Inside Higher Education provides a plot summary of the time-honored tale of a giant sports program swaggering a campus and sucking all the money out of it.
“O giant,” say the professors. “Don’t kill us.”
“Ho, ho,” says the giant. “I won’t. By the hair on my chinny chin chin I’ll balance my budget. Sit down in my chair and watch my self-sustainability increase.”
The professors don’t want to sit in the giant’ s chair, but they do not want to make him angry.
Ten years pass.
“O giant,” say the professors. “Your subsidy has increased to 35 million dollars.”
“ROAR,” says the giant, showing his teeth. “The coach was getting picked off by SMU. We had to increase his salary to ten million dollars a year. We haven’t resolved the lawsuit the last coach brought against us, and that costs five million dollars a year. The teams aren’t doing well this year and no one’s buying tickets … You do the math.”
Four ex-Texas Lutheran University football players have been indicted over the alleged beating of a rival two weeks after a game.
The Seguin Gazette-Enterprise reports arraignment is pending for the men charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon resulting in bodily injury.
University of Incarnate Word on Oct. 17 defeated TLU 53-18.
[C]ongratulations on the new contract extension — it’s quite the accomplishment.
Not many Connecticut residents can boast about getting a 25 percent increase in salary as a reward for a less-than-stellar year — especially your fellow state employees, many of whom are taking furlough days and foregoing pay increases because of the state’s fiscal crisis.
[M]issing seven games over a 23-day period, finishing the season with an 18-16 mark and a second-round NIT loss, and an NCAA investigation into alleged recruiting violations, and yet still pocketing a $400,000 pay increase, is something. That is, at least, how we understand the new five-year, $13 million extension is defined — retroactive to this past season with a salary increase from $1.6 million to $2 million.
And then another raise, $2.3 million, for the coming year…
A commenter on this article about Oregon State’s criminal football team reckons up the wages of cynical recruiting.
Scooping up drunks who’ve been flushed out of other programs (“Beavers quarterback Peter Lalich was arrested Friday at Shasta Lake in Northern California on suspicion of drunken boating and briefly jailed. The former player from the University of Virginia … transferred to OSU after two incidents involving alcohol led to his dismissal from the Virginia program.”) turns out to be especially clever.
All South Carolinians should keep in mind that two assistant football coaches at two public institutions of higher learning are now making a combined $1.275 million even as our state government experiences severe fiscal distress.
Post and Courier
The Lawrence Journal-World notes the deterioration of a once-fine university.
… [T]he Kansas Board of Regents has become politicized and no longer has, or deserves, the respect of legislators — or the public. It now serves as a convenient and easy place for a governor to take care of political IOU’s rather than appointing individuals who are respected and can make a powerful and convincing case for higher education.
… The ongoing embarrassing expenditures for the university’s athletics programs have caused serious concern among faculty and alumni. The salaries of some within KU Athletics are almost obscene…
… [Eminent professors] are far more important to the university than a fancy coach’s office or a $3.2 million super-duper scoreboard, but their salaries, as well as the salaries of most other KU faculty members, are a shame when compared to what KU and other universities are paying those in their athletics programs…
It was a very bad bet. Their brand new basketball coach, Tim Welsh, was just found asleep at the wheel at a local traffic light, plastered.
He forgot to tell the university about this event. Hofstra read about the arrest in the paper. The school’s not happy. It looks real dumb, hiring this guy at hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Hofstra has suspended Welsh.
“One month into the job and already setting a good example for your players,” comments one sports site.
Will he be fired?
Are you insane? Have you been reading this blog even for five minutes?
Of course he won’t be fired.
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Update: Welsh has resigned.
A Berkeley professor speaks up at an open meeting about funding.
A math professor at the same meeting does the numbers:
Professors and community members debated the role of athletics on campus after Calvin Moore, chair of the task force and professor emeritus of mathematics, presented preliminary suggestions for how the department can remedy its financial instability.
Though department officials said last semester that the cost to campus – which totaled about $13.7 million last year – would be significantly lower this year, Moore said the cost will be the same if not more.
Part of the campus support the department received last fiscal year came in the form of a $5.8 million loan from funds at the discretion of Nathan Brostrom, former vice chancellor of administration.
Though Brostrom and Laura Hazlett, associate director for the athletic department’s business office, have said the loan will eventually be paid back, Moore said he doubted any money would ever come back from intercollegiate athletics.
“This is sunken money from the campus, and it’s not going to come back in our lifetime,” he said.
Sunken money’s a nice phrase.
From the Murray State University newspaper:
… Murray State intercollegiate athletics expenses rose by $421,967 from 2008 to 2009 resulting in the highest amount in University history to $4.9 million.
On behalf of the [university Senate Finance] committee, which consists of six faculty members, [Winfield] Rose recommended to the Board of Regents “… we find the size of this subsidy and its growth inappropriate. … We further encourage the President and the Board of Regents to freeze the athletic subsidy at its present level immediately and to eliminate it totally over the next decade.”
… “We are under no illusion that what we have to say will be taken seriously by the Board or by the administration,” Rose said.
… The members of Faculty Senate who voted in favor of the Finance Committee’s recommendation believe there should be a cap on athletic spending.
“How far does it go in these tight financial times?” Rose said. “Does intercollegiate athletics have a virtual blank check on the University’s bank account?”…
Yes. It’s Kentucky, after all.
… the North Dakota State University football team.
I mean. It paid off for awhile.
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From the Grand Forks Herald.
You need to register to get to the article.
A professor at the University of Maine looks at the athletics program there and writes a letter to the student newspaper.
I have read the recent articles in The Maine Campus on the Department of Athletics. Overall, I think they were done well, but you let the director of athletics get away with something in your interview.
At the end of Monday’s article, Athletic Director Blake James said: “I don’t think we should be funded like Ohio State, Florida, Penn State or any of the big programs.”
I bet he doesn’t. According to a database of the finances of public university athletic programs available on USA Today’s Web site, both Ohio State and Florida athletics received $0.00 of direct university support in 2008-2009, while University of Maine Athletics received $9,548,688.
It is important to note that the “big programs” are successful at self-sufficiency by large ticket sales, alumni donations, conference guarantees for away games, etc.
In contrast, UMaine provides well over 50 percent of the budget for the athletics program here — money that comes from the same source that should be used to support the mission of the university: education and research.
For the most part, the academic programs generate more than they receive — my own Department of Physics has a budget of $1.9 million and generated $2.5 million in student credit hours.
The bottom line is the academic programs are being forced to support a bloated administration and a not particularly successful athletics program — with the possible exception of hockey. This is unsustainable, and the Academic Program Prioritization Working Group had no chance of “achieving sustainability” since they were directed by administration to focus solely on proposing cuts to academics.
Dean Astumian
Professor of physics
… comments on the DUI arrest of a University of Kentucky basketball coach. It’s the coach’s fourth DUI arrest.
Enough has to be enough — even for a Kentucky basketball coach.
Another dumbshit American university builds a sports facility it can’t afford … goes begging for money from the state… uses operating funds to service the debt…
Today it’s Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
[S]ome on campus, noting the bonds may have to be paid off with university operating funds, questioned why officials let a project with at least 40 percent of its funding not yet identified break ground in November 2008 amid a worsening economy.
“Folks, to quote a friend of mine, to get out of a hole, the first rule is to stop digging,” Robert Mutchnick, an IUP professor and president of the faculty union’s campus chapter, wrote in a campus e-mail… “They are mortgaging the future of the university,” he said.
Happens every day.