The presence of corporate marketing on campus is most visible at the Athletic Centre. Vending machines line its concrete corridors, their neon glow advertising Pepsi and Dr. Pepper. And upstairs, beside the running track, the familiar Tim Horton’s signature displays prominently above advertisements for women’s hockey.

Some student may lament such developments as just more corporatization, but for university administrators they’re economic life rafts. With budget cuts continuing to slash and burn funds that keep programs afloat, the Faculty of Physical Education and Health (FPEH) has had to find creative ways to fill the gap–and one way is through corporate sponsorship.

“Where we get crunched on is the fact that salaries and cost of living goes up higher than the increase we get from funding,” explained Jennifer Jones, FPEH director of communications. “This incongruency is getting larger and larger.”

Jones is responsible for finding the $150,000 the faculty budgets each year in sponsorship money. She does so by offering promotional space to companies like Kellog’s and Wilson in exchange for products and cash.

Realizing the potential in sponsorship dollars, the faculty has become professionally savvy in its approach, hiring people like Jones to streamline the operation. “They understand the needs of the supplier,” said Locust national sales manager Stean Elgaard. Locust supplies balls and apparel to the women’s and men’s soccer teams. “I think the school system, universities especially, have good people who understand business and generate better proposals.”

And it’s paying off. After a year and a half of negotiations, the faculty last summer inked an exclusive five-year contract with Pepsi Corp. Coke ended a 22-year relationship with the school in Dec., 2001. Converse has also come on board, fitting the men’s and women’s basketball teams with stylish new white sneakers, aptly named the “Respect.”

The faculty isn’t alone in securing such contracts. Coaches, too, are being asked to make connections. “We’re being asked in different ways to help out, in terms of making contact,” said Ken Olynyk, former head coach of the men’s basketball team.

Olynyk, who coached for 12 years with the Blues before leaving this past October, has seen the business side of running his program increase over the years. “It’s become part of the job. In the past it wasn’t.”

But it goes much beyond exchanging handshakes and returning phone calls. Each team must find funds to meet their budget. Along with government cutbacks in the middle of the 1990’s, came cuts in travel, exhibition play, and accommodation. Recently the faculty has eliminated meal money from team budgets.

To assuage their hunger, the varsity soccer team set up shop last week in the AC lobby selling raffle tickets to fund their program. Not long before that, the Thundersquad-the women’s varsity dance squad–sold Revlon eyeliners and lipstick to passing students.

For coaches like Michele Belanger, head of the women’s basketball team, procuring sponsorships is diverting energy away from their real job: coaching. “I don’t know a lot of coaches who like to [go get sponsorships]. We do it to survive, to provide the best program to our student-athletes. The Converse deal is as far as I want to go.”

Belanger wants the faculty to consolidate its efforts rather than let each coach search independently, as they do now. She’d ideally like the FPEH to land large contracts with big-name companies like Nike or Converse to transform U of T into a “Nike school” or a “Converse school.”

Although unlikely to veer that far, Jones does say the faculty is looking to set up a handful of key sponsorships to secure its future. But until then, the fight for corporate dollars is fierce.

The reason for the stiff competition, explains U of T alum and Brooks Canada president Mike Dyon, is that companies are sometimes wary of backing university teams. There are small fan bases and a lack of mass media exposure, like televised games, in Canada-something that American colleges have in abundance. Brooks Canada is another FPEH sponsor and supporter.

Taking a chapter from the American book, and fitting it into U of T’s ambition to compete internationally, the faculty is looking to package its sports “brand” in a more noticeable way. It recently put together a branding manual setting rules on the kinds of U of T logos it hopes to market.

“That gives us a stronger sense of a brand out there,” said Jones. “The T and the leaf is very much Toronto and Canadian and it allows us to compete internationally, potentially down the road.”