VOA常速英语:疫情冲击高校体育

Colleges and universities, many already under financial strain, could face additional funding hardships if they cut sports programs. And you know there's never a good time for a pandemic, but for college sports, I think this was particularly bad, because it happened right at the beginning of the Men's Basketball Tournament. And the Men's Basketball Tournament is the largest source of revenue for the NCAA. According to figures from the National Collegiate Athletic Association or NCAA, college sports make roughly one billion dollars annually in ticket sales and promotions for the universities. Athletic dollars from basketball, football and baseball can contribute more than half of a school's operating budget. That loss of revenue this year will be felt not just this year, but for the next several years to come. Some of that money trickles down to students through financial aid.

There are more than 20,000 international student athletes enrolled in competing NCAA schools. These schools provide more than 2.9 billion dollars in athletic scholarships to students annually. Prior to the pandemic, I was pretty confident that I would be able to get a scholarship, with the improvements I would have made during the season. But because of the ending of the season that it happened, hopefully in the end I'll be able to still get a scholarship, and still be competitive at the college level. Some schools are pushing to go ahead with their college football season, a move that will require a huge increase in Covid-19 testing for their athletes. They don't necessarily have the right resources to do all the testing. So it's a concern because I don't know of a university football team that hasn't had positive cases. But Thomas Ford, who is working with colleges and universities to increase their testing capacity, understands the push to not cancel sports. The economic impact to the universities is huge as you can imagine. I think the budget for football is like 500 million dollars for Texas. And so it's not a small fee. What do you do with season ticket holders, what do you do with people that have already bought tickets. Can you refund all that money or have you allocated it somewhere else already. Whether schools will delay sports seasons or be forced to cancel them entirely is yet to play out.

Isha Sarai VOA news Washington