Rick Morrisey wrote about Bill Saum—the single NCAA monitor of gambling activity—and quoted him on the decline of morality in America in the Chicago Tribune, 3/11/99. Matt O’Connor of that paper discussed the Northwestern basketball players’ motives for fixing in a front-page article, 3/28/98. Robert Lipsyte of the New York Times commented about Northwestern University’s “bet,” 3/14/99; Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote many columns about the scandals, most memorably, 12/4/98 and 12/13/98; Andy Bagnato of Chicago Tribune wrote fewer columns on it, but his best was 3/29/98. Joanne C. Gertsner of USA Today visited NU in the aftermath of the scandal and wrote about its effect on the school, 12/14/98.
The unsigned editorial in the Rutgers University Daily Targum appeared, 3/22/99; the bookie in the Big Ten college town spoke off the record, adding, “The police know all about my operations but they sure don’t want me to advertise in your book.” Fredreka Schouten of USA Today quoted gaming industry head lobbyist Frank Fahrenkopf, 1/13/00; Gene Wojciechowski described the March Madness scene at Caesars Sports Book in ESPN The Magazine, 7/27/98, p. 83; and Andrew Zimbalist explained the CBS approach to the Internet in Sports Business journal, 12/27/99.
Finally, if the NCAA actually managed to have gambling on college sports in Nevada made illegal and the courts upheld this legislation—two highly doubtful outcomes—the law of unintended consequences could result: illegal betting on college sports would flourish, and campus gambling would increase considerably. Dan Boykin of the State of Minnesota Tobacco, Alcohol, and Gambling Control Commission made this point in a discussion with the author on Minnesota Public Radio, 3/17/00.
18: College Sports MegaInc.
Tony Kornheiser discussed the “Six billion dollars” in ESPN The Magazine, 12/13/99, p. 48; Michael Hiestand wrote the USA Today article on the new NCAA/CBS-TV March Madness deal, 11/19/99; and Andrew Zimbalist quoted NCAA lobbyist Doris Dixon in Unpaid Professionals (op. cit.), p. 198. USA Today quoted North Carolina State athletic director Les Robinson on the ACC as a “corporate group,” 1/7/00 (no reporter given); Steve Weiberg of that newspaper quoted Mike Kryzewski on the poor “marketing of our product,” 2/5/99; Rudy Martzke of that paper included Jim Wheeler’s comments on the BCS in a column, 12/8/99; Martzke also explained the 2000 bowl problems and he quoted TV analyst Terry Bowden on Roy Kramer’s love for money, 12/31/99; and, that day, Steve Weiberg also wrote about the BCS’s success. USA Today covers college sports more thoroughly than any other daily paper in America, and it discussed the average annual revenue of the BCS and other conferences, 12/20/99, and Michigan AD Tom Goss’s admission of money lost, 11/30/99 (no reporters given on these stories); Steve Weiberg and Jack Carey did an article on the ISL’s offer of a post-bowl game playoff, 1/25/00.
College Sports Inc. (op. cit.) discussed athletic department money losses in detail; see the first section, “Ol’ Siwash in Red Ink,” pp. 15—145, for an analysis of general and specific revenues and expenses; this book was published ten years ago and I advise current readers to multiply the numbers by ten for a sense of the contemporary scene. The exorbitant costs of women’s sports programs is pure myth: even a quick glance at athletic department books reveals that spending on women’s teams is far less than on men’s programs; for example, frequently the women travel in university vans at minimal cost to the athletic department, whereas the men often board jets, sometimes private charters, and rack up enormous travel expenses. But the sports media rarely examines athletic department books, instead accepting the male athletic director’s lame line about the “phenomenal costs of women’s sports.” One media exception is columnist Christine Brennan of USA Today; she took a shot at the myth, particularly the huge, unwarranted expenses from football, 3/9/00.
Joshua Rolnick of the Chronicle of Higher Education analyzed the NCAA’s most recent financial report, Revenues and Expenses of Intercollegiate Athletics Programs (op. cit.), 10/23/98. Andrew Zimbalist (op. cit.) stated his conclusion on athletic department deficits, p. 171—72. I interviewed Howard Schein at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 11/11/98. Wisconsin newspapers are not typical of the media coverage of college sports, and they have long listened to state auditor’s concerns about waste in the UW athletic department. They never manage to end that waste but they did report on the UW Rose Bowl trip. Anthony Jewell (a former student of mine) broke the story for the AP, 10/21/99, and supplied the basic facts; the next day, he provided a breakdown of the expenses for all of the members of the traveling party; Jeff Potrykus of the Milwaukee journal Sentinel got reactions from state officials on 10/ 22/99; and Beth A. Williams of the UW student paper, Badger Herald, discussed the $1.1 million deficit for 1998-99, and the projected deficit for 1999—2000. The interview with the travel manager took place in San Francisco, Calif., 12/19/99. I thank him for his time and professional expertise, and I respect his desire to stay strictly off the record; he explained, “My company does business in all parts of the country, and who knows when we’ll do business with the University of Wisconsin.”
The saddest bowl-game stories and the greatest losses involve schools playing in lower-tier events, far from the BCS bowls. Yet universities never refuse or complain when invited to the Obscure.com Bowl. Not only are the payouts for these games much smaller than those for the top-tier bowls, but often participating schools have to buy blocks of tickets from the bowl committees, and if they do not sell the seats, they have to swallow them, often in six-figure gulps. Of course, these schools have large traveling parties and expenses; therefore, the poor manage to become even poorer as a result of bowl-game appearances.
One small sliver of financial good news from bowl games appeared in the 1990s—but only for schools in BCS conferences. If, like Indiana University, they had mediocre football teams and rarely went to bowl games, they won the bowl game sweepstakes by staying home. In 1999, with Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl, and four other Big Ten teams bowling, Indiana and its losing record remained in Bloomington. But because of its conference share of the payouts from these five bowls, IU received almost $2 million, clear and free. In 2000, again staying in Bloomington, Indiana did even better, receiving almost $3 million as its share of Big Ten payouts. The bottom line is obvious: in the corrupt world of bowl-game trips, the best way to win is to spend New Year’s at home.
As to the people on the gravy plane, faculty often call them, particularly professors on the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee, “jock sniffers,” men and women so enchanted by the glamour of intercollegiate athletics and its coaches and athletes that they are willing to compromise their integrity, as well as the fiscal integrity of their institutions, to support big-time college sports. I wrote about this species in “Flagrant Foul,” Lingua Franca, November-December 1993, cover article. Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors, also mocked them in an article by Richard Robinson, “Reversal of Fortune,” September-October 1996, pp. 45-49. In the Academe piece, a “jock sniffer” brags, “As Chairman of the [Faculty] Athletic Committee, I get a parking space next to the stadium as well as free tickets for the games,” and lots of other perks.
The administrator of the Sunbelt university spoke off the record; he was quoted in the introduction to this book in an interview done 7/12/97, and the comments in this chapter were in an interview, 6/18/99; I thank him again for his time and patience during these interviews. The NCAA tries to explain the association’s ultra-complicated formula for distributing tournament revenue on its website; Andrew Zimbalist commented on the new CBS contract in his Sports Business journal article (op. cit.); and Steve Weiberg of USA Today predicted “a continued migration,” 11/19/99. All of the institutions that enter Division I pray for a “Cinderella” miracle—their small school going a few rounds in the tourney; the 2000 event showed the perils of this prayer: Midnight struck for almost all of the Cinderellas in the opening game when they lost and disappeared without any publicity except for a stack of athletic department bills back home as a result
of joining the big-time poker game. In the text, I refer to “300-plus” schools in Division I because the number keeps moving up; as of early 2000, it is 318, but it will be higher when this book is published, and higher still in a few years.
College Sports Inc. (op. cit.), part 4, “The NCAA: The Fox in the Henhouse,” pp. 309-44, explained the NCAA as a trade association for coaches and athletic directors. Ball State University is a good example of a school with problems meeting the NCAA’s minimum football attendance rule: its team played so poorly in the late 1990s and drew such small crowds that the NCAA threatened to drop it from Division I-A; school officials scrambled to convince local businesses to buy blocks of seats to inflate attendance figures with “no shows”; the ludicrousness of an institution of higher education doing this is obvious. I learned the details of BSU’s attendance problem during a campus visit, 2/25/00; Professor Jeff Fry was particularly helpful.
USA Today quoted University of Minnesota football coach Glen Mason, 9/24/99 (no reporter given). Andrew Zimbalist in Unpaid Professionals (op. cit.) discussed the recent wave of new stadiums and upgrades, pp. 133-34. Gary Mihoces of USA Today quoted Virginia Tech AD Jim Weaver and an unnamed former associate athletic director at Nebraska, 1/3/00. The Kansas City Star discovered NCAA executive director Cedric Dempsey’s annual salary of $650,000, plus multiple perks, and an unsigned editorial excoriated him for it, 5/25/98.
19: College Sports MegaInc. versus Undergraduate Education
The college newspaper advertisement for Jimmy John’s Sandwich Shops appeared in the Indiana Daily Student, 10/2/98; students sent in their questions and answers, and the Jimmy John company published them as the main feature in their ads. In referencing the responses to the survey questions in this chapter, I have given the dates and circumstances of answers of over a sentence in length; however, to avoid totally cluttering these notes, I have not referenced the short responses. The Clemson senior male filled out a questionnaire and articulated his “strongly agree” position in a subsequent interview on campus, 4/15/99; the University of Maryland male in the honors program filled out a questionnaire and made his comments, 2/16/99; the University of Kansas junior woman added the P.S. to her web survey form, 10/22/99; and the DePauw University student, a senior male, commented in a questionnaire and interview session on campus, 7/12/98. Reid Epstein, sports editor of the student newspaper, remarked on academics coming first at his school, 4/14/99. The freshman female at Kansas State commented on the jocks in a P.S. on her web survey, 12/22/99; and the UMass sophomore woman left her P.S. on the web survey form, 6/6/99. The cynical prediction from the FSU senior male appeared on the web survey, 12/1/99.
Gary Mihoces of USA Today quoted Kansas State president Jon Wefald on college sports as “the window,” 1/3/00, and that article applauded K State’s rise to football fame, focusing on its carrying out the formula. Welch Suggs of the Chronicle of Higher Education spotlighted Kansas State, 10/15/99. Kevin Allen, an alumnus of the university, commented in an e-mail, 1/22/00; he knew about the beer-and-circus thesis of this book after “reading your conclusion to Onward to Victory and the preview for Beer and Circus” in it; he subsequently gave me permission to publish his comments, and I thank him. The K State sophomore male left his comments about JUCO transfers on the web survey form, 9/12/99; the sophomore female at that school wrote about architecture on her web survey form, 1/3/00. The 2000 edition of U.S. News ranked K State in the third tier of national universities.
20: Who Loves the Jocks?
Edward “Moose” Krause commented on JUCO transfers in an interview, 8/9/91; for background information on this topic, see pp. 233—39 and 294—95 in College Sports Inc. (op. cit.). James Naughton of the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote about the different admissions standards for athletes and regular students at various schools, including UNC-Chapel Hill, and also supplied excellent charts to illustrate his points. The 2000 edition of U.S. News’s college issue put the Alabama (Tuscaloosa) acceptance rate at 94 percent. The Georgetown male junior filled out a questionnaire and did an interview on campus, 2/18/99; a Clemson senior male said, “I can’t answer this question” during an interview after he filled out a questionnaire, 4/16/99.
U Magazine published the results of its survey, January/February 1997. I realize that by including Division III responses—schoots without athletic scholarship athletes on campus—in my results, I weight the percentages; however, I wanted a comparison with the U Magazine results, and the latter included responses from students at Division III schools. Sports journalist Teri Bostian commented about the doublethink of regular undergraduates, 10/20/99. Georgetown University faculty member Ted Gup wrote about student attitudes toward a star athlete in his op-ed piece “Losses Surpass Victories, by Far, in Big-time College Sports,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/18/98, A52; students at the school confirmed that they had seen Iverson with the Mercedes and the Rolex.
The Tulane female tennis player filled out a questionnaire and did an interview on campus, 6/7/98; the Boston College football player put his comments on the web survey, 8/8/99, as did the University of Texas, Austin, female distance runner, 11/14/99. The media covered Robert Smith’s problems at Ohio State in detail; among the more comprehensive articles were Scott M. Reid’s story in the Atlanta Constitution, 12/29/92, and Rock Bozich’s in the Louisville Courier-Journal, 9/4/92. The Robert Smith case was exceptional—not many athletic scholarship winners want to be doctors or architects or anything else involving long lab or studio sessions. Sports Illustrated put Andy Katzenmoyer on the cover, 8/27/98, and Austin Murphy wrote about his case in detail. The Insider’s Guide (op. cit.) said about Ohio State at this time, “If you sign up for four classes, you’re lucky if you get into two of them if you don’t have priority scheduling—which goes [only] to athletes and honors students,” 1998 edition. Katzenmoyer told Larry Guest of the Orlando Sentinel that he regarded football “as a job,” 8/17/98; and he explained to Tim May of the Columbus Dispatch how he learned the “Ohio State defensive system,” 5/4/99. HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” took one of the few in-depth looks at the Katzenmoyer case, probing the question of athletes’ vocationalism and the context of the OSU incident; the show aired 10/20/98.
Syracuse University professor David H. Bennett told Jim Naughton of the Chronicle of Higher Education about the “innumerable ‘guts’ on every campus,” 7/12/96.
21: The New 3 R’s
Jeffrey Turner wrote his comments in a letter to the editor of Sports Illustrated, 6/2/97; he worked with many schools, including Washington State University. Richard W. Moll quoted David Smith of Syracuse University in his article “The Scramble to Get the New Class: Is the Dean of Admissions Now Outside the Academy?” in Change magazine, March/April 1994, pp. 11—17. Anne Matthews (op. cit.) discusses “outsourcing admissions” and “bounty hunters,” p. 33; Alice C. Cox wrote an excellent article on the ethics of the new college recruiting procedures, “Admission Recruiting and Selection: Some Ethical Concerns,” in the anthology, Ethics and Higher Education (op. cit.), pp. 84—102.
U.S. News discussed the “pressure to win” on admissions officials in its 1994 edition. Jack Carey of USA Today quoted Texas Christian University athletic director Eric Hyman, 10/12/99; the Insider’s Guide for 2000 gives the statistics on TCU’s in-state percentage of undergraduates; the numbers on Rice are in U.S. News’s college issue for 2000. TCU was with SMU and Rice in the old Southwest Conference until that group disintegrated in the early 1990s; then the three schools joined the WAC.
The interview with the University of Kentucky professor took place on campus in Lexington, 5/14/96; he asked to speak off the record because “Administrators here get angry and vengeful toward any faculty member who speaks the truth about this place’s jock school image.” The NCAA has studied the dropout rate for athletes, particularly freshmen, and one of its committees actually considered making freshmen ineligible—but the idea died in the summer of 1999. Patty Pensa of the Columbus (Ohio)
Dispatch wrote about this, 7/4/99; later that month, Vahe Gregorian of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch probed the reasons for the high freshmen athlete dropout rate and discussed “de-recruiting”—what occurs when recruited athletes encounter the reality of big-time college sports, and their problems in dealing with the “de-recruiting” process, 9/10/99. Some coaches also “fire” athletic scholarship holders, see the note in the chapter 2 notes about Tommy Tubberville, the football coach at Auburn.
The U.S. News college issue for 2000 discussed “Vanishing freshmen—one in four does not return for sophomore year,” and how Division III schools have much higher retention rates, including for athletes, than do Big-time U’s. The 1998 edition of that magazine quoted Alison Albrecht, the discus thrower at Ohio Wesleyan, about “the Division III philosophy.”
College Sports Inc. (op. cit.) discussed alumni and booster donations, and the research into this topic, pp. 70—81; Andrew Zimbalist in Unpaid Professionals (op. cit.) updated this information, pp. 248—49. University of Notre Dame vice president Richard W. Conklin wrote his comments in his article, “The Role of Public Relations,” in The President and Fund Raising, edited by James L. Fisher and Gary H. Quehl (New York, 1989), pp. 91—101. For a discussion of the history and role of the “Notre Dame Family” in alumni support for the university, see Onward to Victory (op. cit.), pp. 255—265. All the references to the “Alumni Giving” rankings in U.S. News’ annual college issue are to the 2000 edition. The University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) alum asked to speak off the record because members of her family currently work for the university.
College Sports Inc. (op. cit.) explained “priority seating,” pp. 32—34, 67—69. In the 1990s, the IRS occasionally challenged this tax scam but always backed off; the most recent challenge occurred in 1999, when it questioned a claim by an lowa State fan to write off his luxury box in the Iowa State football stadium as a donation to higher education; see Kent Pulliam’s article in the Kansas City Star, 5/10/99. In speaking with “development officers” at various schools while doing research for this book, I found that most complained that athletic department fund-raisers competed with them for money from the same alums. But not one of these fund-raisers would go on record with complaints, explaining: “In development [fund-raising], we really stress teamwork, and we’re supposed to he on the same team as the athletic department people.” I believe that universities would be better served if they discussed this conflict openly. Doug Lederman of the Chronicle of Higher Education probed Southern Methodist University’s post-scandal years, 11/25/92; the good news is that alumni donations increased significantly after university administrators convinced alums that they had control of the athletic department and the scandals would not recur.
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