Pending uproar

[cactuswatcher]

The current trend of empire building by the athletic departments of many of the nation's largest universities is coming to a dramatic head. Having grabbed multi-million dollar salaries for coaches and cornered vast operating budgets usually beyond their athletic-related income, now the powers-that-be in college sports want to start paying the players walking-around money.

I can think of nothing that would infuriate average students struggling to get by with onerous loans and even the lucky full scholarship students forbidden from earning outside money, than having athletes waving around cash even if the coaches don't think it's that much money. How long before one of the all too frequent sexual attacks or other crimes committed by athletes ignites campuses across the country? How long would it be before we see sit-ins at the athletic departments? How long before there would be widespread calls to end direct state funding for college athletics where it exists, and the cessation of loans to athletics departments from general funds where it doesn't? How long would it be before there are demands to rid the schools of thugs masquerading as students? How long would it be before there are serious demands to throw big-time athletics off campus altogether? These folks are playing with fire around a very short, dangerous, fuse.

Since the 19th century, athletics have had a poor reputation with the academic side of things. With athletics pulling in huge amounts of money without sharing a dime with the rest of the school, tensions have to be rising. Athletics have always survived on campus by keeping the faculty and student body willing to accept the accompanying nonsense. Maybe not right away, but I think eventually the issue of paying athletes will drive too many of the student fans and faculty fans into the opposite camp.

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, the athletes do make lots of money for the college, aren't allowed to see any of it, and generally don't come from wealthy backgrounds.

Although I'm one of those foreigners who looks at USA university and high school sport with absolute bemusement and horror. (In UK soccer, people of that age with athletic talent would already be employed by a team and paid a wage.)

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

(In UK soccer, people of that age with athletic talent would already be employed by a team and paid a wage.)

Baseball has minor leagues here that do the same thing. But American professional football has always relied on universities to sort out the best for them.

I would challenge the idea that athletes make good money for their American universities any more. When I was in school that was, not doubt, very true. Then the coaches didn't make more than professors and instructors, and stadiums and arenas were basically supposed to last forever. Since then in order to pay for dramatically elevated salaries for coaches and build bigger and fancier training and playing facilities to attract pickier players, most of the people who would contribute more to the school because of the team, are guided directly or indirectly toward giving their money straight to the athletic department. Among many others, the university I got my bachelor's degree from instituted a policy, borrowed from professional teams, of requiring a massive surcharge over the ticket price for non-students to be permitted to buy season tickets. Since the games are partly social event, season tickets are the vast majority of sales. That surcharge is money the rest of the university won't see. Among the 125 colleges and universities that play football in the highest division in the US only about 1 in 6 makes a profit on sports. The rest have to make up the difference from other sources. None of the hundreds of schools in the lesser divisions of our college sports, makes money directly from sports. It's a fact that schools with teams that win 3/4 of their football games or more have their general fund donations go up noticeably. But obviously that's not going to happen for most universities in a given year. Schools that have invested heavily in sports for a century or more have to keep up those investments or those donations drop. Some of the teams, including the one from my university, are getting big checks from TV revenue. But all of that goes right back into sports empire building. My university has built two new basketball arenas since I graduated and turned the place where they played before into a gigantic training facility, at least parts of which ordinary students pay a fee to use. That university is one of those that can't legally get money directly from the state's government for sports. Last year the general fund of the university lent twenty million dollars to the athletic department, an amount equal to one third of the department's total yearly budget, for a smallish expansion of the football stadium. If you don't worry about where the money came from and don't worry about how much good it could have done elsewhere in the university, it all looks fine.

The price of a university education in this country has grown out of proportion to inflation for more than a decade. Unhappiness is growing. Athletics may not be the only target if and when the discontent erupts into something else, but it's an obvious target. I'm a graduate of two universities that play football at the highest level. As a student I had season tickets for football. I've always been a college sports fan, but I've never given a dime in donation to an athletic department and I'm very worried now about the whole system.