CEDAR FALLS — The ISU Athletics Department will completely eliminate its general university financial support for the 2012 fiscal year.

ISU athletics will not receive any funds from the state of Iowa as a result of the decision, approved by the Iowa Board of Regents on Thursday.

“We have been steadily reducing this amount over the last several years and are prepared to take it down to zero,” said ISU President Gregory Geoffroy.

The athletic department has been cutting its dependence annually since being supported by university funds for as much 10.8 percent — $2.4 million — of its budget since 2001.

Iowa State aimed for 2011 to be the final year of school support, with $1.6 million of athletic revenue coming from the university. 

The strategy to relieve ISU athletics of the support had been in place since March 2010 and was laid out by administration officials.

With total athletic revenue rising from $22.3 million to $41.6 million since 2000, Cyclone teams will now be an ISU enterprise, not a state enterprise.

University of Iowa athletics has been without general university or state funding since 2007.

A small amount of funding will continue to be allocated to all state universities for student athletes.

“That does still include, however, tuition set aside, funds from the student-athletes that are members of the athletic department, and a portion of those funds will be used to support scholarships in athletics,” Geoffroy said.

Iowa State’s current plan has the athletics department cutting from under $3.1 million to zero in just less than two years — a much sharper drop than the seven years the University of Iowa took to drop $1.9 million of its university funding since 2001.

The move for athletic sustainability happened as Iowa State was granted $50 million for flood recovery just hours before in the ballroom of UNI’s Maucker Union.

The spending cut ISU athletics took in front of the board hardly offset the cost of this summer’s natural disaster, but the state of Iowa is working to cut as much unnecessary spending as possible in the current recession.

Athletics were directly in the flood talk, as a golf maintenance shed was the only campus building that needed to be entirely replaced. Hilton Coliseum’s flooding received talking points around the table.

“We obviously want to qualify for reimbursement. On the other hand, we want to get back in [Hilton],” said Warren Madden, ISU vice president of business and finance. “We believe you can reinforce stronger doors, seals and the kind of things that collapsed this time around.”

University of Northern Iowa’s major athletics revenue was the focus of discussion and tension during the discussion.

The host of the Board of Regents’ meeting has been slower to cut its dependence on athletics, as the lower-level Football Championship Subdivision team and Missouri Valley conference sports don’t provide the revenue necessary for complete independence.

“We cannot operate our athletic program as a self-sustaining auxiliary,” said UNI President Benjamin Allen. “I do not know of any Division I program that plays our level of football that is self-sustaining.”

The Board of Regents accepted Allen’s proposal to reduce UNI athletic funding to 2.4 percent of its total university support and keep that as a maximum for the length of his four-year plan. Panther athletics budgeted to have $4.5 million come from university support — 38.8 percent of Northern Iowa athletic revenue.

“The existence of athletics makes [students’] experience better,” Allen said. “The existence of athletics brings visibility to the program, so people look at our great academic programs.”

Allen was joined by Panther Athletic Director Troy Dannen, who offered part of Northern Iowa’s proposal to add another Football Bowl Subdivision opponent to its football schedule in 2013, when its scheduling window opens.

The Panthers are slated to take on University of Iowa or Iowa State each year until 2017.

“It does put our own backs against the wall when it comes to playoff qualification,” Dannen said, “because year in and year out the school with 22 less scholarships is not expected to win those games, even though we’ve had our own fair share of success. We would anticipate that going forward.”

In the proposal, the board questioned whether the Big 12 Conference’s realignment and loss of Nebraska and Colorado would negatively affect revenue. While Geoffroy wasn’t questioned on the answer in the discussion, the university replied to the question in the proposal.

“The future Big 12 conference membership change has no impact on the university’s proposed plan to reduce university support to athletics,” according to the proposal.

Current funding from ISU athletics comes from fundraising, ticket sales, the Big 12 conference, sponsorships, student fees and university support.

Once the fiscal year 2011 reaches a close, the entirety of the budget will come from sources other than the university.