Recent Posts

CHE's Players blog has a new entry discussing proposed laws in California and Georgia requiring schools to disclose information such as medical policy, scholarship policy, the cost of tuition, and so forth.  These are interesting bills.  On the one hand, one could say that it is the student's (and their parents) responsibility to research their college options and the true cost of attending a school.  Athletes must accept the fact that they may get injured or underperform.  They need to understand the consequences of these situations.   

On the other hand, recruiters have been accused of painting an overly rosy picture for recruits.  The recruiters tell the prospects that they will be treated like they are royalty, but that level of treatment may end if the player gets injured or does not perform.  Players may not understand the hoops they must jump through in order to transfer in some cases.  These proposed bills, if enforced, could make the recruiters more honest.  I'm sure the recruiters won't dwell on potential misfortunes.  It will probably be fine print, but the fine print may be more information than the recruits currently have. 

In order for these laws to work, it must cover all recruiters from all the states, not just the ones where the bills are past.  I believe both bills cover all recruiters.  I'm not sure what the punishment would be for noncompliance.  Could there be a situation where, for example, Georgia prosecutors go after Florida coaches for noncompliance while being blind to in-state violations? 

There are still unanswered questions about these proposed bills, but I think there are more benefits than problems with the bills.  I don't know if they will be passed or not, but I'm not sure if there is anything problematic about either that would get them voted down.  I can't see it hurting the in-state team's competitiveness, although it may force schools in California and Georgia to adopt policies that are more favorable for the students if the students and parents actually listen and accept that injuries and underperformance happens in athletics all the time.  I doubt that is a negative that will sway legislators much, but you never know what they are thinking.

If anything, I think colleges and universities need to be more transparent in general.  Information given to prospective students is often full of half truths.  To that extent, perhaps these proposed laws should be extended to cover all prospective college students.   

Libby Sander and Brad Wolverton, reporters at the Chronicle of Higher Education, have started a new blog.  The blog, Players, covers news concerning college athletics.  I'm expecting this new blog to become a smashing success given the wide readership of the CHE.  Anyone interested in this site should definitely also check out the new Players blog. 

Link

The Kansas City Star recently published an interesting article (via The Sports Economist blog) chronicling how the athletics director at the University of Kansas, Lew Perkins, made $4.4 million last season.

But that’s a paltry sum compared with what Perkins received in 2009 — $4.4 million.

Perkins’ pay is the equivalent of $85,000 a week — about 10 KU students’ average yearly tuition payments. What’s more, $4.4 million appears to place Perkins far beyond that of any athletic director in the nation.

The 4.4 million dollar figure includes a hefty one-time bonus, but it is still an outrageous figure compared to the typical pay for high level athletics directors as noted in the article.  Even Perkins' normal salary, which is above $900,000 a year, is at the very high end of the spectrum. 

One could justify Perkins being paid so well.  Under his tenure, the Jayhawks have seen the football team have more success and a national championship in men's basketball.  The basketball team even won Inside Higher Ed's hypothetical graduation rate tournament for this past season.  However, there were negatives as well.  The coach that led the resurgent football squad, Mark Mangino, departed the school a few months ago under a cloud of controversy that he abused his players (though some argue that the abuse story was used as an excuse to fire Mangino after a disappointing season on the field due to the added expectations Mangino helped build).  There was a physical feud that boiled over last year between the football and men's basketball squads.  Also, as the story mentions, there is a recent ticket scandal involving the athletics department. 

It seems like most schools are willing to trade some controversy for some success in the big two sports much less a national championship.  To that extent, Perkins has probably done everything Kansas wanted him to do.  That said, the bonus still seems outrageous to me.  Other ADs with similar resumes are making less than Perkins even without the bonus.  One can't claim market value when that is the case.  It seems like Kansas has let athletics success overrule common sense.  This may be another case of a coach or athletics director getting a blank check. 

David Williams, Vanderbilt's Vice Chancellor for University Affairs and Athletics (essentially the athletics director in Vanderbilt's athletics system without an athletics department), made some very clear statements about football, Title IX, men's non-revenue sports, and bargain women's sports.  A lot of sports administrators will try to hide the issue, but Williams is very frank in his analysis:

The head of an athletic department in the mighty Southeastern Conference says the biggest problem with meeting gender equity is what he calls the elephant in the room: College football.

"We have 330 varsity athletes, 110 are on the football team," Vanderbilt vice chancellor David Williams said Tuesday night. "So if you want me to get to 50-50, that means I have slots for 55 men other than football."

Williams was the only panelist able to discuss Title IX from the position of having made decisions based on trying to meet the federal law.

He worked at Ohio State and saw how that Big Ten school met gender equality by starting a women's crew program. To meet one requirement of Title IX, he had to cut men's soccer a few years ago and added women's swimming and bowling. That women's bowling team in 2007 won Vanderbilt the only national championship in school history.

"We had to add women's sports. Then you have to deal with the budgetary situation. The university says, `We're not going to give it anymore money,'" Williams said in defending the move.

Williams also noted that his daughter swims for Brown, a university that has 36 sports offering no scholarships compared to the 16 varsity sports Vanderbilt has with scholarships.

Money is out there. Williams was part of the SEC's negotiating committee that worked out a 15-year deal with ESPN reportedly worth more than $2 billion to televise the league's sports in 2008. Vanderbilt will be receiving $18 million to $20 million a year under that package.

"One needs to understand that college athletics in Division I in this country is big business, and we sit in a conference that signed the biggest TV (deal). And they didn't give us that money for anything but two sports: Football and men's basketball," Williams said.

Link to the Associated Press story

I think Williams does a pretty good job of briefly painting an accurate picture of the way things work in college sports regarding the relationship between the revenue sports and non-revenue sports.  As the article puts it, college football really is the elephant in the room. 

There's an interesting article in the New York Times (via The Sports Economist blog) discussing the reasons why St. John's men's basketball coach Norm Roberts was fired.  Just for reference, the coach at St. John's before Roberts, Mike Jarvis, was caught paying players, but Jarvis did win a number of games.  Roberts did not keep the Red Storm as competitive as they were under Jarvis.  Why?  Well, according to the New York Times article at least, Roberts was unwilling the break rules:

There is a notion that it is difficult for a college in the metropolitan area to win without currying the favor of youth coaches in the region. It is a notion that coaches themselves like to perpetuate. Russell Smith, a coach with the New York Gauchos, an Amateur Athletic Union program, said Roberts and his staff had been “too laid-back” in their local recruiting efforts.

“You got to hustle here, bend some rules or do something,” Smith said. “They settled for the transfers and second-tier kids.”

Kenny Wilcox, the head coach at ASA, a junior college in Brooklyn, said St. John’s had been foolish to think it could win without bending the rules.

“It’s naïve because if you know the business, there are certain schools that are getting certain types of players and certain schools that aren’t,” Wilcox said. “At St. John’s, they’re not getting certain types of players because they’re doing things the right way.”

Dave Telep, a national recruiting analyst for Scout.com, said St. John’s needed a “pied piper” who would in turn lure other top athletes. He said that would take the cooperation of some New York City power brokers.

Telep added: “If you have to cheat to win at St. John’s, then they had the wrong guy. There’s not a bone in the Norm Roberts body that would sacrifice the right thing for the quick fix. He recruited the local kids hard and high school and A.A.U. coaches hard.”

Based on the quotes in the story, it sounds like Roberts did not pay off enough AAU coaches to get the top talent.  On top of that, it sounds like he did not pay the players either.  If Roberts is as honest as many say he is, it is very sad that a scandal ridden school like St. John's would dump an honest coach in the quest for a coach like Jarvis with the exception that the new coach does not get caught cheating.  It sounds like the new St. John's coach better be prepared to do a whole lot of cheating if he wants to keep his job unless he can win 30+ games a season with an honest program.  I'm sure St. John's parents, students, alumni, faculty, and staff are so proud of their dishonest institution!   

U.S. News and World Report published two articles debating if the NCAA should ban teams with poor graduation rates from competing in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  Ben Miller, a policy analyst at Education Sector, believes that teams with poor graduation rates should be locked out.  Marc Isenberg, author of books covering college athletics issues, presents other possible ideas, like freshman ineligibility, to perhaps improve the academic landscape of college athletics.

I think Miller has the right idea in thinking that only the schools with an intention of educating their athletes should have a shot at the championship, but actually implementing a policy to support that ideal is almost impossible.  In theory, the APR should be preventing schools with rock bottom graduation rates from being in the tournament.  Yes, there is a difference between academic progress and graduation, but academic progress should point towards the graduation goal.  Then again, one does not have to graduate to be considered a "graduation success" under the NCAA's preferred graduation rate metric, the GSR.  Obviously, blatant lies and charades start right at the top in college sports.   

The problem with the APR, as we've seen, is that schools aren't willing to actually improve their academics in order to boost their APR scores.  Instead, they rely more on "friendly" faculty, joke classes (if they are even real), joke majors, and fraudulent academic advising.  Similarly, criminal schools would do the same to obtain a graduation rate high enough to qualify for the tournament.  It's as simple as that. 

Thus, it is probably best for unprepared students who aren't given an education, which will continue to be the norm in sports like big-time men's basketball no matter what the regulations are,  to leave a university without a degree in hand.  The alternative, as Isenberg illustrates in the quote below, is to hand out fake degrees.  I don't think that is a good idea for athletes or non-athletes.   

Asked if he had earned a degree while playing basketball at Clemson University, former NBA player Elden Campbell replied, "No, but they gave me one anyway."

Jon Solomon of The Birmingham News published an article yesterday discussing the revenue and expenses of Alabama's trip to the BCS National Championship game this year where they won the BCS championship.  The expenses ended up costing $4,296,631.  The revenue is $3,690,400.  The revenue figure does not include the redistributed money Alabama will receive from the SEC for other team's bowl payouts, but they would have received that even if they did not win a game all season.   

The article breaks down the expenses and revenue in more detail.

Alabama isn't the first team to lose money on a national championship game victory.  There were articles stating the same about Florida when they won their first BCS National Championship.  Yes, there may be other tangible and intangible benefits of winning the championship, but clearly being on top of the mountain in college football is not as much of a win-win situation as many would want us to believe.     

Tom Van Riper of Forbes just had an interesting article published discussing salaries for men's college basketball coaches.  Van Riper finds that coaching salaries are excessively high when compared to the revenues of basketball programs:

But measured against the revenue [Kentucky coach John] Calipari generates, his take-home looks outsized. Calipari (who left his two prior college programs--Massachusetts and Memphis--in hot water with the NCAA for alleged violations) pulls down 10% or so of the $35 million to $40 million that his program generates for the university (the entire athletic department generates $72 million a year, the school says). The corporate equivalent for Calipari's pay package would be Microsoft  ( MSFT -  news  -  people ) handing Steve Ballmer $6 billion a year. The average NBA coach, who works twice as many games as his college counterpart, makes $4 million a year, about 3.5% of an average club's revenue.

Link

I know the typical response to this is that Calipari's salary does not come from the university, but the independent University of Kentucky Athletics Association.  As I have discussed in the past, however, organizations like the UKAA siphon money away from the university negating the argument that the salaries are independent of the university.   

Many people justify big-time college athletics by stating that big-time athletics leads to financial benefits for the university.  This has been proven to be false.  Big-time athletics exists to win games.  Winning games is important because it prevents administrators from feeling heat from the board, alumni, and politicians.  Thus, coaching salaries don't have to make business sense because college sports aren't business decisions.  Losing money on sports is fine for many boards, alumni, and politicians.  They are willing to pay (with taxpayer and student money in most cases) to try to win games.  Schools pay what it costs to win.  In theory, college players can't be paid like they are in the pros.  That puts the college coaches in a more favorable position as they, along with facilities, are the only things colleges can spend money on in order to try to get those desperately sought after wins. 

I found an interesting article in the San Diego Union-Tribune (via The Sports Economist blog) about Cal State San Marcos students (well, 866 of them out of 9,200) approving a student fee increase that is intended to fund Division II men's and women's basketball, volleyball, and a cheer squad:

The vote allows the student athletics fee to gradually increase from $80 per academic year now up to $200 per year in 2012-2013. The revenue generated by this increase ultimately will be more than $1.2 million annually. The athletic department’s current $1.7 million budget for 10 sports teams is subsidized by about $740,000 from student fees and about $400,000 from state funds. The rest is generated through fundraising and other external sources, Seitz [CSU-SM Athletics Director] said.

The idea behind adding new teams, Seitz said, is to open the door to more external revenue — ticket sales, sponsorships — while enhancing a growing campus and community in North County. The university, founded in 1989, currently has about 9,200 students.

The hope is that the addition of basketball teams will lead to a new $20 million multi-use campus arena built by a public-private partnership.

They might be able to sell tickets and sponsorships, but the revenue gained from that probably won't even come close to covering all the expenses related to running a Division II sports program.  This is especially true if they try to construct their own arena.  In other words, the students, university, and even the state will continue to be on the hook for paying for a very low visibility program. 

Although no time is a good time for starting a useless public program, this is particularly true right now when the state, CSU system, and the campus is facing severe financial difficulty.  The article mentions that the recession has cut the school's endowment in half.  Students at other California campuses are holding sit-ins and other protests over tuition hikes, faculty and staff are dealing with furloughs, and some California schools have enrollment caps.  This is not the time to have wet dreams about Division I greatness. 

I'm not sure why each of the 866 students approved the student fee increase, but I really question if they had all the facts when they voted.  Did they realize that the student fees would continue to grow and grow?  Did they realize that the athletics program will give the school very little publicity (unless it is negative) and lots of debt?  My guess is that the athletics department painted a very rosy picture about sports being the way out of the university ghetto.  Unfortunately, intercollegiate sports is probably going to help keep the university and their students as a whole in the red. 

Thanks for the kind words.  Welcome to the forum!