Sport, said broadcaster Howard Cosell, is "human life in microcosm." Ain't it the truth at the University of Maryland athletic department, where the economic mood strikes approximately the same chord as that of the unemployment rate and the budget deficit. University sports budgets, it turns out, can't grow forever any more than subprime mortgage originations or government spending. In what President Wallace D. Loh called one of his "most painful and heart-wrenching decisions," the University of Maryland, College Park, is eliminating more than a fourth of its varsity teams, including men's and women's swimming and diving, men's tennis, and men's track and field.
