Let’s say the recession deepens. Suppose the UW’s public funding and donorship keeps plummeting and more than just the UW swimming program gets cut.

Swimming was the first to go because, unlike football and basketball, it doesn’t produce revenue. This raises a difficult question: Do school sports exist only for profit?

The cut of the swimming program is suspect. Why ax a program that has competed and placed at the NCAA championships a few years running? The women’s team placed 12th in the 2007-2008 season, UW’s highest placement in swimming team history. This season, the men’s team placed 16th, and the women’s team placed 15th.

It’s hard to know who to root for when even our school’s best teams are subject to termination. Our volleyball team has played beautifully, but it couldn’t fill Husky Stadium at $40 a ticket like the football team can.

The volleyball team made it into the Elite Eight but still doesn’t make as much money for the UW as the football program — even when our football team plays like a Pop Warner second string.

These decisions are all about the money. The athletes, the school, the history of the program and the future of it take a backseat to coaches’ salaries and maximized fundraising dollars. Cutting a historic and productive program is frustrating to both the athletes and the UW community.

Would Husky football be cut after a 12th-place finish nationally? Would it be cut after an eighth-place finish? No, that would never happen. Spectator-drawing teams will never be cut, but they aren’t the only sports that do great things for the school.

A vibrant and varied athletic community at any school is conducive to success and interest in all sports. Athletes do more than just play their sport. They strive for good academic performance and are examples to the rest of us, whose schedules aren’t nearly as crazy. Athletes help the community by giving clinics to younger athletes, and the UW has just forgone the influence it had on aspiring swimmers.

While the athletic department is busy counting its dollars during the next few months, the turf at Husky Stadium will get replaced to the tune of $350,000, as the ancient pool facility sits vacant. There is quite a disparity in what our athletic program’s priorities are and what they should be.

Reach columnist Jackson Rohrbaugh at opinion@dailyuw.com.