… in the library. But at least they have a multimillion-dollar football coach whose games no one comes to see.
… in the library. But at least they have a multimillion-dollar football coach whose games no one comes to see.
… UD noted the bad behavior of the University of Michigan’s athletics director.
An old friend of hers on the UM faculty writes:
Hey, Bill Martin is a good guy. He runs a clean athletic program, with relatively high and enforced academic standards. (For example, one of the better players on our football team, which sucks this year, got kicked off for a set of transgressions which included missing classes. More importantly, Martin fired the corrupt and awful basketball coach.) He takes as much pride in the successes of women’s sports as men’s (and devotes resources to them) and in non-football/basketball sports as much anything else (not just hockey and soccer, men’s and women’s, but also the even less traditionally popular ones).
He went through amazing hassles to rebuild the stadium where the incidents took place. He behaved badly when some [people] didn’t recognize him when going into a room that he himself had built in order to schmooze the regents, which is a big, big part of his job (and a real pain; all they really care about is the football team).
I agree that football controls too much of out lives here at Big-10 U (though in marked contrast to, for instance, the University of Minnesota, the athletic department is totally self-supporting), and that Martin acted in a petulant anger. But this is not the story you’re making it into–by a long shot.
There’s actually even more to say about Martin, who is a fascinating character, and a subtle, interesting well-read guy–studied with Gunnar Myrdal when fresh out of college, for example. But the point is, if you’re going to have college athletics at all, you want to have them the way they are here–and Bill Martin gets a lot of credit for keeping it that way.
[Having said all that, let me add that] the presence of big-time sports is a subtly corrupting influence on the university–I mean it’s ridiculous that our political support in the state and our (non-athletic department related) alumni contributions go way up when the football team does well. And of course when I say we’re clean I mean relatively clean: Our basketball team of the 1990s was run by a thoroughly corrupt coach in cahoots with a crooked booster who fed our players bucks on the side which came from a gambling ring in auto plants. The point is that Bill Martin cleaned that up…
At the end of the day, [comments Missouri athletic director Mike Arden,] is it still concerning for people to see expenses continue to go like this (he gestures upward)? Absolutely. But at least it’s being done in an open and transparent environment…
#1:
… [W]hen I arrived at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 2005, I didn’t identify myself as a Gopher. I came to study and get my degree, not to frolic in the flamboyance of our college sports teams and most certainly not to fund a $288.5 million TCF Bank Stadium. Yet this was an identity that was forced upon me. It was built into my tuition. It was assumed, because I lived within the University community, that of course I was a Gophers football fan and that I would have no qualms about chipping in for the sake of sport. It is a ridiculous and insulting assumption … We should be fighting for the separation of university life from collegiate sports. … Yes, TCF Bank Stadium has already been built, but we still have time to rethink the future of university sports. The recession affords us the opportunity to look critically at the institutions we have designed, modify them and maybe even start over…
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#2
Look up Ashley Nord, the latest Rhodes Scholar from the University, one of only 32 such individuals selected from the United States and a former Gophers track athlete.
While you are at it, you could talk to Hassan Mead, a five-time All-American in only four seasons of competition. He has a fascinating story of coming to America knowing no English and is now thriving as an athlete and a student. Talk to the director of student-athlete welfare to see the multitude of community service programs Gophers athletes engage in.
The unavoidable truth — perhaps an inconvenient one for many writers — is that the majority of University student-athletes pursue their athletics with passion while simultaneously outperforming their non-athlete peers in the classroom. Please, writers, the next time you write about the University imposing crushing financial burdens to pay for the stadium, remember to give credit where credit is due.
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From a comment on #2:
Did you mean for this letter to be published on the same day as articles about basketball player and football player thuggery?
Hassan Mead is absolutely a great runner. How does that contribute to the academic success of this university? … This is a research university, and I’ve seen 15 articles about Eric Decker but can’t remember the last article about research. I know they have some, but it’s obviously not a priority of the administration or the MN Daily.
Athletics do nothing but take away from this university, financially and otherwise.
Five hundred dollars an hour — more than that, actually — is what medical school professors who whore for industry make; it is what doctors who whore for celebrities make; and it is what law firms who investigate filthy university sports programs make.
Does this seem a lot to you?
Put it in perspective. When the last president of Harvard University worked a one-day-a-week job for a hedge fund (while running Harvard), he made $20,000 a hour.
So the law firm investigating the SUNY Binghamton sports program and charging this public university $520 per hour is giving them a major break.
Not only that, but $520 an hour is “a 20 percent discount off the firm’s normal blended hourly rate.”
From the AP:
…Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, on Thursday passed a resolution calling for an end to subsidies for the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics.
[Athletics consistently produces] deficits of millions of dollars. Critics say that’s a particular problem right now with budget cuts forcing class cutbacks and student fee hikes.
The resolution is nonbinding. But Chancellor Robert Birgeneau says officials will try to work out a plan to reduce the cost of the department.
… helped build Chicago’s image as a top destination for serious-minded graduate students and faculty. Over 80 Nobel Prize winners have studied, taught or researched at Chicago. “That’s part of the magic of Chicago,” says Robin Lester, who wrote a book about … Chicago football. “That’s their thing. It’s still a serious place for kids to get an education.”
… “We’re still being true to the notion that it’s not in the interest of universities to create mass-entertainment spectacles,” says John Boyer, dean of Chicago’s undergraduate college.
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved a proposal for a new football stadium at the University of North Texas that is expected to be completed for the 2011 season…
“If you look at America’s great universities, you’ll see that they all have the three A’s in common: great academics, great arts and great athletics,” said UNT president Gretchen M. Bataille in a release.
… what with that Knight Commission report and all… But UD thinks it’s time to ground the discussion in actual ongoing cases. The case method, if you will.
Let’s begin with this question: Does Mike Locksley, University of New Mexico football coach, make too much?
Well, before we reveal his salary, let’s consider what he’s contributed to UNM so far this year.
1.) The team’s record: 0 – 6. He’s in his first year, and has lost every game he has coached.
2.) He has an EEOC complaint against him for firing an administrative assistant because, he told her, he wanted a younger woman to “entice recruits.”
3.) He has a history of violent behavior, and has most recently beaten up one of his assistant coaches.
So… what seems a reasonable salary for this man?
Did you say $750,000 a year?
Bingo.
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It’s impossible to put a price tag on the pride students and faculty must feel to be part of the UNM community.
And it ain’t bad at all.
You might recall that a few weeks ago University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau co-authored a Washington Post op-ed calling on the federal government to provide direct support — meaning taxpayer dollars — to select public universities. Birgeneau decried decades of “material and progressive disinvestment by states in higher education,” despite, as I pointed out, no such disinvestment actually occurring.
Well now we know where much of the precious investment in Cal was going — to subsidize sports. According to Inside Higher Ed, over just the past few years Berkeley has provided tens-of-millions of dollars in subsidies and loan forgiveness to its sports programs, which are supposed to be self-supporting.
Now, the whole college athletics undertaking is one that deserves lots of scrutiny for its subsidies and excesses. Cal is certainly not alone in this. But for Birgeneau to take to the pages of the Washington Post, cry poverty, and call for the nation’s taxpayers to foot his school’s bills while he quietly pushes millions of dollars to water polo, rugby, golf, and sundry other sports? That takes a lot of gall. Of course, rent-seeking gall is not in short supply when it comes to higher education.
Thankfully, at least this time it looks like the arrogant aggressiveness is going to backfire. Birgeneau is scrambling, and seems doomed to be thrown for a loss.
Neal McCluskey
… UD thought she’d pay a visit to the Godzillatron, the immense screen many university football stadiums have recently had installed. These things — more commonly called Adzillatrons, because the main thing they do is show advertisements — cost millions. But a peek at this University of Texas opinion piece tells you that this outlay is only the beginning:
… Part of the excitement that allows fans to interact more with the team and the game is the animations and videos that are played on the jumbotron. [Oh right. Lots of people call it a jumbotron.] In this department, we are way past due for a major facelift.
To start, the video that is played directly before the team enters the field is nothing more than juvenile…
Fans pay a lot of money, travel long distances and sometimes sit through unbearable heat to watch their Longhorns play football. The least the athletic department could do is make the entertainment aside from the game as excellent as the team…
While I still go absolutely nuts when the video is played, it could be more professionally done….
More professional Adzillatron animations — your university athletics fee, and your parents’ taxes, at work.
… debate the merits of big time university football.
Problem: Finding someone to take the pro position.
[Professor Thomas] Palaima first wanted to argue against athletics, but he agreed to argue for it, said Madison Searle, a coordinator for the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan, which hosted the event. “It’s very hard to find a full-time professor who’s behind athletics,” he said.
Here’s a faculty resolution on athletics. Read the whole thing.
Highlights:
Only one-third of Cal’s men’s basketball players and one-half of the football players graduate, and Cal’s football graduation rate is near the bottom of the Pac-10 Conference.
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Although it is widely believed that the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA) earns a profit for the Berkeley campus, its financial statements reveal that
it significantly outspends its revenues every year, depleting precious campus resources.For the most recent 5-year period for which the DIA has released detailed data (2003-08) its cost to campus has been at least $10 million every year except for 2007-08 for which the cost was $7.4 million.
Current estimates for the most recent fiscal year (2008-09) indicate that the cost to the campus is expected to be a record high of approximately $13.5 million and is expected to be even higher for the current fiscal year (2009-10).
The DIA has cost the campus approximately $160 million since 1991.
The DIA is authorized to operate as an Auxiliary Enterprise on a financially self-supporting basis.
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The faculty recommend that
All funding of Intercollegiate Athletics from campus subsidies and the use of student registration fees cease immediately (or as soon as possible to the extent permitted by existing contract constraints).
The DIA cease annual deficit spending and the Berkeley campus not permit Intercollegiate Athletics to spend beyond its actual annual direct revenues.