Outwardly, this might seem so.
However, you need to understand that this was done in conjunction with UNO's announcement of going Division 1 and joining the Summit League in everything except hockey where they were already D-1 and in the WCHA.
Football was no brainer. As a D-2 member UNO had averaged between 2,000 and 3,000 fans per game for a
long time time. Not only did UNO football have to live in the shadow of University of Nebraska football if they went D-1 but they would have had to have massively upgraded the football facilities as well. Caniglia Field only seats about 9500 for football. This is
way below the NCAA minimum for a D-1 program. It's a quaint stadium in a beautiful setting but there is a high school complex in Lincoln, NE that puts it to shame, not withstanding a bunch of Texas high school complexes that do the same thing. Additionally, Summit League schools do not sanction football, anyway. Football was losing money hand over fist, and, had been for a long time.
Wrestling was more complicated. Even though UNO had one of the biggest wrestling budgets in all of D-2 and the results to go with it, it was maybe half what they would have needed to spend to be competitive in D-1 (based on a what is currently spent on wrestling in D-1, on average), and, wrestling is
also not a D-1 sport in the Summit League. UNO was already funding more wrestling scholarships in D-2 than any other D-2 school as it was. That ante was going to have be upped pretty dramatically to continue that level of success and the program would have also had to have found a home in
another D-1 conference besides the Summit League for wrestling to continue on in any event. Interestingly, such an option
was available. There are a couple of other Summit League schools in the Western Wrestling Conference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Wrestling_Conference
............but UNO (read:Trev Alberts) deemed it too expensive for reasons already mentioned, anyway, and passed without even seriously looking into it.
This article was published by the Omaha World Herald at the start of this whole process. Anybody looking for more detail would have no trouble finding more.
http://www.omaha.com/article/20110313/NEWS01/703139891
FYI, I support and agree with Trev Alberts decision(s) here. He said the entire athletic department would have been broke in 5 years if he hadn't taken these steps and there is no doubt in my mind that he was right. I can totally understand why outsiders looking in might think his actions were stupid or wrong. He's defended himself and his decision ever since and I support him. They hired him to clean up the mess that was the UNO Athletic Department and, IMHO, he's made sure we're gonna have one in the future. Do a Google search about what went on in UNO's Athletic Department between Trev's tenure and Bob Dannenhauer's tenure as AD, previously, at UNO and you'll see what sort of mess Trev inherited.
You have to remember that UNO hockey has also lost money ever since they moved from the Omaha Civic Auditorium to the Qwest, now Centurylink Center. This is because UNO is playing in a city-owned facility (which is the reason alcohol is readily available at UNO games) and they do not control most of the revenues including suites, parking, and concessions besides
all of the ticket revenue. Ever wonder why it is if you browse around to various college hockey web sites and see all kinds of different seating capacities for the Centurylink Center in Omaha for hockey and why this is? One reason is that the city expanded the arena 4 years after it opened and added an upper deck that didn't previously exist at one end of the arena. That added a couple thousand seats.
The other reason is because the school does not control all the seats in the arena. There are a lot of seats that have been sold to "seat license holders" by the City's administrator of the arena, MECA:
http://www.omahameca.com/
These seat license holder's seats are deducted from the hockey capacity in a lot of cases on these web sites. These seats are literally owned by people that MECA has sold them to. These people own these seats for any and every function in the arena, including UNO hockey.
The hockey capacity in this building is 16,680. Any other number you read less than that is wrong. Even the building's own web site gives this number, by the way. Its amazing how many smaller numbers you can find if you look around.
UNO's deletion of football and wrestling, as well as their simultaneous declaration that they are a "hockey school", cemented the future of UNO hockey, which really was in some jeopardy.
The school's lease with the city at Centurylink ends at the end of the 2013 season. If the city does not give them a much more favorable lease they will likely build a new area that they, themselves, control.
What I think is more likely is that they get the lease they want and they will then build the practice facility they desperately need instead of building an an actual arena. UNO can't afford, really, to build the arena (size-wise) that they need. And, the City of Omaha can't afford to lose them as a tenant. Their upcoming series with UMD on the 13th & 14th is going to draw north of 25,000 (well over 20,000 tickets for the two games have already been sold) and UNO can't afford to build an arena to accommodate this kind of following, or, so popular opinion says around here. The talk has been of building an arena that seats "around" 8,000. UNO has
averaged better than that number 9 out of it's 15 season of existence. It would seem stupid to walk away from a possibility of having a 10,000+ person per game team playing in an 8,000 person per game arena. Omaha is the 59th largest metro area in the country. It would be a shame to walk away from potential ticket buyers.
Lastly, Title 9 was also a BIG consideration in the decision to do away with the wrestling and football programs, given what UNO had to add, program-wise, after these deletions.
