Albert Hunt, New York Times:
…[T]he leaders of college athletics [will soon introduce in place of] the 64-team tournament, which balances quality and inclusiveness, … 96 teams next year.
This would encourage mediocrity and make more money. The latter is the dominant concern of too many leaders of higher education; it trumps the academic interests of the players and institutions and the desires of fans, whether it’s the basketball tournament’s expansion or the insistence on keeping the antiquated football bowl game schedule.
One of the top teams in college basketball this season was the University of Kentucky. Recent figures show that just 31 percent of its players graduate; a year ago the university brought in a hot-shot coach, John Calipari, who took two other schools to the tournament finals only to have those achievements wiped from the record books for rules violations (though Mr. Calipari himself was not directly implicated).
His Kentucky team was led by four fabulous freshmen, all of whom indicated last week that they would leave without graduating and play professionally next year. So much for the student-athlete concept.
Many of the basketball-crazed fans in Lexington, Kentucky, probably couldn’t care less about student athletes or graduation rates, or their coach’s possible ethical transgressions; he wins games…
An editorial in the University of Oregon newspaper describes Mike Bellotti’s classy exit from his athletics director position at UO (background here):
… Bellotti believes he was promised a five-year contract, which would have given him an even larger buyout, though it’s hard to know without evidence in writing. He said in a press conference he is not taking anything that isn’t owed to him, a statement that seems out of touch amid the ongoing argument that the University places a higher priority on athletics than academics. It’s irresponsible for Bellotti to insist upon so much money, when as former athletic director, he knows the athletic department already owes $16 million annually to cover debt service payments for Matthew Knight Arena…
[A] midday ceremony [on a recent Monday in honor of its victorious basketball team] violated an internal Duke agreement established in 2006 that no such celebrations would be held during precious class time.
The 2006 agreement was spearheaded by Richard Hain, a math professor at Duke since 1991, who waged a four-year campaign to limit those activities to evening hours. Hain sent me an e-mail message about the breach and also formally complained to university officials.
“This is the first time since that agreement was made that Duke’s men’s BB team has been to the Final Four,” Hain wrote. “This year, the agreement was completely ignored.”
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Provost Peter Lange, who negotiated the original agreement with Hain, said: “There was a planning meeting, and someone at the meeting was assigned to check in with me about whether there was an agreement. That person never got in touch with me.”
Hain asked, “How can somebody schedule a major event that wipes out basically all undergraduate classes the whole afternoon, without talking to the provost?”
Lange added, “That mistake obviously is never going to be made again because, obviously, now everybody’s aware of the mistake.”
The team, flying back from Indianapolis, arrived an hour late, further disrupting students’ schedules…
… on whistleblowers in university sports.
It’s part of the College Sport Research Institute‘s annual conference, this year held at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
UD‘s excited that Sally Dear will be on the same panel.
“Without the athletic teams, nobody outside the state of Maine would even know the university exists.”
From an article about SUNY Binghamton in the Wall Street Journal:
… “Basketball is the cesspool of college sports,” says James Duderstadt, a man too familiar with the game’s pitfalls. He was the University of Michigan’s president from 1988-96, a period marred by scandal. Federal charges were later brought against a booster, Ed Martin, and two others, for making illicit loans of more than $600,000 to four players. Mr. Martin pleaded guilty in 2002 to one count of conspiracy to launder money but died while awaiting sentencing; severe sanctions were placed on Michigan by the University and the NCAA. “It only takes a few outstanding players to make a program nationally competitive, which is why basketball is the source of such cheating. Universities don’t realize that it’s so visible that the blowback can cause enormous damage to the institution, damage that lasts for decades…
… Berkeley, but the University of Memphis?
The Faculty Senate passed a motion last week urging University of Memphis President Shirley Raines to stop subsidizing the athletic department $2.2 million from education and general funds.
After almost an hour of debate, 25 members voted for the motion, five voted against and six abstained.
Besides the athletic department subsidy, which increased from $1.5 million last year, education and general funds pay for scholarships, equipment upgrades, employee raises and other amenities to benefit students and faculty at The University…
To quote Michelle Obama: Damn.
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Oh. Not that these votes mean anything. Look at the latest on Berkeley athletics.
… is that many American universities routinely give millions of dollars every year to totally anti-intellectual coaches and athletic directors.
The university foundation of California State University, Stanislaus, is under fire for hiring Sarah Palin to speak at a $500 per ticket, gala black-tie fundraising event in June, to celebrate the university’s 50th anniversary. The foundation is refusing to disclose Palin’s fee. And students, professors and even a state lawmaker, point to the former half-term governor of Alaska’s vitriol, divisiveness and her hefty speaking fees of at least $100,000, as not appropriate for a University celebration. Her lack of intellectual curiosity is cited by Zoology Professor Patrick Kelly, who started an anti-Palin Facebook page, pointing out her distinct lack of academic accomplishments. In other woods, the academic community of CSU is outraged and embarrassed to have their school’s 50th anniversary celebration represented by a know-nothing, polarizing woman, whose major contribution to the public discourse has been inflammatory rhetoric…
Most coaches don’t give a shit about academics — they pressure their universities to admit students bound to fail and drop out; they have the highest salaries on campus (sometimes the highest salaries in the state) because they don’t see why they shouldn’t drain resources from students.
Palin’s populist tirades against professors and universities differ in no way from the contempt lots of coaches routinely express for these things. When you reward the coach with four million dollars a year, and then get upset when a university gives Palin – What? She’s probably getting a paltry $100,000 – you’re being a mite hypocritical.
University of Oregon athletics doesn’t like to do contracts.
As all criminal syndicates know, if you write down what you’re doing, other people can figure out… what you’re doing.
Do you remember any scenes of Al Pacino signing contracts in The Godfather?
So when the school’s athletic director left the other day to take a tv job, and the school just, you know, gave him $2.3 million dollars even though he wasn’t fired – he quit – and even though it was all done via secret handshakes, the state Justice Department decided to investigate.
The UO says it had no signed agreement with Bellotti on the terms of his employment or departure when he took over the job of athletic director last summer, yet the university said it will pay the former football coach the $2.3 million to fulfill unspecified “commitments” that were never put on paper.
Bellotti negotiated the terms of his employment orally with UO President Richard Lariviere in July, when both of them were beginning their new jobs, a UO spokeswoman said last week. The UO is not making those terms public. Less than nine months later, the two settled on the details of a deal allowing Bellotti to leave for the television job with the multimillion-dollar payout.
Nobody at the university has any comment to make to reporters.
Reporters want to know how a once-respectable university became such a cheesy outfit.
From the student newspaper, University of Maine:
… [T]he athletic department is losing millions of dollars annually. Other financial documents indicate the university is spending less of its budget on educational instruction now than it was in previous decades.
In the current fiscal year — which runs July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 — athletics is projected to cost the university $7.3 million more than the revenue it brings in.
Athletic Director Blake James said the athletic department is subsidized by the university, but that the projected loss of $7 million sounded high. James said he thought the actual loss would be closer to $5 million.
… The budget for fiscal 2010 projected the athletics department would generate about $4.5 million in revenue, falling far short of its expected $12.2 million in expenditures. This discrepancy would be covered by revenue in the general university budget, the vast majority of which comes from tuition and state appropriations.
… The bulk of sports teams’ operating costs comes from coaches’ salaries and benefits.
… There appears to be a historical trend in the financial documents from decennial accreditation reports indicating student education has been slipping on the university’s priority list…
Well, where would you put student education on a university’s priority list? Tenth? Twelfth?
This Boston Globe opinion piece tells you the reason.
From the moment she clapped eyes on him at a Knight Commission gathering a few years ago, UD knew Michael Adams, president of the University of Georgia, would be the NCAA’s next president. Unlike Myles Brand, who entered the job with a sense of morality as well as a sense of what universities are (he started his career as a philosophy professor), UGA’s man is a backroom politician all the way down.
His departure from UGA will be good news for that university. Otherwise, it’s barf bag city.