To the Editor
Comments on article “Should Mustang Football be dropped”

Here are some statistics about the Western Athletic Program.

Western has 219 student athletes. 106 of them are in the football program. 30 of the 219 athletes are from New Mexico and 5 of them are from the tri-county area.

The state funds the athletic program with $1,742,100, student fees bring in another $651,197 those together with some other small amounts gives the total athletic budget of $2,837,906.

There are a few state laws that affect athletics. One limits the number of athletic scholarships for Western to 140 full tuition and fee scholarships. Another limits the number of out-of-state scholarships to 75% of total. By law Western could give up to $959,630 a year in grants in aid but chooses to give only $768,164. With 219 athletes Western should by law have 54 in-state athletes but only has 30, this could be a violation of law. Eastern is also subject to the same laws as Western, Eastern’s tuition and fees are significantly less than Western so their 140 scholarships generates even less grant in aid money than Western.

The football program has a budget of $471,326, including grants in aid of $258,547.

A student athlete costs for tuition, fees, housing and meals about $20,000 a year. That’s over $4 million with over $3 million having to be paid by financial aid programs outside of the Athletic Department.

Why won’t Western do away with football and why is Western putting $300,000 more into athletic scholarships next year? Because winning games is only secondary to recruiting students to come to Western that normally wouldn’t come. Do you think any of the out-of-state athletics would come to Western without an athletic scholarship? About 12% of all undergraduate credits are taken by athletes. Why doesn’t Western recruit locally? Because there are over 300 dorm rooms that need to be filled, locals live at home.

The University administration has other considerations besides having competitive teams when it comes to Athletics, keeping up enrollment and paying the bonds on the dorms.

As for baseball, when I came to Western in 1974, Western was in ‘Sports Illustrated” magazine for the college baseball program with the record for the longest losing streak in history.

Alfred Milligan
Silver City, NM