by Curmie
The first part of the title above ought to be self-evident. Far too many universities operate as sports franchises with a few academic courses offered on the side. This, despite the fact that most athletic departments lose money despite TV revenue, ticket sales, etc. Even average (by intercollegiate standards) athletes are likely to get a full ride: tuition and fees, room and board.
And that’s not counting NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals which often run well over $100,000 a year for even average players in a major sport at a Division I school. High-end programs in football and basketball get bowl games or in-season (or pre-season) trips to tournaments in exotic locales. The best student physicist at the school might get travel money to a conference or something like that, but there’s not going to be a lot of hanging out on the beach on someone else’s dime, much less a tuition waiver and a six-figure income.
NIL also means that at least some elite athletes in football and basketball are shopping their services to the highest bidder. Every time a star player enters the transfer portal and moves to a different university, the accusations pour forth from the new school’s competitors that they’re “buying players.” Some of those allegations are simply sour grapes; many (most?) aren’t. Of course, the practice has existed under the table for decades, but NIL has certainly exacerbated the problem.
Then, there are the tutors, the luxurious housing, and other forms of special treatment. A goodly number of athletes, of course, wouldn’t be accepted at Duke or Stanford, or even at the University of Northern South Dakota at Hoople (extra credit if you get that reference), if they didn’t have a jump-shot or some equivalent skill in another sport.
Bolenciecwcz, the dim-witted football star of James Thurber’s “University Days” (1933) who finally is able to name a mode of transportation after professor and fellow students alike prompt him to say “train,” is a satirical construction, of course, but satire works only if there is the ring of truth. And I suspect the scandal at the University of North Carolina a few years back is more likely the tip of the iceberg than an anomaly.
I’ve had a number of students in my classes who actually were the “scholar-athletes” the NCAA pretends anyone with an athletic “scholarship” is. There was the multi-year all-conference tennis player who was also a fine student and an excellent actress (she got a graduate degree and now works for one of the country’s leading regional theatres), the middle-distance runner who missed the Olympic team by a fraction of a second and did quite well in my non-major class, the starting safety on the football team who asked for permission to miss class because he would be interviewing with one of the nation’s top med schools (he got in).
But there are plenty of examples in the other direction, as well. There was the basketball player who couldn’t write a coherent paragraph about literally anything. There was the football player who complained about his grade in an acting course because he had nothing in common with the character I’d given him in a scene; the character was complaining to his professor about his grade. (Sigh.) Another football player whispered disgusting sexual advances to one of the women in an acting class when I was working with other students. (He came to regret that.)
My… erm… “favorite,” though, was the star football player who missed about a half dozen more classes than department policy allowed. There were three hour-exams in the course: he got a D on one and failed the other two. He didn’t write either of the required short papers, and he got something like a 31 on the final exam. He subsequently showed up at my office, position coach in tow, to protest his failing grade because one (yes, just one) of his absences should have been excused. His excuse: he was in court… being convicted of an E felony. (Sigh.)
All that said, it would be easy to make a case that athletes, especially those in sports other than football and basketball, are the most exploited students on campus. Unless, like LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne, what you’re selling is that you look great in a bikini or a miniskirt, you’re not going to get as good an NIL deal as the backup quarterback does. Plus, most sports require that you’ll play more than a dozen or so games; baseball and softball, for example, generally have about 50 games in a regular season. That means, among other things, more road games, and that means more travel, more time out of class, etc.
The situation is exacerbated enormously by conference re-alignments. Back in the Dark Ages when I was in college, conferences were aligned geographically: schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference were located (wait for it) along the Atlantic coast, the Southeastern Conference was in the southeast, and so on. The Big 10 was in the northern Midwest, and the Big 8 was a little further south and a little further west.
Rivalries usually centered on proximity: Pittsburgh against West Virginia, Washington against Washington State, Oklahoma against Oklahoma State, and so on. Some rivalries were sport-specific, like Syracuse against Georgetown in basketball. As of about a year from now, none of those teams will be in the same conference. At the most personal level, this may be the greatest cost of the wholesale shuffling of conferences. Those intense rivalries are part of the fabric of intercollegiate sports. Their prospective demise saddens me.
Schools moving from conference to conference is nothing new, of course; I can’t think of any conference other than the Ivy League that hasn’t changed at least somewhat in the time since I was an undergrad. But the last couple of years, especially the last few weeks, have been insane. Last year Oklahoma and Texas, two really big names in college athletics, announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC; fans feared for the future of the former conference, which was now down to eight schools. The league responded by adding four new teams to get back to being the Big 12.
But a few weeks ago UCLA and USC, the two biggest names in the Pac 12, announced that they’ll be joining the Big 10 starting next fall. And then the floodgates opened. The Big 10 and Big 12 have cannibalized the Pac 12, which as of now will be down to four schools come next fall, and one would have to believe that those programs are currently considering their options. And the SEC has its eyes on the two highest profile programs in the ACC (at least in football), Clemson and Florida State. Note that the long-term excellence of Duke and North Carolina in basketball is borderline irrelevant. Nary a women’s team matters in the slightest in this calculus.
All of this is about one sport, football, and one thing, money. This is aggravated by the fact that universities in general seem incapable of understanding that both income and expenses matter. If it’s a famous faculty member whose presence attracts a handful of tuition-paying new students a year: “look at all the money we’re spending on this guy!” If, on the other hand, it’s going to increase travel costs for sports teams by literally millions of dollars, it’s “look at this spiffy TV deal.”
So now we turn to the University of Missouri’s head football coach, Eli Drinkwitz (that’s him in the photo), who notes that all of these decisions seem to ignore other sports than his own. He wonders aloud, “did we count the cost for the student-athletes involve in this decision?” The answer to his semi-rhetorical question is “OF COURSE NOT.”
One of my mantras is “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.” And the NCAA sure does tell us a lot about how much they care about “scholar-athletes.” Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows it’s all what my mom would call “balloon juice” (I might opt instead for a term suggesting bovine fecal matter). The NCAA has never, ever, cared about anything but itself, its self-image, and its power. Students? Fans? Who? Alas, too many universities are following their lead.
Drinkwitz cites three really significant facts. First, an inevitable result of conference realignment is lack of sleep for the athletes, the number one cause of mental health issues. He mentions baseball and softball: “They travel commercial. They get done playing at 4:00, they gotta get to the airport, they come back, it’s 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, they gotta go to class? I mean, did we ask any of them?”
He also points to tweets (I’m still going to call them that) that the reason a number of students chose their school is so their parents didn’t have to travel to see them on the road. Asks Drinkwitz, “Did we ask them if they wanted to travel from the east coast to the west coast?” Again, OF COURSE NOT. He doesn’t mention other students at their university, but that’s part of the deal, too. You just might want to see your best friend or significant other play their sport.
Back when there were, you know, ten teams in the Big 10, the greatest distance between two conference teams was 644 miles. Next year, it will be 2686 miles, over 2000 miles more. When there was a Big 8, the longest distance between schools was 747 miles. It will soon be 2320 miles; make that 3125 if, as rumored, Oregon State also joins the Big 12. Having driven a round-trip from Texas to New Hampshire last summer (a mere 1742 miles, one-way), I can attest that 2000+ miles seems like a rather long commute.
And it’s not just the big conferences. The university where I taught for a couple of decades joined a new conference recently. It’s now 2379 miles to one of our new conference foes… in an FCS (1-AA) league. This is insane.
Someone on social media noted also that these huge distances will make it more difficult to recruit athletes in sports other than football and (maybe) basketball. Who wants to play softball for UCLA if you’re going to have to travel to New Jersey to play Rutgers? Maybe Long Beach or San Diego State start looking more attractive. Good.
Finally, Drinkwitz points out that the athletes most directly responsible for giving the universities the ability to get those multi-million-dollar TV contracts don’t share in the profits. They have restrictions placed on them; “the adults in the room” can do as they please.
There is one advantage to conference re-alignment, of course. Because the University of Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC a few years ago, they are no longer the arch-rival of my beloved Kansas Jayhawks (I got my PhD at KU). I am therefore no longer duty-bound to despise all things Mizzou, and can, if I might borrow Jack’s term, declare Eli Drinkwitz an Ethics Hero.
Ethics Alarms 
The more and more the current-day United States resembles second-century Rome, with the crisis of the third century looming over the horizon. And our sports, especially football, parallel the gladiatorial games so nicely…
Curmie, I’m surprised to learn football and basketball players attend class at all. Certainly as to one and done basketball players, I figured they were already in the NBA by the time their report cards were due to be assembled.
OB, I’ve never had a like a one-and-done, or even sure-to-be drafted, athlete in one of my classes, but I suspect you’re probably right about them. (My best friend from high school was in a class with one of those guys; let’s just say your skepticism doesn’t appear to be misplaced.) The majority of the really good (as opposed to great) players, though. would come to class enough to get the C they needed to stay eligible. Most didn’t really care beyond that, but some actually wanted to learn something. But I never taught full-time at a Power 5 school.
I can’t remember having any athletes in an upper-level class, other than thay tennis player I mentioned . She did what you’re supposed to do: used her athletic skills to pay for college, studied what she wanted to study, did well, and moved on in her chosen field. I think she gives tennis lessons on the side, too.
Thanks. As you may know, I’m in favor of no intercollegiate athletics. College baseball has become particularly annoying to me of late. Seems as if most of the guys in MLB played in college and then spent a few months in the minors and then into the bigs. The MLB teams don’t have to have huge farm systems because the college programs do it for them. What a racket. Same with golf. All the guys in the tours are from college programs. There are no more Lee Trevinos or Gene Sarazens or Ben Hogans. All these guys learned their craft in big time college programs that do nothing for their schools.
Curmie wrote:
All of this is about one sport, football, and one thing, money. This is aggravated by the fact that universities in general seem incapable of understanding that both income and expenses matter.
Indeed, this is exactly right. But it is also about something you haven’t mentioned — conference revenue sharing. Schools in profitable football conferences rake in huge amounts of money at the end of the year that doesn’t depend on their on-the-field performance. It’s just mailbox money for being in the conference, which handles most of the distribution rights of games in contracts with media companies. At least in the SEC, everybody gets an equal share (I assume it works that way in other conferences also, but I don’t know that for sure).
So now we turn to the University of Missouri’s head football coach, Eli Drinkwitz (that’s him in the photo), who notes that all of these decisions seem to ignore other sports than his own. He wonders aloud, “did we count the cost for the student-athletes involve in this decision?” The answer to his semi-rhetorical question is “OF COURSE NOT.”
I think this is likely wrong. Colleges have actuaries, accountants, and the like working for their sports department. It doesn’t take a financial genius to understand that if you are geographically distant from your conference-mates, you will bear a bigger burden of the travel and lodging cost for teams. They have made the judgment that the overall value in moving is sufficient in terms of conference revenue to justify the higher costs mentioned above.
… The NCAA has never, ever, cared about anything but itself, its self-image, and its power. Students? Fans? Who? Alas, too many universities are following their lead.
This is absolutely true, but there is a catch.
The weird fact you may not be aware of is that there are far more student athletes that actually fit the bill than the miscreants you mentioned above. Ironically, it is the miscreants’ sports that most often make the sports of the actual scholar-athletes possible. Without Drinkwitz’s football team, softball, soccer, gymnastics, swimming and diving, and other non-revenue sports where most of the school’s athletes reside would be casualties of university finances.
Someone on social media noted also that these huge distances will make it more difficult to recruit athletes in sports other than football and (maybe) basketball. Who wants to play softball for UCLA if you’re going to have to travel to New Jersey to play Rutgers? Maybe Long Beach or San Diego State start looking more attractive. Good.
Indeed. I am very much disgusted with the “realignments,” it has become blatant money-grubbing and it comes at a cost, which will be realized eventually. But anytime you offer to pay for a person’s education, many of them will be willing to suffer the long road trips and lack of sleep, although the higher-quality athletes may decide they don’t need the hassle and play in a less geographically diverse conference.
Perhaps Drinkwitz deserves Ethics Hero status for bringing up the obvious (at least to me), I don’t know. I frankly think that “conference realignment” has made college sports an even bigger mess than it was back in the early part of the century. Alas, money talks, and common-sense walks.
Glenn– I’m aware of revenue sharing. Even with that, most athletic departments lose money, which more often than not gets made up with student services fees to all the non-athletes. You’re right, of course, that the “revenue-producing” sports bring in the most money… but they also cost the most. Even at the place I retired from a couple of years ago, the cost of coaches, scholarships, travel, etc., approached $3 million… for an FCS team. The last time I checked, there were 20 people working full-time for just the football team.
No way they were getting that back in revenue. It’s likely different in the SEC and other major conferences, but the costs are still enormous, starting with huge contracts for coaches. There are assistant coaches making more in a year than I made in a decade as a tenured full professor.
I think you quoted the wrong part of my post, or maybe I just don’t understand your argument. Drinkwitz isn’t saying that conference realignment doesn’t make money for the university. He’s saying that no one bothered to consider the toll on the mental health and academic life of the student athletes they pretend to care about. I think that’s undeniable.
Conventional wisdom says that alums and other backers will contribute more if the teams in high profile sports win. This may or may nor be true (I know of no actual studies to say so), and it’s my experience that people who think sports are the most important thing about a university give their money to buy a new jumbotron or weight room; they don’t care about the library or faculty and staff salaries (except for coaches, of course). The sports programs benefit, but the university really dosen’t.
I agree, what Drinkwitz has to say is pretty obvious. But it’s a case of the emperor’s déshabillement as far as insiders are concerned. You or I pointing out the downside of having three super-conferences spread across the entire country is one thing. Having that commentary come from a head football coach in the SEC is praise-worthy, I think.
There are many students who were athletes who stood out in my classes at the schools I taught at. I will give a few notable examples.
(1) The captain of the basketball team led the school to a national championship in our (minor) athletic division and was headed off to medical school after graduation. He came to my office one day to tell me he was worried about his senior teammates. He had spent 4 years preparing for medical school, but his teammates hadn’t given any thought to what they were going to do after graduation and graduation was a month away. He was upset that the coaches had never discussed anything with the team about preparing for their future and when he brought it up, they blew him off. I had to point out that maybe the coaches don’t care.
(2) I caught an athlete cheating in my class. He tried to intimidate me into not penalizing him for it. He truthfully asked, “Then how am I supposed to pass the class?”. I made him work at the class and he passed. I think it was the first class he ever had to take himself. He had been convinced that he was too stupid to pass his own classes.
(3) I had an athlete come up to me after class and ask me for the notes from the day before. I said “But you were here yesterday”. He proceeded to tell me that he had hit his head in practice on Monday afternoon and he woke up on Wednesday without any memory of Monday night or Tuesday. I told him to go to the ER immediately, he had a concussion and needed to be checked out. He told me no, he was going to see the trainer on Thursday and the trainer told him not to go to the doctor or he couldn’t go to the meet that Saturday. I told him his life was more important than the meet. The coaches had him drop my class.
(4) I had a football player who suffered a concussion in a game. The physician told him no practice for 4 weeks, then only light, non-contact practice. After 4 weeks, the coach made him participate in contact practice on his first practice back and he suffered another concussion. The physician told him he was done with sports for the rest of his life. The coach immediately took away his athletic ‘scholarship’.
There are many more examples, but you can see how I have a hard time being super positive about athletics.
Ah, University of Northern South Dakota at Hoople. Home of the best musicolology professor ever.
Someone knows their PDQs.
Great comments, Curmie.
All that I have to add is something recycled from another forum that I frequent:
I was going to mention something along these lines (I wouldn’t have been clever enough to write exactly this), but the piece was getting long as it was.
How, after all, do you schedule a 20-team league when there are only 9 or 10 conference games per team? A four year rotation–home/away/off/off? Imagine playing for, say Michigan, and getting only one trip to East Lansing or Columbus, and only one chance to play those teams at home.
Or split into divisions and play teams from the other division only once every four or five years?
I just got my contract for a chapter in a book on absurdist literature. I’m beginning to think those guys lacked imagination.
“Getting”??????
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Touché.
I have two responses when my alumni assn. asks for money. I either shred the request or send it back with $1 donation to a designated true academic department.
From a fan perspective I can relate to everything you said.
I was born in Nebraska, lived there my first decade, and still have roots there. The big football game every year was Oklahoma-Nebraska. Back in the 50s, when we lived there, the Cornhuskers routinely got blasted by the Sooners, but eventually they got good and started beating them.
Win or lose, it was a game that everyone pointed to all year — and, as is the wont of college teams, some years a team won that had no business competing. I assume it was pretty much the same for Oklahoma, although they also had a rivalry with Oklahoma State.
==============
Fast forward to the mid 90s, and I had been in West Texas (Lubbock and Abilene) for nearly 20 years. Texas Tech was the school there and generally was one of the red-headed step children of the Southwest Conference, except for women’s basketball who won the one and still only national championship Texas Tech has ever had.
Well, apparently the Southwest Conference wasn’t doing all that well at that time (I think Arkansas had already deserted to the SEC by then). Possibly (probably?) neither was the Big 8. So they put their heads together and lo and behold the Big 12 was born.
All well and good, you say, a big TV contract, more money for everyone, right? Cough. Except, of course, the half of the Southwest Conference that got left behind, orphaned by the change. Remember this was the first of the conference ‘realignments’ of the modern era. I think it was TCU, Rice, SMU, and I believe Houston (who had just achieved a long time goal of joining the Southwest Conference) who were left behind, forlorn and abandoned. I suspect they’d have dumped Texas Tech and Baylor — but I think state political actors put their foot down.
===================================
OK, so I know it is getting kind of long, but we’re coming to the punch line.
When they published the schedules for the new Big 12, football was divided into a Northern and Southern division. You played the 5 teams in your division and 3 of the 6 in the other. Guess what? Nebraska was Northern, Oklahoma was Southern. So a big time college rivalry was now tossed aside — they’d play 2 years on, then 2 years off as I recall. And given the way college football scheduling worked back then, no way could they schedule a non-conference game in the off years.
What that told me — and it has been reinforced many many times since then, with the destruction of the Pac-12 the latest example — is that the universities don’t care a whit about their fans, alums, students, and especially student athletes. If they can squeeze another dollar out of ESPN or NBC or Sesame Street, they were all in. The heck with anything else.
=========================
Major league baseball lasts through the beginning of November these days, and I am usually all in. I used to make the time on Saturdays for college football in September and October — but it’s gotten harder and harder to do so. Even once baseball is over, it’s really hard to get up for college football. I’d actually just as soon watch hockey, if I could get in the habit.
I’ve been a passionate college football fan much of my life, but they’ve pretty much lost me at this point. Why should I watch if the schools themselves don’t care?