UC Davis announced in January that its equestrian program would cease to exist as a Division-I sport at the end of the school year. However, a parent-led investigation found that the university might’ve lied about its reasons for the decision.
An external financial audit found very different numbers than the ones that were reported.
UC Davis was forced to review its own decision to cut the equestrian team after the discrepancies first came to light. However, the school has not provided an update on its review with only a few days remaining until the program’s demotion becomes official.
UC Davis cut the equestrian team based on “accounting.”
The University of California, Davis has one of the most decorated equestrian programs in the United States. The Aggies won back-to-back conference championships in 2023 and 2024, won again in 2026 and competed at the national championships in 2019 and 2024. They were ranked No. 7 in the country when they found out about the decision to move the team from D1 to the club level.
UC Davis cited financial concerns. A “detailed financial analysis and an independent assessment of the national competitive landscape” presented enough reason to shutter the program. According to Gabe Fernandez of SFGATE, the university was tasked with making a 10% cut to the athletic department’s budget. That came out to approximately $1.05 million.
Cutting the equestrian program would supposedly save $1.02 million. It was essentially 1-to-1.
However, UC Davis is subject to public record laws as a public school so parents were able to receive additional information about the decision to shutter the program. They decided to dig deeper. What they found was (is) suspicious.
“I feel very passionately about doing what’s right, and you know, if at the end of the day we found out that this was best for the university, and it’s a bad thing for our daughters, but it’s understandable, we would have walked away,” Sigrid Elschot, a Stanford professor and mom to a sophomore on the team, told SF Gate. “But the more we dug, literally within the first couple weeks, the more we realized that there was something really egregious happening.”
First and foremost, the university decided to cut the team five months before it informed the student-athletes on the team. That put them at a serious disadvantage in terms of their future. They could not enter the transfer portal. They were effectively trapped.
Perhaps more importantly, the numbers did not add up.
A financial audit revealed discrepancies.
Advocates for the equestrian program hired an independent firm called OSKR. OSKR did its own independent audit of the financial report used by the university to support the cut. The math did not math.
UC Davis’ initial report counted the value of donated horses under the program’s expenses at a total of $665,000. It also reported the team’s direct overhead costs in 2024 as 45X the average from 2019-2023. The whole thing was off
The report included the boarding fees that the team paid to the university. OSKR said the fees should’ve been considered an “internal transfer where the expense item burdened by the team ins a revenue item for the school.” Meanwhile, the report did not consider coaching salaries when comparing expenses to other athletic programs.
All-in-all, according OSKR’s findings, UC Davis overstated the equestrian team’s expenses by more than $850,000. The university initially ranked the equestrian team second among its 25 varsity sports in terms of per-athlete spending. OSKR said it was actually 15th. The miscalculation was significant.
UC Davis spokesperson told SFGATE that he objects to the OSKR audit. It “did not confirm to the generally accepted auditing standards.” He also questioned the qualifications of the audit’s author, Andy Schwarz.
Schwarz has worked as an economic consultant on NCAA matters since 1997. He found irony in Nash’s criticism
“The premise of my analysis is that the NCAA accounting system is not well designed to assess the universitywide economic and financial questions regarding sports viability. The criticism that I didn’t apply the NCAA standard accounting, or that I’m not even an accountant, kind of misses the point, because it was the accounting system, the approach, that led them to make their mistakes.”
UC Davis Chancellor Gary May told the California Aggie 86 days ago that the university secondary audit would be “completed by the end of June.” It is now the end of June and the audit is not complete. The team remains in line to be cut.
To make matters worse, only three athletes were able to transfer to another equestrian program because of the timing. The other 37 athletes are left without an opportunity to compete next season and, in some cases, without a scholarship.