“Are you saying the athletic department is fully paying its entire expenses, including salaries, and the university is not contributing?” asked chemistry professor Dvora Perahia.
“We are part of the university,” Hill said. “We are what is called an auxiliary enterprise, which by definition produces its own revenue and pays its expenses.”
Hill said reports on how self-sustaining athletics departments are will vary depending on accounting definitions. Clemson, for instance, grants in-state tuition to athletes so that the scholarship dollars stretch further — a savings of about $2.5 million to the athletics department. This and the student fee, though it provides tickets to students, are considered subsidies in some reports.
Still, Hill said, Clemson athletics pays the salaries of every staff member and coach, covers all its buildings’ utilities, pays for all team travel, and raises all the money for $8 million in athletics scholarships.
“We charter jets?” American literature professor Susanna Ashton said.
“Of course,” Hill said.
“Sorry, I don’t do sports. The word ‘jet’ caught my attention. That’s cool,” Ashton said.
“We’ve got a football team with out-of town games, and we have to get them back for class,” Hill said.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:05AM
Good that they’re paying for salaries, travel, utilities, etc; still, as a veteran of many cost-accounting wars I bet I could have some fun with these numbers. For example, are they paying for legal costs–both internal and outside law firms–when players get into trouble or former coaches file lawsuits? Are they paying for the capital costs of the buildings themselves as well as the heating/cooling thereof? etc
Many companies do an extremely mediocre job of understanding their costs, and I’d bet it’s even worse for universities, since the spectre of financial disaster is generally a little further away…
February 15th, 2012 at 12:14PM
david: Absolutely. The article seemed to me an excellent description of an excellent song and dance number put on for the faculty.
February 15th, 2012 at 1:19PM
At a place like Clemson, where football and basketball presumably bring in substantial revenues, the situation is very different from that at, say, Akron. The real problem isn’t so much money as diversion of attention and the subordination of academic standards and concerns.
On the money side, though, personnel and student aid loom extraordinarily large in university budgets. In my (admittedly limited) experience, capital costs tend to be much less of a factor than they seem, because they’re big numbers but spread over many years. (They may cause acute short-term issues if mishandled, as apparently occurred at Berkeley.)
In my view, an undue focus on costs has been the enemy of meaningful reform of intercollegiate athletics. Yes, it gets the faculty all riled up; but it doesn’t point the way to the kinds of changes we need to see.
February 15th, 2012 at 3:44PM
It was all lies at Cal. When UC got caught clandestinely funneling $10 million/year into the athletic department they claimed it was legit by invoking a new definition of an auxiliary. Eventually the accounting at Clemson, will be revealed for what it is – smoke, mirrors and nothing more.
Universities don’t need football to fulfill the educational and research missions of the institutions. Too bad much of America refuses to understand simple concepts such as this one.