Thus Taylor Branch — civil rights historian, MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant’ recipient, Friend of Bill Clinton, and no stranger to controversy — titles his new Atlantic cover story:
… “Why,” asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, “should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?”
__
Vaccaro did not blink. “They shouldn’t, sir,” he replied. “You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir,” Vaccaro added with irrepressible good cheer, “but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.” …
__
But what Vaccaro said in 2001 was true then, and it’s true now: corporations offer money so they can profit from the glory of college athletes, and the universities grab it. In 2010, despite the faltering economy, a single college athletic league, the football-crazed Southeastern Conference (SEC), became the first to crack the billion-dollar barrier in athletic receipts. The Big Ten pursued closely at $905 million. That money comes from a combination of ticket sales, concession sales, merchandise, licensing fees, and other sources—but the great bulk of it comes from television contracts….
I do not pretend to understand sports. Can those of you who do enlighten me as to whether Taylor’s premises are as significant as he contends?
MattR
Have not read the whole article yet, but my initial guess is that Taylor is pretty close to the mark (if not right on it)
Royston Vasey
Evening, New Zealand calling.
You might not know this, but there is the Rugby World Cup on this month and most of October.
The big game tonight, starting in about 35 minutes is USA vs Russia from New Plymouth.
Break out the foam fingers U.S.A! U.S.A!
RV in NZ
handy
It’s a miracle that someone like Sonny Vaccaro told the truth and let it be documented. Yes, AL, Taylor’s basic premise is sound. Schools, athletic conferences, and the NCAA are making money hand over fist on the backs of young men who don’t see a dime of it, even long after they leave school. Some have called it a kind of indentured servitude. I would not disagree with that characterization.
Yutsano
@Royston Vasey:
Through Book of Faces found an old friend from college lives down your way now. Still not quite sure how that all came about, but it sticks with the reputation of graduates of my school going all over the planet. BTW she told me about it.
Yutsano
A little puppeh crack for me and BHF. ME. WANT!!
Mino
@Yutsano: Oh, man, they have a Boston puppy. Too cute. And those blue eyes.
MattR
I think this is the nut paragraph of the story
I am also glad to see that Joseph Agnew’s case is highlighted.
Overall a good article although I slightly disagree with one of his points at the very end about how member institutions could potentially be the greatest threat to the future of the NCAA. I don’t disagree with that premise, but I disagree with his reasoning. He thinks that the powerhouse football teams moving to a playoff will demonstrate that they don’t need the NCAA to run things. IMO, the threat is actually that all the money in college football is leading to the creation of 16+ team superconferences. Once those superconferences are formed they may create a playoff in football, but even if they don’t they will realize that they can create their own college basketball tournament without the NCAA, which would effectively defund and cripple the NCAA.
Yutsano
@Mino: There are four left, located in California. Just for informational purposes.
Mino
@Yutsano: I’m glad they are so far away. Too tempting. My niece has had two Danes–sweet dogs.
Pyrs were my breed but I only have cats now.
handy
@MattR:
This is very much where things look to be heading ATM.
Yutsano
@Mino: They’re on the edge of just close enough to take a long weekend to go get one. If I could. I’m on a one pet lease and I already have a
Galtian overlordcat. Plus a pet size restriction. I end up getting my own place though…Royston Vasey
Kiwis singing the US national anthem before the game right now.
Cool.
Next up: The Russia anthem
MattR
@Yutsano: Puppeh!!!!!
@rageahol: Wikipedia says 1991. And that he was part of the second class that included males at Goucher, fall 1988. That means he either graduated in three years or transferred there. Either way I feel safe in saying the doughy pantload was not getting laid despite the roughly 90% female population at the time. P.S. The best thing about Goucher College is that you can walk to the Towson mall from there. And since we are talking about relatively obscure Baltimore colleges, I recently ran into an alum of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. First time that has happened.
@handy: It does seem to be inevitable though 12 really is such a better number for football. When there are 80-90 teams (that generate 80-90% of the revenue) in 5 superconferences they will be able to tell the NCAA to kiss off.
Royston Vasey
One minute into the game, and Russia get a penalty (hands in the ruck)
RUS 3 – 0 USA
Mino
@Yutsano: Not having a dog does leave an empty space and with Pyrs that’s pretty big. I lost my last one to bone cancer. I don’t think I want to commit to another; at this stage of my life, cats are a better fit. And cats have been known to take up a lot of space, too.
MattR
@Mino:
Is that a Tunch joke?
handy
Big surprise here: The Family Values crowd continues to fail.
Anne Laurie
@Yutsano: So sweeeeet! One warning, not that you really need it: Even the best-tempered, gentlest Dane-sized puppy is a LOT of dog to handle, physically. If I had orthopedic challenges, I’d maybe hold off… or settle for a GD old enough to be past the ‘puppy awkwards’. I’d rather share the back of a van with five adult Danes than one Irish Setter puppy (having done both), but when 85 pounds of love & floppy teenage-puppy elbows throws himself at you, even a low center of gravity is insufficient sacroiliac protection, if you know what I mean. :)
Royston Vasey
11 mins played. Penalty to USA
RUS 3 – 3 USA
Anne Laurie
@Royston Vasey:
Maybe it’s the late hour (on this side of the globe) but that sounds like an excerpt from a bachelor party speech, somehow.
Mino
Is that a Tunch joke?
I wouldn’t dare. And my first dog was an Irisher. Beautiful but brainless. To be honest, I was totally unprepared for ownership of such a wild child. I found a breed I could be more comfortable with, and learned how to raise a puppy to be a good citizen.
Royston Vasey
Fabulous USA Try!
Oh, hold on. It’s been referred to the TMO.
Yes, it’s a try from Mike Petri.
Conversion is over too. 20mins played.
RUS 3 – 10 USA
MattR
@handy: I would have a hard time condemning someone for cheating on their spouse who has Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. The change in relationship is pretty close to the same as for death so I can understand how a spouse could seek out comfort elsewhere to fill the void. Having said that, anyone who actually leaves their spouse due to such an illness should be shunned from society.
@Royston Vasey: I can pretty much follow the terminology, but “TMO”? Television Monitor Official for replays?
Royston Vasey
@Anne Laurie: Ha!I suppose it does. =)
it’s currently 7:55pm Thursday night here in NZ
Royston Vasey
25 min: The USA are beginning to whip the ball around very nicely now. Todd Clever goes on an NFL-style sortie down the right, Hayden Smith offloading brilliantly as he falls. Cleaver batters three Russians out of the way, but is eventually brought tumbling to earth. But the incessant pressure is getting to Russia: after a couple more phases of play, there’s a scrum, the front row collapsing.
Penalty. The USA are sniffing blood, because instead of kicking for goal, they kick to the corner. Can they get over the line?
No! Turnover ball to Russia!
AA+ Bonds
I stick with the NFL. College football is a fucking disgrace.
Yutsano
@Mino:
My first dog was a Newfie. 120 pounds of big furry protective slobbery luv. I’ve always had an affection for big puppehs. And I love the looks of Danes.
(AL may see a double entendre there. I neither confirm nor deny anything.)
@Anne Laurie: The living and work situation is enough for me to eschew right now. Although the black and white one that is a dead ringer for border collie markings is too cute for words.
Royston Vasey
Half time
RUS 3 – 10 USA
Royston Vasey
48min
Penalty to Russia (incorrectly entering ruck)
Missed!
RUS 3 – 10 USA
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
zomg cute overload!
A couple of danes in the neighborhood… lovely and big as ponies.
Warren Terra
In discussing the atrocity that is College Sports in the US, there are really too many points to make. So I’ll just tell one of them: the story of the current president of the NCAA, Mark Emmert.
Before he had that job, Emmert was the President of my alma mater, the University Of Washington (briefly football champions in 1991, shortly before the police and the NCAA and even the press started paying attention to some of what was going on – but that was long before Emmert had come to town). What he did as UW president, and what that says about the priorities of the man the NCAA recruited as their new Preident, speaks volumes.
Emmert didn’t actually do much as President of the UW. The state is slashing the UW’s funding, as are most states, and Emmert didn’t make a difference there. The state is mandating the creation of under-resourced satellite campuses, and Emmert was actually recruited to help implement this misguided policy. Basically, Emmert had two accomplishments: he pushed for the construction of a brand-new football stadium; and he had a Husky Football game played on a Thursday.
The stadium idea is even more painfully stupid than it might at first appear: not only is there the obvious issue of finding the money to build it in hard times, and not only does the current stadium work just fine; there’s also an almost brand new NFL stadium a few miles away. The NFL stadium is not often used on Saturdays – and a light-rail line is already being extended from one stadium to the other.
But it’s the Thursday game that tells you where Emmert’s heart is – the heart of the man just recruited to head the NCAA. The NCAA wanted to experiment with Thursday Night College Football, basically for the same reason that the NFL has Monday Night Football, i.e. television revenue. Under Emmert, the UW signed up to play, and host, such a game. Thing is, the Thursday in question was a normal school day: classes weren’t cancelled, nothing else was officially changed. Well, except one thing: the vast parking lots by the football stadium were off-limits to students, staff, and faculty. Two-thirds of the students commute, and essentially all the staff and faculty; many drive or carpool, and except for the medical school essentially all of those park at the stadium on class days. Except, of course, when they can’t.
Mind you, kickoff was at 6PM, and at least when I was a student there the first classes started before 8AM. But Emmert wanted the parking lot set aside for the football fans, and for the tailgaters – education be damned.
It has long been obvious to everyone that the so-called “student-athletes” are mostly nothing of the kind: the athletics takes priority, and their studies just have to suffer. This must have been even more true than usual for the players in that Thursday’s game, playing on a day when they were supposed to be in class – especially the away team. But in deciding to cripple the educational mission of a whole campus in order to experiment with increased television revenue for “amateur” football, the man the NCAA was even then recruiting to lead their organization showed his loyalties are to football; certainly not to scholasticism.
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
Me too, although I readily confess to being completely smitten with my little 9 lb. Juno, gadawful breath and everything… and she loves her big (90 lb) brother beyond all reason and measure, as do I.
And while we’re talking puppehs, I got an email forward that wasn’t crap today – lovely portraits of the few surviving dogs that did search work at ground zero.
Royston Vasey
62 min: Yet again, Russia hold up the US, slowing the ball almost to a standstill in the breakdown. America shift the ball back to Wyles in the pocket, but his attempt at a drop goal from not much more than 25 yards drifts wide right. The kicking has been pretty poor here, all in all. Not a particularly free-flowing game.
65 min: PENALTY to USA. Another handling error in the breakdown. Wyles can’t miss this one, it’s right in front of the sticks, and he doesn’t.
Russia 3-13 USA.
Warren Terra
On a more cheerful note, and because the late-night threads are often interested in pet stories, a feel-good story from the AP in the New York Times:
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i’ve read a number of the excerpts, and thus far it doesn’t sound like much that jason whitlock hasn’t said for years. of course, this guy will feed the self-righteousness of academia better, as he is one of their own. given that the koch bros. can buy any school they want for pocket change, i am not sure college athletics aren’t merely representative of the entire relationship between universities etc and corporations etc. so while i probably will agree with the article for the most part, those pretending to have the integrity of the institutions themselves at heart are full of shit too.
A Mom Anon
Questions from someone who is not a sporty type person:
What would happen to colleges without football? I know there’s a lot of money involved here,but how much of that actually goes back into helping students get an education?
My husband actually played football for Uof Maryland for a yr until a bad injury took him out of the program and out of school for good(no way could he or his family afford it without the scholarship). Are things more corrupt now or has it always been like this? From what I’ve been able to observe locally,some of this attitude and practice is trickling down to the high school(and yes,middle school) level too. It really needs to stop.
Warren Terra
@A Mom Anon:
The accounting is incredibly messed up, with contradictory claims. Critics say that these programs are harmful not only to the “students” involved in them (and still more damaging to those young people who don’t make the cut), but also cost massive sums or at best break even. Boosters of football claim that it makes a lot of money for the school – but they play games both on the cost side (a college football stadium is expensive to build, to maintain, and to operate, and little of this is necessarily charged to the football program) and on the revenue side (for example, it’s common for such boosters to claim that all revenue from university-branded merchandise should be credited to the sports program – even though a lot of non-sports-fans buy University branded sweatshirts and binders). Boosters also claim that alumni giving is greatly increased when the team is winning, a claim that is apparently true – although, again, the boosers typically claim credit for a larger share of alumni contributions than they can prove they attracted.
Title IX also comes into this: football is incredibly expensive, and also brings in a lot of revenue (albeit how much is unclear). Title IX says that opportunities must be equal for men and women in college sport; because of this, to at least partially balance their massive spending on men-only football, colleges have to spend more on women’s sports, none of which bring in any money (except in the case of a few schools’ Women’s Basketball teams). None of this increased spending is usually assessed against the football program, though it would disappear without the football program.
superdestroyer
@MattR:
If the 64 biggest football schools leave the NCAA, the question then becomes who do they schedule to play. If they can only play each other, then schools from Wisconsin to Alabama can no longer schedule cream puffs like Kent State or South Dakota. That means some of those 64 schools will have lousy records, 1-11 or 0-12 and will lose thier fan support. Then those schools will be poor sisters to the top schools in the 64.
I suspect that the big time football schools are are not very good in basketball (Alabama, Oklahoma, USC, Penn State) would love to put an end to March Madness because they do not want to share the money with Butler or George Mason.
What will be sad in a 64 school association is that some schools that have no business being there (VAnderbilt, Duke, Northwestern) while schools with a long history of success in football like Texas Tech or BYU could be up on the outside looking in.
schlemizel - was Alwhite
@A Mom Anon:
From what I have read – and I make no claim to have looked very deeply , only some light reading of reports put together from some econ profs & commentary around them – all college sports lose money. The cry of “football pays for all the other sports” is only true if you look at only the revenue generated & not the costs or where the money came from.
These programs are generally built on government funds (or alum money for privates) and student fees and the amount going in is greater than the amount coming out. The fall back position is:1 Its good PR for the school and 2 what Warren said, it supposed to draw in more alum money.
HeartlandLiberal
I just finished a 25 year career at Indiana University. The last 15 of those years my position was IT Director for the Intercollegiate Athletics Department.
That’s the Hoosiers to you, Bub. And yes, I did know Bob Knight before Myles Brand fired him, and it was the worst thing to ever happen to the program. We have never really recovered. Bob Knight may have been an a**hole, but he never cheated and his players went to class and acted like decent human beings or they found themselves kicked out of the program. End of story, like it or not. And how many other basketball coaches worked with the university music school to stage Aaron Copeland’s ‘Lincoln Portrait’, with Bob Knight doing the narrative part?
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/OCM/releases/webknigh.htm
But on to the central question here:
Over the past ten years, I watched as the commercial interests basically completed their takeover of college and university sports. Now they own us to the point they determine game kick off and tip off times, often putting games at horrible times. And often we don’t even know the game times till 10 days out. You know the drill. It is all a result nationwide of the ownership of college athletics by the broadcast industry.
15 years ago, the budget ran on an annual budget of about 33 million dollars. Now that budget is around 65 million and growing.
But here is the key statistic. 25 – 30% of that money comes from contracts for broadcast rights, primarily the Big Ten Network, but the deals for the major games with ESPN(s), CBS, etc. There are separate contracts that manage radio rights and distribution. The department has staff from some these commercial interests embedded right in the department, as ‘sports marketing’ wing for the marketing and radio and advertising interests. We even have an Adidas rep on site. (Funny story. He would not let us take control of his computer to insure it was safe to connect to the IU network. So he had to sit there and use a slow modem and phone line. Har de har.)
What is particularly galling to me was watching the progression. When I started, there was NO ADVERTISING at all inside the basketball venue. Today, we have a 1.5 million dollar scoreboard and a hi-tech video board on the scorers table facing the court and TV cameras, and ads play almost non-stop. We even had marketing selling advertising time at half time, for companies to go out on court and do stupid stuff, the low point of which was a bubble they put someone in, and the person got to grab and paper money being blown around in the bubble. I thought I would just puke.
But a little more on the galling aspect of it. 13 or so years ago, right after I came on board, I had to fight TOOTH AND NAIL with university vice presidents and head a**holes to make them understand the place of the Internet for sports, and to get permission to bring up the first instance of iuhoosiers.com, developed in house, run on our servers. You would have thought that the very idea we could put advertising on an IU Athletics web page was an act of Satan, and would be the end of the the university and its purity.
Of course when Greenspan came on as director (later fired for the Coach Sampson debacle), the first thing he did was outsource the web site, turn it over to the huge commercial interests that were running sites for college sports, in exchange for a chunk of money. Based, of course, on the sites become eyesores covered, nay, plastered with advertising.
Money trumps all values over time in this society.
I am really surprised I have to explain any of this to you at this point.
schlemizel - was Alwhite
@superdestroyer:
Why would they not be able to schedule cream puffs? Schools would still be desperate for the money and attention getting whooped 84-3 brings them. Unless the NCAA forbid it, and how would they do that when all those ‘little schools’ want the money, it would still happen.
We are already seeing the ‘haves’ cherry picking the most lucrative teams from ‘have less’ conferences so I expect the process to continue unabated.
Nemesis
A Mom Anon
Many colleges lose money playing sports. The actual number is in dispute, but the programs atop the list are without a doubt big earners in sports. Texas, Alabama and Florida are a few of the top schools that turn big profits, mainly due to successful football programs.
Recently, the U of Cal decided to drop many sports due to costs, that is, the university was losing money so the specific sports are no longer part of Cal’s prioroties.
One would assume that the millions earned by some programs goes toward campus infastrucure, paying top-notch professors, building/renovating sports complexes and the like.
Making money through sports is a good thing. The eternal tension between academics and sports will not end soon.
schlemizel - was Alwhite
@HeartlandLiberal:
But . . . but . . . but, sports builds character! The finest tradition er fine young men and women perusing higher education ah RAH, RAH RAH for dear old U something something something.
Money trumps all values
over timein this society.superdestroyer
@schlemizel – was Alwhite:
The 64 non-NCAA schools would have different eligibility, pay, and academic rules that the NCAA. Why would the NCAA schools want to play on such an uneven field. The NCAA currently punishes schools that pay players or plays ineligible players. Why would they schedule games with schools that would have institutionalized the cheating?
HeartlandLiberal
Some more comments on financing to address some issues raised by other posters:
The model for financing varies from school to school, as to whether the funding for athletics programs is mingled with general funds directed to the primary purpose of the school, education.
In the case of Indiana University, the athletics program is 99% independent of any general revenue funds or support. It is almost totally self-supporting, and dependent on income from advertising, ticket sales, and very importantly, all that money flowing in from the Big Ten network and the game broadcast contracts.
I once got into an email exchange with an economics professor who did not believe a letter I had written published in the university newspaper explaining the self-support model. He was so opposed to athletics in general that he just refused to believe me, did not matter if it was true or not.
Football, although always a problem at IU, still is a major source of revenue for the department, just because of the numbers. Even 30,000 tickets sold per home game is a lot of money. If we could fill the stadium, which seats only about 43,000, I think, we would be swimming in money from the football program.
Basketball pays for itself, but does not bring in as much money. 17,400 seats.
These are referred to as the ‘revenue’ sports. All 22 of the other Intercollegiate sports are ‘non-revenue’. Yeah, you have to pay to go to women’s basketball, and there might be a charge of a buck or two to soccer games, but it does not generate enough money to self support.
superdestroyer
@Nemesis:
Virtually no money goes from the Athletic Department to the university. In reality, big time athletics cost the university since student service fees (or whatever they are called) are transferred from the students to the athletic department.
What most people do not understand is that are most universities, the athletic department is a separate, not-for-profit corporation that is separate from the university. That is why the athletic department can sign endorsement deals and trade mark the school mascot. the university cannot sign endorsement deals or trade mark what a professor has produced.
In the long run, when most people are discussing college sports, what they are really discussing are the 40 or so schools that have hangers-on fans (also know as Wal-Mart Alumni) who have no connection to the university expect for being fans of the football (or possibly basketball team).
superdestroyer
@HeartlandLiberal:
The Indiana University athletic departments gets over $1 million a year from student fees. That is more than 1%. In addition, it gets more than $500K in indirect instiutional support. See http://www2.indystar.com/NCAA_financial_reports/revenue_stat/show
HeartlandLiberal
I did not consider the student fees,you are right, those were added over past few years.
One other area of increase I should have mentioned was in wiring infrastructure. Until a few years ago, the department paid every last penny for all routers and wiring for connectivity, all networking infrastructure. The university has covered quite a bit of the build out of the wireless access points infrastructure over past three years.
I would suspect that the contributions that are not from Athletics generated income are still hovering around the 3% level, certainly not over 5%.
FWIW, I will be at the upcoming home football game this Saturday, I missed the first one, my son used my tickets. It will be, well, interesting. Wilson has managed to loose BOTH of the first two non-conference home openers. That might be some kind of record, even for as traditionally weak a football program as IU.
Capri
Sonny Vaccaro shows up in George Dohrmann’s book, Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine. I’d recommend the book to anyone interested in the issue. Dohrmann is a Sports Illustrated reporter who followed a self-made promoter/coach for a few years and his AAU team.
Compared to the AAU, the NCAA is pristine. Summer programs is the place the governing body has turned ability to make fists full of money while looking the other way to an art form.
I don’t think much has changed over the years. People want to win more than they want to play by the rules.
Mino
@Yutsano: That black and white one is the Boston. A somewhat rare color pattern. They are striking.
J.W. Hamner
RE: The Branch Article
The angle I had never heard before was that the “student-athlete” construction was meant as a shield to liability/workmens’ comp for injuries to players. That they make billions and aren’t responsible if these guys get hurt seems at least as egregious as denying them due process and owning their images forever.
iceskatingschnauzer
Having grown up and still live in the heart of the SEC (my Daddy’s blood runs Tennessee orange and so does mine) – college (and high school) football has always been and will always be a HUGE thing here. Having our own NFL team (Go Titans) is still fairly “new” to the South. Fall weekends have always been centered around football. You attend your High School Alma Mater games on Friday night and attend your Alma Mater college games on Saturday. A friend who graduated from UT just celebrated his 40th anniversary as an alumni season ticket holder (the entire section is his fraternity and they tailgate every home game). It is what you do (and then you attend church on Sunday – followed by the Titans game right after). Basketball season – same thing (Lady Vols – We Got Your Back, Pat). Thirty years ago the highlight of your subscription to Southern Living magazine was the Fall double issue about SEC football and tailgating recipes (and they still publish their Fall SEC football issue). So even if television coverage ended tomorrow – SEC football would still be going strong!
JCJ
@ A Mom Anon
The other question is what would happen to the local communities without football? Having grown up in West Lafayette, IN and then attending both Purdue and IU there was not a lot of local impact that was obvious to me. Now that my daughter goes to the University of Wisconsin I am amazed to see how Madison businesses must bring in tons of cash on days of Badger home games. There are even many fans in the area for hockey games. I would be surprised if the area restaurants, bars, etc. would not support continuation of the status quo.
NonyNony
@A Mom Anon:
One thing to keep in mind is that without the visible sports programs – basketball and football – many of the state-funded schools get the shaft.
I really do think that one of the few things that protects Ohio State (as the example I know most about) from our state legislature is that Ohio State football and basketball are massively popular within the state of Ohio. Lose that and many folks in the state will wonder exactly why the state needs to be funding a college at all (yes you heard that right – people need their circuses, just like it was back in the days of Nero).
I see a similar dynamic with school funding in Ohio – especially in the rural areas. You can’t cut football and/or basketball (depending on the community) because those are the only aspects of the public school system that a good-sized chunk of the community gives a damn about. Having them out there builds up goodwill and ensures that they’ll keep voting for the schools when the time comes (especially if you can advertise that “if we don’t pass this levy, we may have to cut football” to the voters – sad but try saying “if we don’t pass this levy, we may have to cut our foreign language program” doesn’t exactly have the same impact).
None of that means that the NCAA should be running a professional sports team organization and not paying its players under the guise of them being “amateurs” though. It just means that cutting sports is going to have more of an impact beyond just the dollars that show up on the accounting sheets.
MarkJ
I think what’s happening in college football is what is the same story as Wall St. and corporate America. All the money is floating to the top (it’s ABL’s shovel up economy!). Coaches, athletic directors, Conference chairmen, NCAA big wigs are getting salaries in the millions while the players get the same deal they have for decades. This is why most programs have seen revenue skyrocket, advertizing invade college stadiums, etc. but most programs still aren’t doing more than breaking even despite the revenue growth.
College athletic department are, as a general rule separate from the academic institutions – at least at the larger revenue generating colleges. They are run as non profits (which makes the already laughable term “non-profit” even more riduculous). I would bet that many athletic programs, despite this seperation, get some money from the University to supplement what they bring in in revenue. I.e. if anything, the academic side subsidizes the athletics – but never the other way around.
Coaching salaries are exhorbitant – we’re talking high hundreds of thousands to millions a year at a run of the mill Big Ten or ACC program. The kids risk getting maimed for life, and their performance generates most of the revenue, and all they get is a four year scholarship.
As for how to fix things, if amateurism is so important then the NCAA, conferences, and coaches should all be amateurs – unpaid volunteers. Either that or the student-athletes should get paid. I’d say that in addition to tuition, room, and board each student athlete in a revenue generating sport should be entitled to X% of the revenue generated during his time at the school upon graduation. If the player signs with an US-based pro league before graduation, then he should get the amount prorated for the years he was at the school.
For players who don’t graduate within six years, and don’t go pro, the money should still be paid to them, but it should come out of the head coach’s salary. This would incentivize coaches to make sure their players go to class and graduate.
Also, every athlete in a revenue generating sport should have an injury insurance policy, taken out by the athletic department, that pays out if that player suffers a serious injury. Finally, there should be an absolute ban on academics supporting the revenue generating athletic programs – if they want to rake in dough they should live or die like any for-profit institution, on their own merits.
Cacti
@handy:
Some have also called the NCAA a cartel. I would not disagree with that assessment either.
khead
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
This.
burnspbesq
Royston went off the air before reporting the final score, but the US held on to defeat Russia, 13-6. The US plays Australia next, on the evening of the 27th, local time (middle of the night here), and will likely get whacked. The last match for the US is against Italy, and if they win that they will likely finish third in their group, which would be a good result.
Special One
Shut up NCAA numpties!
Anyways, doesn’t the whole “I lost my scholarship and school will now cost $35k!” refrain kind of smash the idea that student athletes are not “paid”? Yea, I know it isn’t fair (the scholarship should be 4-years no matter your eligibility) and the SAs themselves too rarely actually take advantage of it, but the fact is they’re being offered both an expensive education and a four-year training program for professional sports. That’s compensation in my book. I had to work my ass off to get through the school on part-time jobs and what academic scholarships I could garner.
Personally, I think the best model for sports is the German one. A top to bottom club-system that mandates that each team be 50+1% owned by its membership (unless it’s a factory team). If you (or your family) is a member you don’t just get to use the facilities and benefit from the pro team’s youth system (if you’ve got the quality), you get a say in the running of the club. This has produced a soccer league that out-draws all other leagues (and every other sport except NFL and Indian cricket), maintains both healthy competition and rewards popularity (5 teams have won the Bundesliga in the past decade, but Bayern has won 6 of those seasons) and has reinvigorated both their national team and their league (which just passed Italy as the 3rd ‘best’ league in UEFA) by focusing so hard on youth development.
Be champions.
burnspbesq
@MarkJ:
“Coaching salaries are exhorbitant – we’re talking high hundreds of thousands to millions a year at a run of the mill Big Ten or ACC program. The kids risk getting maimed for life, and their performance generates most of the revenue, and all they get is a four year scholarship.”
Three aspects of this comment are misleading. First, given the well-documented link between athletic success and alumni giving, it’s possible to justify coaches’ salaries on an ROI basis. Second, a substantial part of the compensation of highly visible and successful coaches comes from the shoe companies. Coach K makes more from Nike than he does from Duke. Third, “all they get” at a place like, say, Georgetown is worth a cool quarter of a mil, and much more afterwards if the athlete gets a degree and uses it to build a career.
Warren Terra
Special One,
You are assuming that the scholarship athletes are receiving a $35,000 education. I think the evidence strongly argues that for the majority this is not the case: their total efforts are dedicated to their sport, and they are not able to properly receive a college education, if they even were prepared in the first place. Those protesting that their scholarships were withdrawn often suffered career-ending injuries in the service of their school’s sports teaml the least the school can do is give them at least as good an aducation as a “student-athlete” might expect.
Paul in KY
@A Mom Anon: The universities seem to think that alot of contributions would dry up. They think alot of their contributions are from people who only care about the sports program and have no interest at all in any academic programs or helping to educate people.
Wether that is true or not, I don’t know. Would be interesting to see a major state college do that & then see how they faired.
Paul in KY
@superdestroyer: Colleges will never pay players. Right now all the profits from college athletics are considered ‘educational’ and are not taxed. If they paid the players, it would then be ‘professional’ and the profits would be taxed accordingly.
Yutsano can correct me on this, if wrong.
Paul in KY
@J.W. Hamner: It also allows them to say it is an ‘educational’ experience, which then makes it not-taxable.
Warren Terra
@Paul in KY:
The biggest school that I know of to cancel its football program is Boston University, about ten years ago. It’s quite a large school, but it’s private (not a state school) and was never a football powerhouse (wasn’t in Division A or whatever). I doubt any Division A school has cancelled its football program recently.
As I said above, schools do get more donations when their teams are winning than when they’re losing. How much more, and whether those same donors might eventually have coughed up anyway but were inspired to do so now by the sporting success, I don’t know.
Paul in KY
@Warren Terra: Thank you for that info, Warren. I also didn’t know Boston U. was that large. My late cousin was going to go there (was very excited) & then was run over by a car when 18 (1 month before graduation). That was in 1986.
MattR
@Cacti: In the article Taylor Branch refers to it as closer to colonialism.
@HeartlandLiberal: I came across this breakdown of the Penn State athletics department by sport that I found interesting. Well, mostly it is by sport but they also separate out things like “stadium maintenance” that probably mostly belong to the football program. Even with all that, you can see how football pays for the rest of the department (though Penn State is one of only roughly two dozen institutions where this hold true)
Warren Terra
@Paul in KY:
I’m sorry for your cousin. Such a time of promise, so cruelly cut short. 25 years is a long time, but I’m sure many people miss them still.
dj spellchecka
interesting paragraph near the end of the article
“Ninety percent of the NCAA revenue is produced by 1 percent of the athletes,” Sonny Vaccaro says. “Go to the skill positions”—the stars. “Ninety percent African Americans.” The NCAA made its money off those kids, and so did he. They were not all bad people, the NCAA officials, but they were blind, Vaccaro believes. “Their organization is a fraud.”
Paul in KY
@Warren Terra: He was a fine young man. I miss him every day. Thank you for your kind comments.