College Athletics
And the Amateur Ideal
Amateurism & the Olympic Ideal
Ancient Olympics
Even central myth hypocritical
Winners well rewarded by home cities
Modern Olympics & Pierre de Coubertin
Anglophile miffed over Franco Prussian War
Sought solution in British “public” school
“Mens sana in corpore sano”
Amateurism reflects class snobbery
Laborers not considered amateurs
American Scene
More combative than British
Commercialism & Corruption always present
1st competition: 1852 Harvard v. Yale in crew
Sponsored at resort by railroad
2nd competition brought first eligibility scandal
Harvard’s coxswain had already graduated!
Second sport: Football
Rutgers v. Princeton: first academic scandal
4 Rutgers players were flunking math
NCAA as “Incidental Cartel”
Restricts movement
Prevents “tramp athletes”
Students – not hired guns
Monopsony power
Players have little mobility
Drives down pay
Stars worth more than tuition
In football >$500k/yr
In basketball >$800k/yr
Athletic Scholarships
Now source of great excitement
Not always the case
NCAA forbade them until 1956
NCAA rules often ignored
At center of “Seven Sinners”
Hoped to to regulate by legalizing
Analogous to drugs or prostitution
“Student-athlete”: a legal term
Scholarships created “pay for play” relationship
Prevented workman’s compensation claims
The Value of an Education
Cannot equate benefits with tuition
Scholarship is value of input – not output
Do private schools give more benefits than
public?
Do athletes get an education?
Graduation rates on average the same
Rates vary widely
Across Schools
Across Programs
Graduation Rates Vary
by Sport and Quality
Money sports worse
Especially football & men’s basketball
Consider 2004 Sweet 16
5 schools had <33% graduation rates
But Duke’s grad rate 25 points below all men
12 schools graduated < 50%
Three had grad rates >40 points below avg.
UConn, GATech, Wake Forest
Women do Better
9 of Sweet 16 better than best men
Stanford & Vanderbilt > 90%
Only Purdue <50%
Head-to-head with men:
Duke: 87% v. 67%
Vanderbilt: 92% v. 62%
UTexas: 88% v. 38%
UConn: 67% v. 27%
Comparable to Women as a Whole
Blacks do Worse
Top 5 football programs
Grad rates average 43.2%
Student body 56.8%
For Black players: 39%
All blacks 41.4%
Data for basketball now suppressed
In past has been worst for men’s b’ball
Why do Some Sports do Worse?
Some athletes less prepared
SATs, HS rank, HS gpa lower
True for basketball & - especially – football
Not so for softball or golf
Is dropping out a rational investment?
Go to Florida State to get to NFL?
Go to Harvard to become a physicist?
Academic Standards
Preserve academic integrity
Don’t recruit students who cannot read
Creates Barrier to entry
Established powers keep out new entrants
Competitors cannot pay athletes more
Now cannot take weaker students either
History of Standards
Nothing uniform until 1965
1.600 Rule
To play needed projected 1.600 gpa
Based on complex formula
1973: Replaced 1.600 with 2.00 rule
Ostensibly higher standards
Actually just needed C+ in any courses
Worst abuses came under this rule
The sad case of Chris Washburn
Proposition 48
Provisions
Needed SAT=700 & GPA=2.00 in 11 core courses
If not: no scholarship in 1st year & cannot play
Was Prop 48 Racist?
Disproportionately affected black athletes
SATs for blacks average 200 points lower
Are SATs a valid instrument?
Still – graduation rates rose
A concession: Partial Qualifiers
Can receive aid if pass one criterion
Proposition 42
Meant to eliminate partial qualifiers
Again accused of racist impact
Loophole restored – and then some
Under Prop 48 scholarship “counted”
Under 42 doesn’t count against limit
Proposition 16
Created sliding scale
Clearinghouse evaluated individual courses
Understaffing caused embarrassing errors
Allows partial qualifiers to practice
Challenged in court
Students claimed disparate racial impact
Won initial case
Verdict overturned on technicality
NCAA does not disburse federal funds
Latest Revision
Eases initial restrictions
14 core courses (up from 13)
Sliding scale
2.0 core GPA requires 1010 SAT
3.55 core GPA requires 400 SAT
No Partial Qualifier status
Stiffens progress requirements
Need 40% of degree requirement by 3rd year
Need 60% of degree requirement by 4th year
Need 80 % of degree requirement by 5th year
Fear and Loathing of New Rules
Coaches fear
Players become ineligible in midstream
Faculty fear
Greater pressure to pass
Proliferation of garbage classes
Are Athletics Profitable?
Most men’s sports are not
Only football and basketball make money
Only for Division I & IA
Almost all women’s sports are not
90% of women’s basketball programs lose $
& They are most profitable
How Profitable?
Consider the NCAA Tournament
NCAA has 11-year, $6 billion contract w/CBS
Tourney revenue now $425 million/year
$389 M in TV rights
$35 M from ticket sales, etc.
Was only $1.4 million in 1970
~60% goes to Division I conferences & schools
Splitting the Pot
$105.3 M distributed according to program size
Number of sports offered
Number of athletes on scholarship.
$105.3 distributed according to performance
Conference gets 1 "unit" per member game
Finals don’t count
Each unit worth ~$152,000.
Temple did very well this year despite a bad season
Payments made six years
Each unit will pay ~$912,000 overall
Uneven Allocation
~60% of the performance distributions in 2003
Went to 6 major conferences
ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-10, & SEC
Big Ten got most: $12.3 million
9 small conferences each got $784,182.
Most conferences divide revenue evenly
Reformers want to change disbursement criteria
Base on graduation rates
But Colleges Don’t Make Money
If Michigan cannot profit – who can?
Projected $2.05 million deficit in 2000-01
Minnesota & Wisconsin hemorrhaging $$
Miscounting
Benefits understated
Increased enrollments - the “Doug Flutie Effect”
Costs overstated
Opportunity Costs – what does a scholarship cost?
Endogenous Expenditure and Bureaucratic Behavior