieces at the Division I level are coaching salaries and player scholarships. Mr. Russell did qualify his comment about financial issues facing athletic directors by granting that if you reduce the number of athletes on a team by changing the format, you could conceivably reduce the number of scholarships offered. That’s not really the aim of simultaneous format and it isn’t feasible if we still plan to use six courts in a dual match.
However, salary budget can benefit from the schedule flexibility discussed above using simultaneous format. Among my collegiate coaching assignments, I was briefly the Director of Tennis, Head Men’s and Women’s Coach for a Division I institution. It was the most fun I’ve ever had coaching, managing two teams at once. Many schools look to combine their coaching positions between men’s and women’s teams for Olympic sports. You see it in the swimming pool, on the track, in the boats and on the tennis courts. There is practical savings in combining head coach salaries not to mention administrative efficiency. Assistant coaches can work with both teams as well. When contests fit time constraints and scheduling is easy, the way it is for volleyball, athletic programs can keep their men’s and women’s teams together for home contests while traveling together reduces redundancy and provides more bang for the buck. Granted, combining a coaching staff is not going to work everywhere. Still, combining the roles of assistant coaches is a savings that could not happen without the scheduling flexibility that simultaneous format presents.
Scheduling flexibility through simultaneous format also addresses the wear and tear of a grueling tennis season. Players are taxed less with fewer dates of competition. Even a double-header or tri-match would not ask more from our players physically than in the past. The scheduling freedom we gain from simultaneous format could grant our athletes more time to be students, more time to be members of the general campus community (something D-I athletes lament not having) and more time to heal physically and mentally from the demands of the schedule. As the parent of a D-I athlete, I witness the toll the schedule takes on her body and spirit. As a coach, I want my players to be able to perform to the best of their ability. Schedule is an enormous part of getting the student athlete experience right. Simultaneous format does more for schedule than any measure the NCAA has taken to reduce match length.
Since many of those recent time saving measures do more to hurt the game by empowering cheaters, stunting player development, cheapening competitive value and turning off fans, why not turn to a solution that eliminates all of that? Allow players to play the same game of tennis the pros play. Regular scoring, two out of three sets.
College Tennis is about to face its greatest existential crisis. I agree with Mr. Russell that the health of the Power Five is a major concern. As Mr. Russell says, we have to help the athletic directors who have million dollar tennis budgets make those much smaller. For non-Power Five conferences, the Ivy and Patriot League model of no scholarships may be the way to save a majority of Division-I tennis programs. However, across all of tennis, simultaneous format and the scheduling flexibility it allows may provide enough budget relief to save the game. Even a Power Five tennis budget.
Jeffrey Menaker
Play The Let 