The University of Cincinnati’s sports program will need up to $11 million in new funding every year to be competitive in the Big East Conference, but it still is running a deficit every year and owes millions of dollars from past overspending.

A new report also shows that UC’s Athletic Department is losing about $3.5 million a year and has amassed a $24 million debt, mainly from a shortfall in construction of the Varsity Village complex on campus.

… UC will start construction soon on a new sports complex along Jefferson Avenue that will include football practice fields, but a potential expansion of Nippert Stadium – and whether UC can afford a project that could cost up to $50 million – looms over the program…

FSU’s appeal has failed.

… The NCAA Infractions Appeals Committee said Tuesday the cooperative efforts of the university in the academic cheating scandal involving 61 Florida State athletes failed to outweigh the aggravating factors in the case.

“The case also included impermissible benefits, unethical conduct by three former academic support services staff members and a failure to monitor by the university,” the NCAA statement said.

Twenty-five football players were among the athletes who cheated on an online test in a music history course from the fall of 2006 through summer 2007 or received improper help from staffers who provided them with answers to the exam and typed papers for them…

Leach’s buyout figure, $1.5 million, is actually cheaper at the end of the day than drawn-out litigation for the university.

Who says there won’t be drawn-out litigation on top of the $1.5 million?

Latest Texas Tech University undergraduate application essay prompt:

YOU’RE CONCUSSED FROM PLAYING FOOTBALL FOR TEXAS TECH. YOUR COACH GIVES YOU A CHOICE – IMPRISONMENT IN A DARK ROOM OR INSIDE OF AN EQUIPMENT BIN. WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE, AND WHY?

Via the great website UO MATTERS, UD notes that a parking lot mainly used by University of Oregon law professors will now be for athletes:

Phil Knight [the donor who runs UO] was able to convert general university parking into special reserved slots for athletes only. Lot 34F …  was converted to parking a few months ago, and was apparently used heavily by professors at the law school.

Look out for the Mustang coming in real fast.

… [Football Coach Mike Leach] is the king of Lubbock. He’s bullied his administration numerous times over the last six or seven years. Leach and the school have bickered over his salary several times, and just last year the school president had to personally oversee Leach’s latest contract extension…

… Leach [has] revealed himself as dangerously irrational. He tried to sue Texas Tech so that he could coach “his” team in the bowl game. Are you kidding me? It’s not his team. It’s Texas Tech’s team…

All this, and Alberto Gonzales.

Plus they’ve got years of expensive litigation from the just-fired Leach to look forward to.

CBS Sports:

… For too long coaches have had it their way without question — salaries bigger than their state’s governor, courtesy cars, country club memberships. The student-athlete has to play his behind off year-to-year just to keep his scholarship… [A] $4 million contract doesn’t give you the keys to a university. Too often that’s what has happened. Coaches get away with this stuff with impunity because they can. Whether it’s a third-world dictatorship or the SEC, it’s unsettling to be reminded that absolute power corrupts absolutely…

… According to a USA Today study, the average pay for major college football coaches has risen 28% over the last two years, to $1.36 million. In 2007, 12 coaches made at least $2 million. Today, that number has more than doubled, to 25. According to the USA Today study, Leach made at least $2.7 million this year, Mangino $2.3 million and Leavitt $1.6 million…

Time magazine, in an article titled Are College Football Coaches Out of Control?, notes the increasing sadism toward players among university football coaches.

UD understands. You’re being paid more than anyone else on campus — often anyone else in the state — to win games. The pressure’s incredible. When the reputation of the university rests on your shoulders, you might have to concuss a few players to get the school where it wants to be.

… Coach Mike Leach.

But cheer up, Red Raiders! You’ve still got Alberto Gonzales.

… are one of many benefits your tax dollars support at universities with big sports programs.

Student athletes learn a lot from role models like Mark Mangino and Mike Leach. You can understand why institutions devoted to the life of the mind reward these men — who make students crawl on hot Astroturf until they permanently burn their hands, and who make concussed players stand inside of equipment bins for hours — with their highest salaries. It takes real brains to think up this stuff.

… sports round-ups.

This university’s president looks forward to a future even more “bright and positive.”

Minnesota Spokesman-Revew:

Compared to other Big Ten schools, the data shows that Minnesota ranks at or near the bottom in graduation rates of its Black students in three revenue-producing sports: men’s basketball, football, and women’s basketball.

Men’s basketball
GSR for U of M Black student-athletes: 43 percent (ninth in Big Ten); Northwestern leads with 100 percent.

Football
GSR for U of M Black student-athletes: 39 percent (last in Big Ten); Northwestern leads with 90 percent.

Calipari is allowed to keep coaching for the same reason Knight was allowed to stamp, scream and bully his way through Bloomington from 1971 to 2000. They both win.

He’s wrong.

Winning’s a lot of it.

But audiences like to see the same aggression in coaches that they like to see in players.

Coaches who are sons of bitches are exciting to watch.

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There’s a whole charismatic world of violence and destruction off the university or professional football field that people find exciting to follow. Players and coaches with their drunken assaults, crashed sports cars, and gun play — these aren’t things universities tolerate because they only care about winning. They’re things the fan base adores. Football wouldn’t be football without them.

“… College athletes, many of them African-American, are brought to college as hired guns, under the guise of getting an education. The entire charade is sustained for the sake of helping the NCAA maintain its multi-billion dollar professional sports league.

Yes, I said professional, not amateur. Any league that earns money on par with the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB is a professional sports league. NCAA coaches, commentators and administrators – mostly white – earn six and seven figure salaries while simultaneously robbing athletes of their educations, their futures, and the money that they and their families have earned. In order to avoid paying taxes on their revenue, the NCAA spends millions on marketing to convince us that their multi-million dollar corporate extravaganzas are polite little weekend activities that students barely remember to keep on their schedules. All the while, Tyrone Smith attends four years of college and doesn’t even learn how to read.

… The NCAA needs independent oversight. The federal government should take the lead and give meaningful disciplinary power to individuals who care more about education than winning percentages. When schools like The University of Kentucky choose to pay millions to coaches like John Calipari – who has consistently violated NCAA rules and carries a horrific graduation record – they are making their intentions… clear …”

Boyce Watkins:

http://www.thegrio.com/2009/12/educational-mission-of-ncaa-is-great-scam-of-21st-century.php

“…In the 2007-08 school year, nearly 80 percent of major athletic programs reported operating deficits, with programs in the red losing an average of $9.9 million, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Add the recession, which has affected state appropriations and private giving at most colleges and universities, and college sports face unprecedented economic challenges.

A recent NCAA report noted that even football-generated revenue does not cover the operating cost of the football team at 44 percent of the institutions playing major-college football. Such figures would be worse if the millions in debt for stadium improvements and other facility enhancements were included. These are hardly profit centers at most institutions.

Now, consider all this in an environment where athletics costs are escalating at all but a few institutions while academic budgets are being cut and student fees and tuition are being raised. NCAA data show that the rate of increase in athletics spending in Division I programs is three to four times greater than the rate of increase for academic budgets. That is neither acceptable nor sustainable…”

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Oh hell sure it is. I can’t tell you how many times UD’s been lectured by readers about how acceptable and sustainable the situation is.

And anyway, the two writers of this opinion piece in the Washington Post —

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/18/AR2009121803510.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

— don’t take up the real problem. They’ve done the numbers, but they haven’t done the ethos.

You’re up against a deeply corrupt and deeply embedded culture. Pontificating about how it’s not sustainable is like an Italian politician telling constituents the Mafia isn’t sustainable. Sure it is.

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Apologies for the bare-bones look of this post. I’m having trouble getting a good window to open in my WordPress dashboard.

… about brainless but brawny University of Oregon.

… At the University of Oregon, academics has taken a backseat to athletics. Despite the generosity of Nike founder Phil Knight, who has given hundreds of millions of dollars to the school, Oregon has gone on such an athletics building spree that it has had to postpone a long-term project to renovate student housing. That’s because the university has hit its debt limit of $200 million.

“We literally can’t go out and ask for more bonding authority for the academic side of the campus,” said Nathan Tublitz, an Oregon biology professor and the co-chair of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a reform group that’s often critical of the culture of college athletics. “The mission of the university is to educate students and perform cutting-edge research,” said Prof. Tublitz. “To be spending so much money on an auxiliary enterprise is not only scandalous, it’s criminal.”…