Reduced schedules to get a second look

Perhaps reducing the state’s prep sports schedules will save athletic departments money.
Perhaps it won’t.
Jeff Malloy doesn’t know for sure.
Consequently, Malloy, athletic director at Gainesville Oak Hall who also sits on the Florida High School Athletic Association’s board of directors, wants to take another look at it. And he would like his fellow board members to follow suit during Friday morning’s meeting in Orlando.
In an attempt to cut costs, the board voted to reduce varsity sports schedules by 20 percent and sub-varsity schedules by 40 percent. Football was excluded.
Malloy voted against the measure, which in April passed by a count of 9-6.
“I don’t feel we had the information necessary to pass the game reductions — for both sides,” Malloy said Wednesday afternoon. “Maybe this is a viable change — I don’t know. I think we need more information.”
Malloy has proposed the board suspend the reductions for 2009-10 to allow members to gather more information from the FHSAA’s member schools. Malloy wants to find out how sports departments are funded, and if slashing the number of games, and therefore slashing the amount of money programs can generate from ticket sales and concessions, would do more harm than good.
“The outcry has been totally negative,” Malloy said, adding superintendents are the few who have voiced support for the reductions. “I feel we need more information, but more importantly, I don’t think we listened to our members."