Georgia’s Universities Continue Fundamentally Corrupt Collegiate Athletics System
Only 10 of the 205 Division 1-level athletic departments in the U.S. gave more money to their schools than what they received in subsidies. A whopping zero of those 10 schools are in Georgia meaning UGA, Tech, GSU and Southern are all guilty of corrupting their schools for the benefit of athletics.
The findings came in a blistering report from The Chronicle of Higher Education which is now behind a paywall.
Even more damning than 95.1% of all athletic departments living off the largesse of their parent institutions, despite collegiate athletics being a multi-billion dollar industry built on indentured servitude, is that “less than $1 of every $100 in revenue generated by major college athletic departments at public colleges is directed to academic programs.”
Here is an instance where we are the problem. As much as I love collegiate athletics, our major universities are now sports teams being pretending to be schools. If we truly loved our universities–not their football/basketball teams–we’d be calling for an end to this perverse practice. Look at the number of schools, mine included, that are running at the opportunity to throw millions of dollars at one, possibly two, sports teams for some lucre they’ll never earn, all while running athletic departments that almost universally operate in the red.
Put another way, what would be a more compelling reason for you to donate to your alma mater (if the team you support is the school you actually attended): a national championship in football or a 20% increase in the amount of professors being published? A Final Four appearance or admissions standards increase?
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Maybe ticket prices could be tied to tuition cost. A percent of all tickets goes to academics. Tuition prices go up, so do ticket prices.
I haven’t thought that through, just throwing it out there.
Another solution: schools focus on, I don’t know, education?
Just throwing it out there.
And often students are forced to subsidize intercollegiate sports programs via “student fees” and ” student athletic fees.”
Well my longstanding feeling has been that they shouldn’t even make the athletes go to school. Just drop the pretense; pay them. It’s a pro team/league, but the school logo on the helmet. Why not? Who cares?
It’s just that it opens up a whole can of worms as to salary caps and trying to achieve some parity or competitiveness. Otherwise, 10 schools with the most money will always win it.
But we can figure that out.
Then you’ve got the age thing. The NCAA is basically a feeder system/minor league for the NFL and NBA. Would the NCAA be competing with them, or do we have an age limit? Or do we make the NBA and NFL develop their own minor leagues? Or make them pay into the NCAA since they benefit from it?
Are those trick questions or something?
Thank you Ed. I have been an educational equivalent of Jeremiah in my social circles with similar statements. It is a subject where all I can do is admit to my own hypocrisy however. I love watching college football while still remaining aware that the business it has become is anathema to education. I would say that a university running this business is equivalent of a Southern Baptist Church running a distillery, but at least the distillery would return a profit back to the church.
I blame the fans who are rooting for the wrong teams (and by wrong, I mean the programs that are doing it the wrong way)
Ed, welcome to the bandwagon! I think I’ve found another fan of Navy athletics! (#18 in the final polls this year, by the way)
The service academies generally do it right–the athletics directly support the core mission and identity of the schools, with D1 football serving as an invaluable marketing tool for institutions that are federally mandated to enroll students from all 50 states–roughly proportionate to each states’ population–in every freshman class.
And for the record, Navy’s athletic department is completely self funded–taking no federal dollars (unlike Army and especially Air Force) while supporting a ludicrous number of varsity teams–in part because of Title IX (USNA’s 75% male, so you need two male varsity teams for every female team… varsity squash anyone? Sailing? Wrestling? Boxing? We got it all and then some).
Oh, and Navy’s athletes are paid–just like all Navy students. They’re on active duty. It’s not much, but it does give you a little spending money on top of all your lodging, clothes, meals, school supplies, laundry, etc. being taken care of. A decade ago it was about $400 a month for a senior and less for underclassmen.
Send me your address and I’ll mail you a t-shirt. Beat Army!