Blog Archives: December 2009

[Ashlen]

This is an archive of blog entries I published to the old Other Side Sports blog during December 2009.

[Ashlen]

Risk and college sports
12/02/2009

Yesterday, it was announced that La Salle University had settled with the parents of a former La Salle football player.  The player, Preston Plevretes, suffered a concussion in 2005 that eventually led to damage which keeps Plevretes non-fully functional today.  La Salle will pay the family $7.5 million.  Interestingly, La Salle no longer fields a football team for unrelated reasons. 

This situation brings up interesting questions.  First, there are many questions in pro and college football right now regarding the way players with concussions are handled.  It is possible for a concussed player to return to the field the game following the concussion.  Medical research indicates that this is not such a great idea.  Athletes naturally want to return to the playing field as soon as possible, although there is some reason to think that pro football players are starting to take concussions more seriously.  In the end, however, coaches and trainers need to step up and protect their player’s health.  It is a fundamental part of the job.   

Another issue concerns risk.  $7.5 million is not an insignificant figure for most schools.  This is certainly true for smaller Division I and most Division II, III, and community college programs.  Football is certainly not the only sport that has a heightened level of risk.  Given this, I wonder how many schools will reconsider intercollegiate sports primarily based on a risk assessment.

Of course, it also raises the question of responsibility.  It is reasonable to expect risk when participating in sports.  Given that, should schools be on the hook when an athlete gets injured?  The answer might be clearer if the trainers and coaches know a player is injured and don’t tell them or requires them to play anyway, but what about freak injuries?  Should athletes on an opposing team be responsible for damages on illegal plays?  What about legal plays?  What about a sporting league?  These are very legitimate questions in youth and adult sports.     

[Ashlen]

Hofstra University also punts varsity football
12/04/2009 

Two weeks ago, Colonial Athletic Association member Northeastern University dropped their football program.  I commented on the situation by stating that other schools were in the same predicament as Northeastern and should consider also dropping football.  This week, another Colonial Athletic Association member, Hofstra University, also decided to drop football.  The reasons cited for the move are noted on an excellent FAQ that is definitely worth reading:

The board voted unanimously last night (Wednesday, December 2) to eliminate the football program and reallocate those savings to academic initiatives, in order to further the University’s academic mission. At the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA) level, football could not attain significant national recognition, and it has had low student, community and media interest, attendance and financial support. In addition, the football program, the largest of the athletic programs, is by far the most expensive. In the end, we could not continue to justify the expense of football compared to the benefits it brought to the University.

[…]

We will increase need-based scholarships, and consider enhancements to a variety of existing programs, including the hard sciences and engineering, as well as investments in new programs such as public health and other health-related fields. Hofstra has made significant strides in the past decade, and academic excellence has been and will continue to be our highest priority. To continue our momentum and strive to become one of our nation’s best institutions of higher education, we must invest in academics and programs in which we can compete at the highest level. It is more essential than ever that we invest our resources wisely, and consider fully how we meet our mission as a university.

A university actually wants to stick to their mission?  A university realizes the importance of need-based scholarships and academic program enhancement?  A university realizes that it is quite pointless competing in Division I-AA football?  A university realizes that football is a drain on resources?

It kind of makes you wonder what took Hofstra so long to make this decision.  The uselessness, and perhaps danger, of the football team on the university’s core mission should have been obvious years ago.  While I could slam Hofstra for waiting so long to make the move, I wish to congratulate the school for being brave enough to submit to common sense.  Many schools, if not most schools, are not as wise as Hofstra.

While the claims of academic support and financial aid gains may just be a P.R. cover to justify dropping the team , I sincerely hope that the university sticks to their word.  How wonderful is it that a university is committed to providing financial aid and high quality academics in an era of inflated higher education costs and deflated academic (particularly undergraduate) quality?  Hopefully the academic community and general population will realize that Hofstra has the right plan.

As a side note, I was intrigued by a user comment made in reference to this story on espn.com.  A user named TheMick6677 said the following:

4.5 [million dollars] is nothin to the schools with endowments and how much money they are making by over charging for schooling. they can afford to keep it going. schools with no football are pointless so hofstra is just another stupid pointless school.

Apparently, TheMick6677 has not heard about endowment earmarks.  Also, TheMick6677 is failing to connect overcharged tuition to mission drift.  The last part of TheMick6677’s comment is both hilarious and sad!  Is this the reasoning universities appease to when starting and supporting sports programs?   

[Ashlen]

Championship game leads to less class time
12/09/2009

Over the weekend, the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team secured a spot in the BCS National Championship Game on January 7th in Pasadena, California.  Classes were set to resume on January 6th (a Wednesday) at the Tuscaloosa campus, but in order to facilitate those traveling to the game, administrators have pushed back the start of the semester to January 11th (a Monday).  There will be no make up days.

The end result is that students with a MW or TTh schedule will miss one day of class.  Those with a MWF schedule will miss two days of classes.  Academically speaking, the loss of one class is not huge.  The loss of two days is pushing it.  Nevertheless, students are paying for classes that they won’t be able to take.  It is a missed opportunity for learning.  Although faculty may appreciate the break in order to work on other projects like research, they will have to redesign their teaching plans. 

Sure, this will be a break for those athletes, band members, cheerleaders, students, and faculty that are traveling to the game or otherwise partying about the game.  However, is it worthwhile for an academic institution to reduce the chance of academic achievement for the purpose of the decidedly nonacademic (and probably anti-academic) purpose of cheering on a football team? 

Chances are that several students and some faculty would take off that week to follow the football game, but why deprive those who wish to complete what they are paying for or are paid to do?  After all, educational institutions are supposed to educate.  Instead of giving the students every opportunity to get the best education they can, the University of Alabama would rather support tomfoolery.   

[Ashlen]

Television programs about college sports issues
12/10/2009

ESPN’s Outside the Lines television program and espn.com will have a multi-part series about the business of college athletics starting this weekend.  Meanwhile, Penn State has uploaded discussion panel videos to their YouTube channel that originally aired on the Big Ten Network concerning college athletics issues.  There are full length shows about the arms race in college athletics and life after the NCAA.   

[Ashlen]

Two interesting discussions about athletics and academics
12/15/2009

Two discussions about academic quality for athletes have caught my eye.  First, Phil Miller at The Sports Economists blog discussed a recent Associated Press story about the importance of Division III colleges.  The original blog post has spurred on interesting user comments and follow up questions.  I found the blog post, the AP story, and the user comments to be quite thought inspiring.

Also, Gregg Easterbrook published commentary on his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column at espn.com about the importance of education for athletes.  Easterbrook backs up his opinion with research and interesting quotes.  This article is also quite fascinating. 

[Ashlen]

Bowl tickets: Don’t buy what you can’t sell
12/17/2009

Brent Schrotenboer of the San Diego Union-Tribune published an interesting article today about required bowl ticket sales.  Bowl bound teams are required to buy a certain amount of tickets upfront for the bowl games they are participating in.  Subsequently, the schools then try to sell the tickets to the fans.  This practice helps guarantee revenue for the bowl games, but it certainly does not guarantee revenue for the schools.  This is particularly true with low prestige bowls.  Schrotenboer uses last year’s Texas Bowl as an example.  The game matched Rice against Western Michigan.  Western Michigan was required to buy 11,000 tickets, but they were only able to sell 548 tickets.  The end result is that Western Michigan lost $412,535 just on unsold tickets. 

Given such a lack of interest, it does make one wonder why schools would even go to these anonymous bowls that clearly generate little fanfare.  Richard Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of North Carolina, explains:

“Seemingly, universities will do whatever they need to so everyone knows they’re a successful, big-time football power,” Southall said. “Whether it’s playing on any night of the week or buying ticket allotments, it doesn’t matter. On some level, the bowl committee folks know this. The (athletic directors) know this. Nobody can say no to the bowl fix.”

The bowl operators must feel pretty good knowing that they continuously outsmart the universities.  Sure, schools will get money back from the bowls generally speaking through school and conference payouts, but when all expenses are considered, most of these bowl games look like losing propositions.  Then again, mediocre squads going to mediocre bowls should expect mediocre results.  So why do it?  My guess would be that the administrators, who are probably mediocre to begin with, use mediocre logic.  This might be one of those cases where the fans are smarter than the schools.   

[Ashlen]

Knight Commission co-chairs on the future of college athletics
12/21/2009

William E. Kirwan and R. Gerald Turner, the co-chairs of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, wrote an editorial published in The Washington Post this past Saturday.  In the article, the co-chairs dismiss common perceptions about football’s supposed financial power and the potential for a playoff to become a financial jackpot for universities.  Although I absolutely agree with the article, I still contend that it is pretty hypocritical for Kirwan and Turner to call for financial reforms when they have hardly done that at their campuses and systems.  How do they expect anyone to take their call for collective action when they aren’t doing it themselves?