Warning: This post is long. I've tried to be brief in the past since
this topic is technically off subject for hockey-l. all that has meant
is that I'm accused have having no facts to back up my statements. In
the future, I might not make this mistake and will give the list a
lot,of off-topic information. Sorry, folks, I tried to be brief.
Robert Svec wrote:
> I don't feel that anecdotal evidence makes your case at best it makes it for
> the school are discussing. Is it valid to find some anecdotal evidence,
> then smear the whole group with the same broad brush? For example, "getting
> comprehensive and honest numbers from an athletic department is much the
> same as asking for them from the intelligence community. Right there, that
> ought to make one a bit suspicious." Maybe I'm getting cynical in my old
> age but I find anecdotal evidence and smear tactics as poor substitutes to
> facts.
>
Then the athletic departments should provide the facts. Their the ones
that have them, so the ball is in their court.
> I'll agree that a good accountant can show that virtually all or none of the
> programs are making money. But implying that football is the cause of many
> of the problems in college sports or with Title IX and that it is a money
> loser in all but the "5-8 schools TOTAL in the country that consistently
> make money on
> football" is not consistent with the published data. (See Below)
I'll deal with the very dubious published data in a moment. As to
football not being the major cause of Title IX problems, you're just
wrong. Football uses 85 scholarships. No other sport, men's or
women's, uses more than 20. Other measures of funding show the same
disparity. There simply is no arguing that the disproportionate
resources devoted to football make Title IX compliance very difficult.
>
> I have two questions about the "NCAA internal survey, only a minority of
> schools were billed by their schools for such things as maintenance on the
> stadiums." Are athletics departments being handled diffferently according
> to that study than the drama department for the auditorium, the concert band
> for the concert hall or practice area, the school newspaper for the office
> space/ computers/printing presses or the various of university sanctioned
> clubs and organizations for the space they use? If they are you have an
> arguement, if not you don't. Is that "internal NCAA" survey on their web
> page and when was it done? Would you please share the data from the
> internal NCAA document?
The comparison between football and drama departments is pathetic. No
one has ever claimed that the drama department makes money or that doing
so is one of its goals. It is treated as an academic unit, much the
same as the physics department. Part of its mission involves public
performances that provide entertainment. In this very superficial way
it perhaps is like the football team. But in its purpose, operation and
very philosophy it bears no resemblance. Further, the facilities of a
drama department are available for the use of any student taking a drama
class. Try getting use of the football team's weight facility sometime.
The NCAA survey I refer to formed a part of the report "Revenues and
Expenses of Intercollegiate Athletics Programs" It was authored by
Mitchell Raiborn and published in 1986. As I said, the primary source I
use is a bit out of date. If you have any evidence that things have
changed sine then, I'd love to hear it.
> The following data arefrom the Gender equity study that appeared in USA Today
I deleted the actual table you included because on my e-mail system, the
columns get all messed up and as it gets passed back and forth, it'll
become incomprehensible. Also, I assume that this is the same data that
Brad Toberman referred to in his post, so the same criticisms apply.
Put quite simply, the numbers listed are not credible. It makes the
same error that is highlighted by the NCAA survey mentioned above: it
accepts as valid whatever numbers the athletic departments put forth
without any attempt to analyze the true revenues or (more importantly)
expenses of a football program. These numbers will never reveal the
items pushed off budget, because their very source is the official
budget.
To highlight this, I'll just use one of the numbers this list provides.
Northwestern reported football expenses as $3,951,692. I don't have
any inside information about the NU athletic department, but it doesn't
take much analysis to realize that this is a false number.
To start off with, a full scholarship plus room & board at Northwestern
is worth about $25,000. (My sister graduated from there in '96; my
source on tuition and expenses is my parents.) Multiplied by 85, this
item alone costs just over $2.1 million. This is 53% of reported
expenses already.
Then we get to coaches salaries. I do not have the figures for Gary
Barnett's contract, but does anyone believe that he turned down the UCLA
offer for less than $200,000 a year? Now throw on a full complement of
assisstant coaches and we're easily up to $500,000.
Now we start to get into realms where I'm guessing, but I'm trying to
make my guesses on the conservative side. In the same survey mentioned
above, the average athletic travel costs for Div I schools was $554,000,
with the football team accounting for roughly half of this.
Universities have probably gotten better at cutting good deals since
1986, but general travel costs have gone up by a large margin. I'm
going to call Northwestern an average school; they're in the geographic
center of the conference, but I suspect that the averages are pulled
down by eastern schools with shorter distances and minor conferences
that are more compact. I'll give this item $300,000 and be confident
that I'm low-balling it.
In 1988, Tony Barnhart of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution estimated
that the costs for travel associated with recruiting averaged $150,000
for Div 1A schools. Northwestern's rise to prominence did not scrimp on
recruiting costs. They are at least average among the 107 schools and
costs have gone up. Call it $175,000. Throw in another $75,000 for all
of the promotional materials sent to prospective recruits, long-distance
phone calls to same and subscriptions to scouting services (again
extrapolated from Barnhart's numbers) and the total for recruiting
stands at $250,000. Actually, there are more categories that Barnhart
detailed, but I'll ignore those. Remember, I'm trying to be
conservative.
A 1989 study by a sports-business expert at Indiana University put the
yearly cost of football equipment at about $100,000. I'm taking this
figure from "College Sports, Inc." At the time of publication, the
study's author requested confidentiality, but Murray Sperber
independently verified the prices of the equipment items mentioned.
Again, this is an item that I'm sure is more expensive now than it was
then, but I'll use the $100,000 figure.
A May, 1983 story in the "Chronicle of Higher Education" quoted a Penn
State football team physician estimating the medical costs for football
that year at $326,000. I'm going to cut this in half on the theory that
Sperber might have found an unrepresentative sample (I have no evidence
of this, just being conservative). Given that football players have
been getting bigger and faster and more injury-prone in the 14 years
since then, plus the fact that medical costs are the only thing that
have outpaced tuition costs over that time (to the tune of better than
10% a year), I feel fully justified in just over doubling this cost (run
the compound interest equation for yourself). Chalk it up at $350,000.
This does not include the fact that since that time, universities have
instituted drug test for their atheletes, which is very expensive.
Insurance. On this issue, I'm not the only one that's guessing. I'm
just going to punt on this issue (I'll break $3.9 million without it)
because I have no idea. Athletic departments pay their liability
insurance as a whole, so it's tough to figure out just what portion the
football team is responsible for. It's surely a lot, though, given the
nature of the game. There is another problem in assessing insurance,
though. At some point, an injured athlete is going to sue the
university claiming that he was actually an employee at the time he was
injured. Eventually, the courts are going to agree with this
description. As soon as this happens, every university is going to have
to deal with a cost overhang (workers compensation only starts to cover
the legal liabilities) that their insurance companies might refuse to
cover. In addition to the premiums they pay, athletic departments may
well be horribly under-insured. In an effort to keep star players from
turning pro early, many universities also pay for insurance policies on
potential future pro earnings. This is such a variable cost that I
can't account for it, but it is increasingly important.
Administrative overhead is also hard to figure. Most of it gets lumped
into the general athletic department costs rather than being billed to
the football program. I feel confident in asserting that football is
responsible for at least a quarter of general athletic department
overhead (from ticket sales to PR to lawyers to Gary Barnett's
secretary) at Div 1A schools. In 1988, the average cost of this at 1A
schools was $1.571 million (from the same NCAA survey). divide by 4 and
you get $400,000 of football overhead, even assuming that costs haven't
gone up in nine years. This is also a case where a bad year can lead to
much greater costs; an NCAA investigation or major court case (see the
Jan Kemp situation at Georgia a few years ago) can lead to ballooning
costs in this sector.
Where do we stand at this point? Assuming that Northwestern is an
average institution and based on the assumptions I have outlined above
we get:
Scholarships: $2,100,000
Coaches: $500,000
Travel: $300,000
Recruiting: $250,000
Medical: $350,000
Insurance: Who knows?
Overhead: $400,000
This gives us $3.9 million dollars. Insurance is at least $50,000. So,
even with conservative estimates, I've made it to the published figure
before getting to the punchline. Nowhere in the above analysis have I
addressed capital expenditures, debt service or maintenance of
facilities. How much are these? I have no idea, but they aren't cheap.
Upkeep on an artificial turf surface by itself is usually figured to be
at least $100,000 per year (from Sports, Inc. magazine and again a
decade old). Dyche Stadium in Evanston is a dump (or at least it was
when I went down for a Minnesota game three years ago), but this lowers
the maintenance bill by less than you might think. Besides, if it's
still as bad as it was then , I'll also question the revenue numbers NU
provided. If it isn't, they've put a lot of money into capital
improvements that will only add to my total.
In sum, Bob, you simply can not trust the numbers that athletic
departmetns provide. There are other expenditures that could be
accounted for that I haven't even touched upon in this discussion.
Until they allow an independent and thorough accounting of their books,
you have to assume that NCAA athletic departments are lying when they
try to convince you of the financial benefits of football.
> You can argue about the data but until you put a more a more accurate and
> comprehensive data, these are the best that I've seen and therfore am able
> to use.
The burden is on the athletic departments. They're the ones who prevent
an open accounting of the situation. Until they open up, I'll
extrapolate as best I can.
>
> The interesting points are: all Big 10 schools are making money on football
> and men's basketball and losing money on other men's and women's sports.
> There are five universities with sizable revenue flows from other men's
> sports: Iowa probably from wrestling and Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota
> and Wisconsin probably from hockey. I would guess that Ohio State's
> revenues will increase in a few years when they abandon their small rink and
> start playing in their new 17000 seat arena.
>
> Similar data is available if you are interested for other major conferences.
> The results are similar...however, for the smaller conferences, a case can
> be made that virtually all sports lose money.
I absolutely agree with you that the data is similar if I look at other
conferences. The Big 10 has no monopoly on intellectual dishonesty.
> Why should people people stop doubting the "football loses money" statement?
> Because you capitalize the word FACT? Because you make it ? Because it is
> repeated over and over? Or because if someone says it is true that makes it
> true? If you don't give the data to prove your case, why should anyone stop
> doubting you?
People should doubt that football makes money. Why? Every time someone
outside an athletic department tries to analyze the financial data, they
come up convinced that it doesn't. Big time athletic departments have a
vested interest in convincing us that football makes money. Big time
athletic departments are very secretive about providing an open and
accurate audit of football's books. Combine these three facts. What
other conclusion should we draw than that football's profitability is
horribly overstated?
> AW, I'm sorry but something isn't a fact just because something is said over
> and over on a board. Let me see your data rather than your claims. Which
> are the 5 programs making money? Post the comprehensive data or as an
> absolute minimum the URL were it can be found.
The athletic departments (or perhaps the universities that,
theoretically if not in practice, control them) are the only ones that
have complete access to the data we need. They have chosen not make it
difficult to analyze. Please cast your aspersions in a different
direction.
> Let me finish with something on which we can all agree ...won't it be great
> when the hockey season starts so we can discuss things like coaching
> strategy, team performances and rankings rather than Title IX?
We can sort of agree on this. I look forward to the start of hockey
season as much as anyone. But that's not an excuse to put my head in
the sand and ignore other important issues.
J. Michael Neal
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.
|
