Southern Miss braces for financial impact from shutdown of sports due to coronavirus
Pete Taylor Park at Southern Miss will fall quiet for the rest of the spring and there will be no Conference USA baseball tournament title trophy handed out at Biloxi’s MGM Park on Memorial Day weekend.
C-USA announced Monday night that it is canceling all competition for spring sports, meaning sports like baseball, softball and women’s rowing will be put to a halt due to the new coronavirus outbreak across the U.S. The decision was made following a unanimous vote by the Conference USA Board of Directors.
After holding conversations with officials across C-USA over the weekend, USM athletic director Jeremy McClain said that it quickly became apparent that the league was ready to shut down spring competition.
“I think everybody felt that way,” he said. “We wanted to go through the formal process, make sure presidents and chancellors weighed in. I think we all felt like it was headed in that direction.”
The 2020 USM baseball campaign will end with a record of 12-4 with the season finale coming in a 9-7 victory over Troy in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 10.
The softball team finishes with a record of 14-8 after dropping the season finale, 7-2, to Mississippi State in Hattiesburg on March 11.
It’s been a surreal few days for the entire USM athletic department after C-USA announced an indefinite suspension of sporting events on Thursday.
“It’s obviously not something you anticipate having to deal with,” McClain said. “In many ways, it’s been surreal. The sports world has shut down, but this is much bigger than any contest or sporting event, and we understand that. I’m proud of the industry. The NCAA and conferences stepped up and responded in the right way. It’s difficult to deal with, but I feel for the student-athletes most of all.”
The NCAA announced last week that spring athletes who had the majority their seasons wiped out will be given a chance to regain a year of eligibility for next season.
The financial impact for Southern Miss
Every Div. I program will deal with the financial fallout of canceled games, but few programs will take a bigger blow than USM, which has a total budget of just north of $24 million to among the smallest in the Football Bowl Subdivision. The baseball program is one of the school’s bigger draws, pulling in an average of about 3,000 fans a game.
“When we first started talking about (canceling the rest of the season), I made a decision to not look at the financial impact,” McClain said. “We wanted to make decisions on what’s best for students and the community, the state and the country. We’ve begun to to start looking at the financial numbers, and it will have an impact on us. We’re obviously losing a key revenue piece with baseball, which is one our most popular sports from a fan standpoint. That has an impact. We’ll work through that. We’ll minimize it the best we can. We’ll make adjustments at the end of the year.”
For fans who have questions about tickets they’ve purchased for the spring, the USM athletic department plans to reach out soon.
“Now that we’ve canceled spring events, we’ll be communicating with folks within a week,” McClain said. “We want to give people an idea of what the options are. People have been great. We have wonderful fans. We’ve had very few calls demanding info from a ticket standpoint. I think everybody understands the situation.”
Also taking a financial hit is Overtime Sports, which has hosted the C-USA baseball tournament in Biloxi the last three seasons.
“We have sponsors who have already bought advertising and marketing,” Overtime Sports CEO Tim Bennett said. “So this is not easy to recover from, especially from the standpoint of insurance. There is no insurance that covers what we’re going through. It’s a tough blow, but the good part is we’re continuing to work with C-USA. We’ve enjoyed a great relationship with them.”
Bennett is confident that his company will again play host to the 2021 C-USA tournament in Mississippi.
USM football spring practice in limbo
While spring competition has been called off by C-USA, there has yet to be a decision from the conference on whether to cancel football spring practice. Florida International, Louisiana Tech and Charlotte have suspended practices and USM wasn’t planning on starting spring sessions until after this week’s spring break.
“That’s to be determined,” McClain said. “Obviously, the current environment makes that very challenging. That’s not a decision that has been made yet. We’ll have that conversation at a conference level as we move through the week to get more clear direction. We try to be on the same page. We expect to get more direction on that later this week.”
High school sports suspended by MHSAA
The Mississippi High School Activities Association has suspended all sporting events through March 29 and until further notice.
“We urge our member schools and their communities to take every possible precaution to remain safe and healthy,” MHSAA executive director Don Hinton said in a statement. “MHSAA leadership is working diligently to adjust to this rapidly evolving situation and will share updates as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue to work through this unfortunate situation together.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 2:51 PM.
