Comments on: Big-time College Sports

By: Ethesis

Ethesis — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 01:52:06 +0000

in the case of both basketball and football the growth in size from 18 to 22 makes, for many, a significant difference in the player’s ability to play and maturity and skill. Consider BYU in the pre-steroid dominated age, when the extra two years of age made a significant difference in BYU’s favor. The interesting factor is that many of the benefits of sports can be obtained by having teams at the AAA and AAAA levels and large intramural programs. Should be interesting to see how this develops.

By: Cryptic Ned

Cryptic Ned — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 18:03:25 +0000

Matt, I believe you mean BSU went from I-AA to I-A. I-A is the highest level you can go. What I find sad is small, small colleges that are almost bankrupted by stupid decisions to field a Division I basketball team. You’d think that wouldn’t be expensive – 12 guys, you have the gym already – but there’s all the travel, and the greatly increased recruiting budget. I think that happened to Morris Brown College a couple years ago.

By: epist

epist — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 20:40:43 +0000

Call me an asthete, but it seems to me that an important benefit of the university-based expenditure on sports has been omitted, i.e. the production of athletes and teams, or, more pointedly, of great athletes and teams. If a university is really a center for research and development of human talent and effort, and if sports is a worthy endevour at all, then spending money and time producing great athletes and teams seems just up the school’s alley, no? Granted, it’s expensive, and getting more so, but so is every area of development. And you can’t argue that the product hasn’t vastly improved (look at the NCAA record in the recent oympics, for a start). I’m not saying that we oughn’t look at whether it’s time to cut back on sports, or even move this enterprise off campus, but I am saying that we ought to include the actual outcome of sports expenditures, athletes, teams, records, performances, etc. when we do the toting up.

By: Ken D.

Ken D. — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 18:37:30 +0000

Chris Lawrence’s comments are well taken, and get to a key issue: would the diverting of significantly more top high school football or basketball players directly to pro leages (“minor” or European) significantly degrade those industries—which is what they are—in commercial terms? No one really knows, although Chris is correct that we may be about to find out in basketball. The self-perpetuating instinct of the billion dollar college football and basketball industies cannot be underestimated as a factor here.

By: Chris Lawrence

Chris Lawrence — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 10:03:10 +0000

In the case of both basketball and football, top-level collegiate competition preceded the professionalization of the sports (baseball and hockey were organized around amateur leagues, not collegiate competition), and neither pro sport was very successful until the advent of television. As the pro leagues grew, they recruited college athletes in lieu of establishing minor leagues because, essentially, nothing the NBA or NFL/AFL could set up would compare with big-time college sports—especially since, into the 1980s, college athletes were probably routinely receiving under-the-table money at every program in the U.S. So I’d attribute the “minor league” syndrome to historical evolution rather than a conscious effort to shift costs onto taxpayers (although at most big-time programs, the football and men’s basketball teams are profitable). Interestingly, the structure of basketball may be moving away from this as more players are recruited from European leagues and high school athletics—which may ultimately erode the quality of the college game so much that it will no longer be a “revenue” sport.

By: Ken D.

Ken D. — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 06:16:20 +0000

The ultimate problem is that big-time college athletics are built around a fundamentally bad idea—essentially professional athletics that are simultaneously a students’ extracurricular activity. Most of its big problems trace back to that bad fit. A couple of things that would help: cut back football squads from 85 to 60 or so; and try to force the creation for football and basketball of minor leagues, like those in baseball and hockey, to take from high school the good athletes who don’t belong in college full time at that age, or who just don’t want to be there.

By: Davis X. Machina

Davis X. Machina — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 05:46:40 +0000

Clever of pro football and pro basketball to have figured out a way to have the taxpayers (state universities, federal financial aid) foot the bill for their minor leagues. Would that baseball and hockey, which embrace this breakthrough only half-heartedly, had been this clever…

By: Giles

Giles — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 01:58:39 +0000

who’s to say that universities dont rationaly have rank dependent utility?

By: agm

agm — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 23:16:01 +0000

Hmm. I wasn’t aware that a school ranking 8 last week, 6 this week, who finished something like 15 last season, is a mediocre football team. On the other hand, I mourn for my alma mater, for they shall be slaughtered by Boise State in a couple of hours.

By: harry

harry — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 21:59:44 +0000

Frank is obviously right. But how odd to choose him to do the study, as it was more or less ocmpletely predictable that he would come to that conclusion. Not doubting his intellectual honesty one whit, but he had alreayd made extensive, and well-informed, comment on this issue. Is this really the result they wanted?

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 21:44:24 +0000

It will be interesting to see the effects of making cheerleading an NCAA sport. Let’s hear it for Robert Maynard Hutchins!

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 21:18:37 +0000

Something similar has happend at my undergraduate institution- Boise State University. It spent a very large amount of money some years back to move to Division I form IA, w/ even more money being paid in to the football program. In one sense it’s paid off- they have been in the top 25 at the end of the year twice in a row now in football, and are there now this year, too. It’s brought a lot of attention to the school. It’s far, far from clear that the accademic side of the university is any better, though, and a larger precentage of courses there are taught by adjuncts all the time.

By: son volt

son volt — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 21:02:41 +0000

It’s deceptive to talk about college sports in the aggregate at a given college. For schools with established programs, (like the aforementioned Texas and Notre Dame) football and basketball are actually profit centers for the school. Much of the athletic red ink at those schools is for less-popular sports, some of which is dictated by Title IX. But you do have a lot of Albanys, South Floridas, etc., that are indeed reaching into their pockets to field a Div I football program. The bigger picture here is that big-time college football is considerably more expensive to field than it was just 20 years ago, due chiefly to the greatly increased complexity of the game (Quarterbacks routinely called plays in the huddle a generation go; that’s completely unheard of now). Because of this increasingly prohibitive expense, Division I football will probably over the next decade shake out to 60 teams or so (roughly half of the current field). Most of them will be the usual suspects: Oklahoma, USC, Texas, Miami, Tennessee, Alabama, LSU, etc. But there will likely be room for maybe 10 arrivistes like Virginia Tech, South Florida, Fresno State. And the competition will be ferocious and expensive among those borderline programs.

By: Delicious pundit

Delicious pundit — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 20:54:55 +0000

I note that your school is the “University at Albany.” My father did graduate work at a school with the exact same buildings on the exact same spot called Albany State. All part of the makeover, I guess.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 20:26:08 +0000

I’ve wondered whether there’s a reverse effect. 40 years ago Texas was a football power but academically mediocre, whereas now Texas is a major research U. but not much good in football. The same may have happened to Notre Dame.