Maybe big-time sports in New York wasn’t such a great idea
11/17/2009
Yesterday, Katie Thomas of the New York Times published an article
describing the trials and tribulations of Division I sports at the four SUNY schools (Buffalo, Binghamton, Albany, Stony Brook) that have moved to the top division since trustees allowed athletic scholarships in 1986. Binghamton’s recent problems have been
well chronicled. The other three campuses have had more than their share of issues as well:
The adjustment has been painful at the other universities as well. In 1999, the N.C.A.A. placed Buffalo’s men’s basketball team on probation for recruiting violations. The N.C.A.A. has also cited Buffalo’s football team for the players’ poor academic performance. In 2006, three Albany football players were arrested on charges of raping a fellow student and were dismissed from the university. And in 2005, the N.C.A.A. placed Stony Brook on three years’ probation for a series of minor violations involving more than 50 athletes. The N.C.A.A. cited the university for a “lack of institutional control,” removed 12 ½ scholarships for two years, and said Stony Brook had been “ill-equipped” to handle the transition. These issues, along with state budget cuts, are making some people question the legitimacy of SUNY schools competing on the big athletic stage:
Now, with the university system facing a proposed $90 million cut in state financing, some are questioning whether the emphasis on athletics is misguided. Assemblyman Peter M. Rivera, a Democrat from the Bronx, said state money should not be spent on building athletic powerhouses.
“That’s not the purpose of a SUNY school,” he said. “The purpose of a SUNY school is to provide the best education possible.”
Naturally, school administrators are defending athletics:
“I suppose you can say that the universities are all looking toward intangible goals in terms of student education,” said Shirley Strum Kenny, who helped bring Division I sports to Stony Brook as its president from 1994 until her retirement this year. “There’s very little way to measure it, unless you’re going to wait 40 years.”40 years? What is going to magically happen if we wait 40 years? Will some, or all, of these SUNY schools suddenly become consistent national powers? Will they join the big conferences? If not, they will continue to lose millions of dollars in order to gain very little regional, much less national, publicity. Even the schools that do have national publicity through sports have had trouble parlaying that to any meaningful benefit outside athletics. The Buffalo athletics director can gush all he wants about the team appearing in (and losing) the International Bowl last year, but nobody nationally cares about such an accomplishment. Although some people in the Buffalo community may have become interested in the football program last year because of the bowl appearance being a high point for the program, few people will retain interest unless they make better bowl games more consistently.
The financial situation regarding SUNY sports is not good:
While ticket sales, student fees, private donations and other revenues help pay for athletics, the universities’ contribution has grown in recent years. At Albany, the university subsidy to athletics increased 77 percent, to $6.7 million in 2007-8 from $3.8 million in 2003-4. During the same period, Binghamton’s contribution rose 47 percent, to $3.1 million from $2.1 million. Buffalo contributed $7.5 million to athletics in 2007-8, a 31 percent increase over 2003-4, when it provided $5.7 million.
Stony Brook calculates its contribution differently than the other SUNY members, but officials said its subsidy totaled $8.5 million in 2007-8, a 119 percent increase over the $3.9 million contributed in 2003-4. The large increase was a result of a one-time payment by the university to relieve the athletic department of its debts in 2007-8, officials said.
Two of the universities have benefited from connections to powerful state senators. In 2002, Stony Brook completed construction on a football stadium that is named for State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, the former chairman of the chamber’s higher education committee, who helped procure the $22 million in state money used to build it. The Binghamton University Events Center, an all-purpose arena where the Bearcats play basketball, opened in 2004 and cost the state $33 million. The financing was secured with the help of a local senator, Thomas W. Libous.
Division I sports at the SUNY schools are costing the universities and taxpayers a significant amount of money. As the article points out, there has been growth in the amount of applications since the schools added Division I sports, but the campuses without Division I sports have also seen growth in the number of applicants. In fact, many schools across the country have seen rising application numbers. As previous research concludes, I don’t think application rate increases can be attributed to sports.
The natural question then becomes why do these schools continue to run Division I sports programs. Here appears to be the answer:
The transition to high-level athletics began in the 1980s, when administrators at Buffalo were looking to raise visibility and establish a rallying point for the university, which had a sprawling campus and a large number of commuter students. Buffalo and the other state universities, which range from 15,000 to 30,000 students, were large research institutions, yet they competed against small, private colleges. SUNY’s 12 smaller four-year colleges with athletic teams continue to play in Division III.
“At Division III, we were playing institutions that simply were not of our type,” recalled William R. Greiner, who served as Buffalo’s president from 1991 until 2004. “It was simply a peculiarity, our athletics program.”Earlier this year, the chancellor of the University of New Orleans made a
similar statement. I don’t understand this concept that research institutions have to be members of Division I. The NIH and other research funding agencies don’t base their grant decisions on whether or not a school has big-time sports. That idea would be ludicrous. Some of the most productive research institutions in the country, like the University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon, are members of Division III. Universities are always trying to find one facet that separates them from the crowd. Instead of viewing athletics as that facet, perhaps they should have advertised that all of the universities’ resources were going towards improving academic quality and student access instead of failing marketing and entertainment enterprises. That strategy had a chance of being successful. Students care about quality and accessibility much more so than they care about sports.
It would be one thing to laugh off the SUNY schools as being misguided lemmings in thinking that they will reap benefits from something that has not provided many, if any, schools with any positive missionary benefits. Unfortunately, the combination of bad behavior and terrible budgets mean that this is no laughing matter. The best strategy now is to jump off the sinking ship of big-time athletics instead of hoping that the huge gaping hole will magically cure itself within 40 years.
