Yes, it costs a lot to maintain the ice ... but most of the athletics department is a fixed cost anyways. For a lot of the larger universities, that cost difference is negligible in the grand scheme of things, and the revenue generated from external ice rental is negligible because the ice times are filled with classes and intramurals. I get shutting it down in the spring / summer when there is no internal use for it ... but in the winter? Depends on the university.
I can't vouch for all schools, but here anyways we have budgets (revenues and expenses) that need to be respected, and we have a hard time hitting our targets in a good year, I can't begin to wonder what would happen in a scenario like this. Take it this way... our revenue targets are about 60k in sports revenues, about 275k in rec center revenue and about 170k in ice time. We have 15 full-time employees accross our sports department and rec center ops (both departments are combined under one service). That's not taking into account (in a good year) 200k in travel for the teams, 100k+ in equipment costs, 100k in game day/other part-time staff, 300k (global, all sports) bursaries etc etc... Most of the time Sports departments end up being loss centers for small (and often bigger) universities, we don't generate the revenue levels the NCAA does unfortunately. The bursaries they will have to honour either way, but I can see campus's all over trying to keep expenses to a minimum if there is no possibility of revenue coming in.
I meant the Rec Centre would be closed to the public (i.e., non-athlete students). It can't be that difficult to monitor access to the facility and restrict it to varsity athletes.
By "this is Canada" I meant that it's not like the NCAA where Football and Basketball are revenue generators. No USports programs generate meaningful revenue for the university, so all would be treated equally for that reason.
Yikes! Good luck, amigo.
It wouldn't be hard to control access no, but it would create a shit storm in the community, which we don't need. Besides, if in your scenario most classes would be online (which I can easily see happening) it would be kind of hard to get the kids to move to campus/the city only for practices. It probably costs a studen nearly 1000 $ month to live on their own while at university, while if they were to stay at home to attend classes, close to 0. With the summer job season looking like it is, many students (not just student-athletes) won't have much wiggle room come September. That's another point too, if too many students are without employment this summer, some might not be able to come back to university in the fall, creating another black hole of revenue for most schools.
Even if we hit our revenue targets (or exceed them by a LOT) it doesn't even match the maintenance, upkeep and utility costs of keeping the rec center and arena going for a full season.
Thanks, I'm not too worried right at this moment, our year-end is today so I've got work for a bit still, and getting things set-up for a hypothetical 2020-2021 season for a bit too, but if they were to cancel the full 20-21 season I'd get a little worried. My U Sports/other duties are pretty much 50/50 but if the rec center stays closed to well... a sports department accountant/game day supervisor is pretty damn low on the list of essential employees for a university campus, and my GF is our front desk receptionist/bookings coordinator for the rec center, so we're both in the same boat.