Brian Burnett, senior vice president for finance and operations at the University of Minnesota, cautions a reporter that
spending sports revenue on academics could make the teams less competitive…. “You certainly can look at contributing back to the campus, but that’ll move you down the scale for competitive resources.”
Burnett’s is one of a number of gratifyingly straightforward comments on the relationship between universities and sports that UD has stumbled upon lately (scroll down a bit for some other examples). His remark appears in one of those archetypal Are we being had? pieces that periodically pop up in the local booster press… The hometown sports reporter seems to recall that high-ranking university personnel not long ago assured him that, what with this super tv deal and that super advertising deal, the university would shortly not only be in the black sportswise; it’d start giving money to the academic side of the university.
Like Herbert Hoover announcing prosperity was just around the corner, jock schools are always announcing they’re teetering on the brink of athletics riches, and the football-slobberers always believe them. Then after the incredibly expensive player sex scandal, the incredibly expensive buyouts of drunk horny coaches, the fans so grossed out by the players and the coaches that they’re not buying football tickets, and the crushing loan payments on palatial buildings for all of these wonderful players and coaches, it turns out hey we’re in the red for fuck’s sake. (UM is indeed in the red for fuck’s sake.)
BUT!
Happy days are here again! Just sit tight and athletics is going to be making so much money you won’t believe it and neither will the Classics department when athletics hands them plane fare to Delphi!
April 10th, 2017 at 10:54PM
some of you are old enough to remember that cities built stadiums that were used for multiple sports. philly, baltimore, saint louis, minneapolis, candletsick park in san francisco, all were configured for both baseball and football. main reason was it made no sense for municipalities to load up on public debt and only use the building a few days a year. have pro baseball/football teams use the same venue and at least the city can make money from taxes, fees, royalties, whatever, and finance the debt service.
but that’s pretty much all gone. municipalities discarded that thinking and have publicly financed athletic venues for one sport used only a few days a year. thankfully, taxpayers are seeing through the huckster’s spiels and are voting down bond measures for athletic buildouts. reference san diego and oakland voters who said drop dead to bond propositions for new stadiums.
but unis have no regard for common sense, taxpayers, or students. as ud states, they’re building sports palaces that are crushing unis because they’re empty 90 per cent of the year. athletic departments aren’t the ones who shoulder the debt burden, it’s the academic side that does. no real constituency exists that would stop this perverse, but profitable for a tiny number of people, use of public resources….
April 11th, 2017 at 4:17AM
charlie, I think UD and some of the other folks here have made a pretty good bloggers’ case that some universities are indeed cannibalizing academics to pay for athletics. Are we getting close to the point where this ought to be reported to some responsible body in a formal way? I don’t know the legalities, but are we getting close to the point where there’ve been criminal and civil violations? (BTW-back in the 1980s, one of our Podunk Tech trustees spearheaded an effort to promote athletics by stripping academic departments of funds.)
April 11th, 2017 at 9:49AM
jack, maybe it should be reported and hopefully something done about all of this nonsense. but ultimately, it’s the responsibility of students and alumni to say no. one of the worst examples of athletic indulgence is the university of oregon. they built the most expensive college basketball arena a few years ago. at the beginning of march, they announced that they’ll be laying of 75 professors. a serious student would say what the hell kind of school is this that makes decisions such as that. attendance and the number of prospective admits would fall through the floor, if oregon recruited undergrads that were scholars.
but that ain’t happening, and until it does, then nothing will change. the example you gave regarding your podunk tech was thirty years ago. in the interim, i’m sure that enrollment increased exponentially. at some point, we have to take responsibility for allowing our unis to become clown colleges….
April 12th, 2017 at 4:06AM
” . . . [W]e have to take responsibility for allowing our unis to become clown colleges . . .”. That’s it exactly. People could use a little opinion leadership from an authoritative body, that’s all.
April 12th, 2017 at 10:38AM
jack, yup…..
April 12th, 2017 at 12:31PM
charlie, thanks bro’.
UD, are you listening? The stripping of academics to pay for athletics warrants attention at some authoritative level. Violation of fiduciary duty, violation of public trust, etc.
April 13th, 2017 at 1:43PM
One of the big problems of this conversation is that the public, especially sports fans, are far too willing to believe that the outlier is the mean. The University of Alabama and University of Texas football teams make tons of money — loogit those full stadiums! loogit those tv contracts! — and so they assume that all football programs make money, and of course that they are so philanthropic that they not only fund the entire athletic program, but give money to academics.
And as we all know almost all programs lose money.
But beyond this, we are not even talking about as much money as it would seem. The richest football program’s budget seems huge, and in some ways it is, but for some perspective, my undergraduate alma mater, an elite SLAC, has a bigger operating budget than any big-time college football team, some $225 million. Furthermore, you’ll always hear something along the lines of “well, if the English department brought in millions of dollars …” but (and again, keeping in mind that most college football programs aren’t bringing in millions and millions after expenses): 1) Actually, at any decent sized school with a Gen Ed curriculum, lots of programs actually do bring in deceptively large amounts of money, especially considering majors, minors, get eds, and those taking electives. I’d be willing to bet that a far higher percentage of academic departments “pay for themselves” than football programs do, especially taking into account DIII and DII. And 2) At many of these institutions, federal grants along dwarf the football program’s revenues (even before expenses). Ohio State’s football rvenues a few years ago were about $125 million. Though when all was said and done OSU ended up a few million in the black (admittedly Ohio State does pay for itself and the athletic program and is on eof the few to end up with a profit). By comparison, that same year OSU received $925 million in federal grants, and that, of course, is only a fraction of the university’s funds, including tuition and the like.
“Soccernomics” has a great chapter about how we overvalue sports as businesses, arguing that they loom large but in fact are quite small. Manchester United would be something like the 250th largest business in Denmark. A midsized grocery store in an English suburb has greater turnover every month than ManU does in a year (I’m away from my resources, soo all of these numbers are approximations but not exaggerations).
In other words: The worst aspect of all isn’t that universities whore themselves out for sports. It’s that we are available so cheap.