DEDICATION
“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.”
Under the guiding principle I learned from Willie Nelson—“police your own area”—this
presentation is, with some measure of aidōs, dedicated to the memory of my friend, UT
student (summer intensive Greek 2001) and scholarly collaborator, Col. (dec.) Ted
Westhusing, who always stood for what was right, even when what was wrong was being
tolerated, excused or supported by those with authority, power and responsibility greater
than his.
His cause was greater. His cost was greater.
It is incomprehensible to me after studying these issues and problems for almost eleven
years now, and quite seriously for the last five, that men and women of high education and
good conscience can let things come to this pass and be so profligate with resources and
tolerant of policies and practices that do not conduce to the true educational interests of
the citizens of our great state. Ted saw the same things in a much more terrible situation.
Just because these matters are, relatively speaking, trivial, does not mean we should not
move to fix them.
They may not cost lives, but they ruin some, and cost others the opportunity truly to
improve their lives.
LONG-DELAYED COIA REPORT FIFTEEN POINTS
(PLEASE, DR. MONTI, DO NOT CALL A QUORUM TODAY)
POINT 1 COIA annual national meetings San Diego State University, January 22-24.
SDSU Pres. Weber (with considerable direct NCAA experience):
(1) athletics is a part of the institutional work of human growth and
development;
(2) the ultimate responsibility of setting standards and values for athletics at
the university resides in the guild of faculty, not administrators;
(3) Weber was glad COIA invented itself—and was sorry it did not do so
about 50 years ago.
(4) President Weber: athletics is in desperate need of reform (his words) and
COIA can be active voice in the reform by posing the right questions, about,
for example, the corrosive aspects of money.
POINT 2
The problems with NCAA athletics were recognized by Upton Sinclair, John R. Tunis and a Carnegie
Foundation National Study in the 1920’s. On the Forty Acres UT’s own Wright Committee (19971999) issued a full report on February 4, 1999, that can be accessed on the Faculty Council Web site.
http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/1998-1999/reports/ath_adhoc.htm.
From it, we can also cite these immortal and courageous words by Michael Granof, when he had a
chance to speak up on the Wright Committee:
“I am impressed with the [Athletics] Department's fiscal integrity, its concern for the academic
well-being of our athletes and the effectiveness with which the department fulfills what it sees
as its purpose.”
President Weber did not say what he was willing to do. This is consistent with the report of the
national Knight Commission which reported the significant average losses by 85% (94 out of 119) of
the national NCAA BCS (formerly Division I-A) institutions: an average of $9.87 million in 2007-08.
It also reported the nearly unanimous opinion of the presidents of NCAA institutions that they could do
nothing about the out-of-control costs and coaches’ salary structures. I.e., the presidents who have
visibility and authority have washed their hands of a situation that their own failures to exert controls
and act in the educational, research and larger cultural interests of their institutions have brought about.
When presidents say they can do nothing, they mean they can do nothing that will not have
consequences for their salaries, their careers, their comfort levels during their tenures as presidents, and
the higher special interests that have placed them in their offices.
POINT 3 The problems are clear and the responsibility should not be shirked off onto faculty who are
everywhere just about as institutionally powerless as we are here at UT Austin.
FOR ANALYSIS READ:
•
http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/the-golden-football The Golden Football: The University of
Texas’ bad example.
•
http://www.texasobserver.org/archives/item/15900-uts-byzantine-budget-on-5-million-coaches-and-laidoff-lecturers UT’s Byzantine Budget: On $5 million coaches and laid-off lecturers
•
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/opinion/athletics-moral-fiscal-mismanagement-1.2142556 "Athletics'
moral, fiscal mismanagement"
•
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/palaima-uts-big-spenders-show-little-regard-for-273051.html UT's big
spenders show little regard for value of money
•
Inside Higher Ed Curbing Athletic Spending
http://www.insidehighered.com/var/ihe/storage/images/media/news_images/2010/01/ncaa/4185866-1-eng-US/ncaa_full.jpg
Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist noted that more than 100 coaches in the FBS have
compensation packages that are in excess of $1 million. In many cases, this means they earn way more than
their (nominal) bosses, the university presidents.
•
Zimbalist proposed that the NCAA should seek a partial antitrust exemption to regulate coaches’ salaries.
POINT 4 CONSIDER IF YOU SAVOR THE IRONIC:
•
Quote: US Secy of Education Arne Duncan declared that we should hold coaches responsible.
"When the average arrests per year are higher than the team's GPA, that's a challenge."
•
If we held UT Austin's $5M coach, Mack Brown, who is held out nationally and locally as a prime
example of coaching virtue, responsible as the Secretary of Education suggests, he would be very
responsible.
•
When Dan Buckner was arrested in College Station on January 13, according to the Austin AmericanStatesman, he was “the fifth Longhorn to be involved in an incident with police since June."
Then on Sunday AM April 18, Texas running back Vondrell McGee was arrested for driving
while intoxicated.
•
That makes 6 players who have been apprehended by police in just over 10 months. That's more
than double the football team's GPA.
•
It would seem to be quite a challenge coaching football at UT Austin, especially if we add the
surprising number of UT student athletes who now decide after a season or two suddenly to 'transfer' to
other programs...and thereby give UT NCAA APR credit for a ‘transfer student’, rather than a dropout.
•
Secy Duncan does not seem to have the words ‘farce’ or ‘fraud’ or ‘flimflam’ in the vocabulary he
chooses to apply to the real world that he must not be looking at.
POINT 5 CONSIDER:
•
College presidents have watched as the NCAA programs at their institutions:
• (1) have run up significant debts;
• (2) have lobbied successfully for removal of basic standards for admissions;
• (3) have lobbied successfully for adjustments to the Academic Progress Report
(APR) system.
•
These last efforts have converted the passing 925 APR score now into a disgraceful 35%
6-year graduation rate.
POINT 6 CONSIDER: THIS IS NOT TOM PALAIMA BLOWING SMOKE:
•
The Panel on Student-Athlete Welfare headed by Dr. Gerald Gurney of the University of Oklahoma,
President-elect of the N4A (The National Association of Athletic Academic Advisors)
•
(1) the gap between the profiles of specially-admitted athlete-students and of the regular student
body. The situation has changed dramatically for the worse since 2003, when NCAA initial-eligibility
standards were changed to a sliding scale. The number of special admits has increased significantly
while, at the same time, at many Division I-A schools, the admission profile (i.e., academic quality) of
the student-body profile has increased significantly. The result is that the situation of special-admit
students in highly-competitive classrooms is even worse than in the past. They are at a greater
disadvantage.
•
(2) There is also a relationship between lower academic standards and character issues (the
NCAA Infractions Committee is seeing a greater incidence of academic scandals than in the past).
Students with weak academic profiles are thrown in with students who have stronger academic
profiles—and then the institutions use the flimflammed APR/GSR (Graduation Success Rate) point
system to evaluate their success at retention and graduation.
•
(3) institutions put a lot of money into academic support for athletes (learning specialists, learning
disability specialists, tutors, etc.). If the other students had such support, they would all do much
better. Dr. Gurney pointed out that athletic departments have huge investments in these studentathletes in terms of recruiting and training; and the huge salaries of the coaches are dependent on the
eligibility of these students.
POINT 7 CONSIDER Ditto:
•
Division I-A Faculty Athletics Representatives
•
The Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR) from Washington State University reported on the role of
the FAR and current issues before the Division I-A FARs, which include:
• getting more faculty on NCAA committees;
• blocking further APR/GSR gimmickry;
• containing costs;
• seeing that the impact on student athletes of playing in NCAA championship
tournaments and bowl games be considered; counteracting runaway
commercialization;
• coaching limitations (institutions seem to add coaches by adding "operations" people
to team staffs);
•
•
bringing decisions about athlete-student life under the control of institutions, not
coaches.
FARs must work actively with the faculty senates/councils about faculty concerns.
POINT 8 CONSIDER:
•
Division I-A Academic Cabinet Report
•
Professor John Bruno, Faculty Athletics Representative from Ohio State and a member of the Division
I-A Academic Cabinet, reported on the work of the Cabinet. Highlights are:
•
(1) current analyses suggest that some combination of test scores and core grades is a better
predictor than either metric alone, for admissions.
•
Professor Bruno said that the guiding principle for initial eligibility standards is that they "should
represent minimally acceptable standards, with continued reliance upon member institutions to make
admissions decisions that are most appropriate for determining academic success locally."
•
(2) The Cabinet is also considering non-traditional coursework. Professor Bruno said that this means
“any course delivery method other than traditional, in-person classroom setting.” Their focus is not an
“indictment on pedagogical value of such delivery,” but shows concern with the “potential for abuse
and also [the] issue of integrating athletes with [the] student body.” The technology is advancing very
rapidly and they want to be able to establish set of general parameters that define such courses as
acceptable.
•
As we know, in one of the last years when such data were available, there is at UT Austin a
considerable difference between the average SAT’s of male student-athletes in major sports and the
overall student body average.
POINT 9 CONSIDER:
•
Comments from Brad Wolverton, The Chronicle of Higher Education editor for Money and Management, with long
experience as a sports journalist
•
He addressed “the true cost of the college sports obsession and all it entails—over-the-top sports facilities, growing
commercialization, and coaches’ salaries.”
•
The presidents and athletic directors, who draw salaries much larger than any faculty, are increasingly cut from a
corporate cloth, as reported in the Chronicle, and President Weber’s mythical institution where faculty set and control,
or even appreciably influence, values and standards in athletics is hard to find in the real world.
•
In a survey Wolverton conducted of the big-time institutions, “private donations were close to becoming the #1
source of revenue.” The biggest programs, together, had raised about $4 billion for capital improvements from
2003-2008. [UT has spent ca. $300 million since 1998 and has an indebtedness now of ca. $224 million.]
•
In addition to football stadiums, the money went for such things (at different institutions) as a 34,000-square-foot
academic-support facility for athletes, a weight room the size of a Wal-Mart store, and a basketball practice
facility with a lot of amenities. Each of these projects cost about $21 million.
•
Much of the money for capital projects comes in the form of pledges, so universities take on debt and hope the money
comes in.
•
Smaller programs, striving to get closer to the top, often face the largest debt problems. Wolverton reported that
“athletics gifts to Division I schools went from representing 14% of overall university-wide gifts in 1999 to 28%
five years later.” During the same period, gifts to institutions for non-athletic purposes were flat.
•
He asked, with a straight face, who is watching the programs. The presidents, he noted, as reported by the most recent
report of the Knight Commission, have largely "thrown up their hands," claiming that the spending and costs are out of
control and they can do nothing.
POINT 10 CONSIDER:
•
Comments from Brad Wolverton, The Chronicle of Higher Education CONTINUED
•
The athletic directors are driven by the need to generate as much money as possible for their programs
and of course, themselves. We might ask, how much time can full-time faculty, even if serious faculty
could be appointed to true oversight committees, spend on the Sisyphean task of trying to influence
big-time athletic programs which have been untethered since the 1920’s?
•
He wondered, archly rhetorically it would seem, whether independent faculty members have as
much voice as pro-sports donors, regents, administrators and politicians do in making sure the
growth in athletic programs fits the academic mission.
•
There are now 25 Division I-A head football coaches who make $2 million or more (twice as
many as two years ago). The average pay of the head football coaches in I-A has gone up 30% in
the last two years. Locally, we know, Mack Brown went from $3.1 M to $5 M actual salary, what
I call the give-Muschamp-a-big-carrot raise.
•
Wolverton pointed to the SEC as the most financially successful conference. It has 6 of the 15
largest athletic budgets, the second-smallest number of sports sponsored by a conference (one of
UT Austin’s own formulae for success—support fewer sports and fewer athletes and have more
money to lavish on fewer coaches), the winningest records, and the lowest APR scores in football,
men's and women's basketball, and baseball of the six BCS conferences. He asked: Is the SEC
the conference that should be emulated?
POINT 11 CONSIDER:
•
Wally Renfro, Senior Adviser to the President of the NCAA, provided an update on several issues. This
was virtually mind-numbing palaver about special admissions, academic reforms, and financing
practices. So I won’t even bother summarizing most of it. There was one factoid: There is a factor-of13 difference between the revenues of the largest and smallest of the 120 Football Bowl
Championship Series schools. The Knight Commission reported that a large majority of
presidents feel powerless to deal with sports finances, because of this disparity.
•
Finally, as we remarked at the outset, former NCAA student-athlete Arne Duncan, our new Secretary
of Education, has weighed in on many of the NCAA athletics issues. He has even gone so far as to
propose that the NCAA ban from their March-Madness tournament any team that does not have a 40%
6-year graduation rate. Naturally the NCAA said “Thanks, Arne, but no thanks.”
•
Secretary Duncan is also troubled by one-and-done players like our own one-year-wonder jerseyretiree Kevin Durant. But the NCAA and NBA explicitly created this situation by making it
impossible for future Kobe Bryants, Kevin Durants and LeBron Jameses in our high schools (or sports
academies) to go straight to the NBA. Have to keep the networks happy!
•
Secretary Duncan also decried the fact that 8th-graders were being recruited by NCAA institutions.
But the NCAA changed its guidelines so that even 7th graders now are considered prospective
athletes and therefore are fair game for “recruiting by the rules.”
POINT 12 CONSIDER:
•
The University of California at Berkeley sports department has wanted to return to
national prominence.
•
It ran up a $31.4 million debt that university leaders repaid from academic coffers in 2007.
•
Now, after UC Berkeley has furloughed faculty and staff (but not football coaches) and
proposed a whopping 30-percent tuition increase, its athletics program reported an
additional $12.2 million debt this year and expects a similar figure next year. This is
coming from the overall University budget.
•
The athletics director announced with a straight face that these amounts “will be repaid in
the future from external sources of revenue.”
•
So UC Berkeley’s Faculty Senate tried to make its advice heard and its will implemented.
POINT 13 CONSIDER:
•
ACADEMICS FIRST
A Model Resolution (aka Fantasy) on Intercollegiate Athletics for Faculty Senates
Jointly not issued by:
•
The UC Berkeley Faculty Senate*
•
The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA)**
•
The Drake Group (TDG)
1.
Faculty Governance
•
(a)
The Faculty recommends that the University recognizes and supports a Campus Athletics
Board (CAB) or equivalent, as mandated by the NCAA. The CAB shall have a voting membership
composed solely of faculty members and shall be authorized, in conjunction with the University
Administration, to establish policy and to oversee the athletic department's operations with regard to
the following:
•
(i)
•
(ii)
Assist the athletic department in making decisions that are in concert with the overall academic
mission of the University;
•
(iii)
•
(iv)
Promote transparency and clarity in all matters affecting the academic mission;
Protect student athlete welfare; and,
Confirm the satisfactory accomplishment of the academic and financial items below.
POINT 14 CONSIDER:
•
ACADEMICS FIRST
A Model Resolution (aka Fantasy) on Intercollegiate Athletics for Faculty Senates
• 3.
Finances
– (a)The faculty recommends that the University President or equivalent put
the Athletics Department on a self-supporting basis, and implement the
following:
(i) The Athletics Budget shall receive no base funds from the general
education fund. Any annual cash support to the Athletics Budget
from the general education fund shall be approved by the Athletics
Oversight Committee and the faculty senate, as well as by the
University's governing board and through the normal budgeting
procedure.
(ii)
The Athletic Budget shall be integrated with the academic
budget and follow the same processes and procedures; and,
(iii)
The Athletics Budget shall receive support from student fees
only as voted by the student body.
POINT 15 CONSIDER:
Graglia and Palaima Debate College Football
•
http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/01/06/debate-college-football/
•
Transcript available at: http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/
watchthehorn — April 12, 2010 — Parts one and two of our interview with UT professor and critic of
the budget of UT's athletics program...
•
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUqtOSjoxNA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf6seiM2i_E&feature=related
•
Here follows a recent article in USA Today about the President of SMU, Gerald
Turner, who agreed to a big salary for his football coach, while as the co-chair of
the Knight Commission speaking out for bringing budgetary restraint back to
NCAA athletics programs.
CONTINUED
Walking the talk?
Knight Commission co-chair backs big salary for SMU football coach: Southern Methodist
University President Gerald Turner says the contract of head football coach June Jones is a
"sustainable expense."
By Steve Berkowitz, USA TODAY, 5-6-10
In his capacity as co-chair of the reform-minded Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics,
Gerald Turner cautions about increasing spending by major-college athletics programs.
In his capacity as president of Southern Methodist University, Turner has overseen one of the
nation's most drastic recent increases in football-coaching compensation.
SMU paid coach June Jones $2,142,056 during the 2008 calendar year, more than a 300%
increase over what the university paid Jones' predecessor in 2005-06. Turner said Jones,
hired Jan. 7, 2008, received a $500,000 signing bonus and a 2008 base salary of about $1.6
million. At that time, Jones' salary likely made him the top-paid football coach at a school in a
conference without an automatic Bowl Championship Series bid.
"We wouldn't have (given Jones such a lucrative contract), believe me we wouldn't have done it. if
it wasn't a sustainable expense ... based upon what these individuals said they would do,"
says Turner, adding that the donors signed pledges and some already have paid their entire
commitments in full.
Turner says SMU's dealings with Jones and his work with the Knight Commission are compatible.
"I'll tell you, with the SMU hat on, it makes you very aware of the point that (he and others on the
Knight Commission) have been making," he says. "One person can't do it. It's going to take
everybody working together, but then every individual has to have a budget that is
sustainable for his or her university. I think those are the two things we've been saying, and I
feel that what we've done here is compatible with both.” CONTINUED
The Daily Texan May 10, 2010 reported in an editorial “Horns down: Shutting down SMU’s press” that the
same president who, as we have just seen, decries the runaway salary structures and expenditures on
big-time football in his role with the Knight Commission, yet has sought out and accepted well over a
million dollars in donor pledges to pay for a 300% increases in the head football coach’s salary, is
presiding over the demise of the culturally significant university press at SMU.
DT: “The Southern Methodist University Press faces a bleak future after university officials announced a
decision to suspend operation of the press starting June 1. …[T]he decision was made with little to no
consultation of faculty or staff, announced to the press’ staff and advisory board two weeks ago and
made public last week. A statement by Provost Paul Ludden cites “challenging budgetary times.”
“The SMU Press is the oldest academic press in Texas and, though small in operation, an influential
publisher of literary fiction, especially for new authors who are otherwise tossed aside in the world of
for-profit publishing. According to InsideHigherEd.com, “of the 82 original fiction titles the press has
published, 31 were deemed significant enough to win coverage in The New York Times Book Review,
and many of those titles were by emerging writers.”
“There is still a chance, however, to reverse the decision. Groups inside and outside the university are
already working hard to save the press, challenging the notion that it’s a necessary cut and working to
raise funds and start a dialogue to discuss alternative options. The SMU Faculty Senate unanimously
passed a resolution in favor of saving the press while support for the the press pours in from all over the
country. The press only requires a budget of $400,000 a year to operate, a tolerable amount considering
the university’s overarching goal of furthering its academic and artistic contributions, not to mention
the amount of exposure and renown it brings.”
Why could SMU President Turner not have asked the donors who gave over a million dollars to the
head football coach’s salary first to see to it that a press whose total operating budget is $400,000
was supported by the same donors? The cost would have been chump change to them. The
priorities here are frankly shameful and disgusting. TURNER IS A POSTER CHILD FOR THE
FAILURE OF UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT’S TO ACT WITH MORAL AND CULTURAL AND
EDUCATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY.