Two articles, lengthy, but some food for thoughtâŠ
[B]Setting goals: As ISU plans its future, football is still in the picture. But will it be alive and well?[/B]
By Mark Bennett, Terre Haute Tribune-Star
November 22, 2005
Indiana State University is currently pondering an elongated version of the ultimate job-interview questions.
âWhere do you see yourself in 20 years?â
And the initial response for many of us would be, âWell, hopefully, alive and well.â
The university is currently developing a new facilities master plan - a road map for the next 20 years of its future. And the context of most of that process transcends mere survival.
With the assistance of a Chicago-based firm, ISU is gathering ideas about how its campus could and should change between now and 2025, from residential life to academics to athletics. Some prospects already mentioned included expanding the campus beyond its current boundaries, moving University Apartments from South Third Street onto campus, and creating a welcome center for ISU visitors. And one student suggestion already posed was to move Sycamoresâ football team from Memorial Stadium (which is two-and-a-half miles east on Wabash Avenue) to an on-campus facility.
But that last idea triggers that aforementioned question-answer scenario - âWhere does ISU football see itself in 20 years? Well, hopefully, alive and well.â Having a new on-campus stadium by 2025 would indicate the university will still be fielding a team.
Even after just finishing the worst season in school history last weekend, the football program appears to be a living part of ISUâs future, whether Memorial Stadium is repaired and maintained or a new home field is built. âWe have no assumption that [the program] wouldnât be here,â said Tom Ramey, vice president of student affairs.
And in the course of building ISUâs master plan for the next 20 years, the goals for any aspect of that process would include being alive and well.
But in terms of Sycamore football, such a destiny would be a big change from the past 20 years.
This past season was dismal. ISU lost every game for the first time since 1906. With its 0-11 record, ISU is the first team in Gateway Conference history go without a victory. The Sycamores ranked last among the nationâs 116 NCAA Division I-AA teams in three statistical categories, and set a conference record by allowing opponents a total of 476 points. And they averaged just 3,213 fans in six home games at Memorial Stadium - every other Gateway team averaged 9,000 or more.
But this isnât about this past season. Lou West is in just his first year as the Sycamoresâ head coach. And he and energetic first-year athletic director Ron Prettyman came to ISU with ideas and plans for success, and they deserve time to develop those.
Instead, a crucial issue is the past 20 years as a whole that led up to this seasonâs nadir. In that time, ISU has won just 79 games and lost 143. Coincidentally, the Sycamores joined the Gateway 20 seasons ago, and their cumulative conference record is 37-91. And through that era, Indiana Stateâs posted just two winning records, in 1995 and '96.
As the university makes its long-range plans, the goal of decision-makers outside the athletic department must be for the next 20 years of football to be a whole lot better than the past 20. Such a mindset at the top is necessary to give the people in and around the program the chance to reverse its fortunes.
ISU Board of Trustees President Mike Alley acknowledged the teamâs recent history, but expressed full confidence in the ability of West and Prettyman to change the situation.
âItâs not where we would like it to be,â Alley said. âBut bringing Lou West on board as coach is a step in the right direction.â
Alley added, âItâs our expectation that weâre going to improve our program, and that itâs only going to get better.â
Getting betting attendance obviously involves winning more games. But even in the early 1980s, when the Sycamore teams were making the Division I-AA playoffs, crowds werenât big. An on-campus stadium would seem to lure more students to the games.
[COLOR=Red][B]âWe would dearly love to have a football stadium that has closer proximity to campus. That would enhance attendance and student life,â Alley said. âBut that is a long way off in achieving. We have a lot more high-priority issues.â[/B][/COLOR]
An ideal location for a new stadium, Alley said, would be east of the new Student Recreation Center.
If the choice in the master plan is to continue playing games at Memorial Stadium, renovations will be necessary at that facility, which opened in 1925.
âWe have a situation at Memorial Stadium, where we have need for major investment,â Ramey explained. âAnd therefore, I think it is a valid question as to whether thatâs a wise use for our resources.â
Though Ramey added, âIf we were to look for an alternative to Memorial Stadium, we would want it on campus, obviously.â He said a new playing facility would not likely be a football-only structure. Instead, it would be âmulti-purposeâ to accommodate other athletic events also, as well as entertainment and various outdoor campus activities.
[COLOR=red][B]Building a new football-only stadium would require significant private donations, and ISUâs lack of a winning tradition in that sport makes such a concept improbable, Ramey said.[/B][/COLOR]
âWe obviously support our football program. We want it to succeed. And we want to have a nice place for them to play,â Ramey said. âBut the chance of a private donor coming forward and saying, âI want to make this the top program in the Gateway Conferenceâ is unlikely.â
With the state of Indianaâs tightened budget and ISUâs enrollment down, private giving takes on added importance, Alley said.
He graduated from ISU in 1978 with a degree in accounting. And he met his wife, Amy, also a '78 grad who majored in elementary education, there too. After living out of state for several years, they moved back to Indiana in 1989, and it was then that Alley got involved with the ISU Foundation. Heâs optimistic about the future and confident more ISU alums will get involved in their alma materâs future, which could raise donations for academics and athletics.
Total donations to the foundation in the past year for all ventures were $9 million.
âThat is greatly appreciated, but we would like to be - on an annual basis - around $20 million,â Alley said.
Virtually all universities with Division I-AA football programs fight to generate enough private funds to supplement the other two revenue sources - state money and student fees. And because itâs the I-AA schoolsâ most expensive athletic program, not every university sees its football future the same.
In 2003, East Tennessee State dropped its I-AA football program after 80 seasons. With a budget similar to ISUâs and those of other I-AA schools, football accounted for $1.3 million of its $5 million in athletic expenses at the 12,000-student school, according to its athletic department. ETSU was averaging about 4,000 fans a game when it dropped football and began spreading that money to other athletic programs and academics.
By contrast, Old Dominion University just launched a drive to revive its football program at the I-AA level after a 65-year absence. That 21,000-student public Virginia commuter school sits in âa very much blue-collar, heavy military and industrial area,â said Jim Ducibella, a reporter for the Virginian-Pilot. Yet surveys of ODU alums and backers indicate $8 million in private donations can be raised by June to support a new program that kicks off in 2009.
Both East Tennessee State and Old Dominion had their futures in mind when each made very different choices about I-AA football.
As for ISU, Alley said, âWe are not considering eliminating, downsizing or changing it. Rather, as funding becomes available, weâd like to build and improve the program.â
The firm hired by ISU - Johnson, Johnson and Roy, LLC of Chicago - will compile the ideas for the schoolâs facilities master plan and help build a list of priorities. The project should be finished by summer.
So where will ISU football be in 20 years? On campus? At Memorial Stadium? Alive? Well?
[B]Is college sports big business? Pundits claim it is, but comparative data argue otherwise [/B]
By Gary T. Brown, The NCAA News Online
August 29, 2005
The press has been giving college sports the business lately about being one.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, for example, claimed during conference realignment two years ago that â©ollege sports are nothing but big business, academics are secondary â even for institutions of higher learning â and far too many individuals running it are nothing but vultures eating away at our young.â
âBut are college sports a business?â asked the Austin American-Statesman in a 2003 story examining facility embellishments at the University of Texas at Austin. âYou bet your Nike shoe contract they are,â was the published answer.
Newsday in 2004 said, âMyles Brand argued that the business of college sport ought not to be confused with thinking of college sport as a business. He said that college sport is about educating athletes on the playing field and in the classroom. But holding to the notion that the spectacle broadcast into millions of homes is all about the old college try rather than a run-up the corporate ladder requires a considerable leap of faith, considering the NCAAâs $6 billion arrangement with CBS.â
The Chronicle of Higher Education in a July 2005 story about Title IX asserted that student-athlete populations at Division I-A institutions are disparate in gender because âsports (at those institutions) are run like businesses and athletics departments are supposed to break even or make money.â
And the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel insisted in a 2004 story about a football coachâs contract that: âDespite the protestations of NCAA chief Myles Brand, college sports is a business and major college football is big business.â
Indeed, if reading is believing, college sports must be more like IBM and General Electric than it is about GPA and higher education.
But sentencing college sports to life in big business is not verified by data.
NCAA revenues in 2003-04 were $470 million â a significant number, except when compared to âbig business.â While many reporters point to the $6.2 billion television contract, they do not often attach the fact that it is spread over an 11-year term. Actually, the NCAA revenues compare not with IBM or Microsoft or Nike, but more with Shurgard Storage, XM Satellite Radio and Eon Labs Inc. â not necessarily household names. Those are companies that actually have annual revenues in the same range as the NCAA.
Nike, which most people consider a big business, posted revenues last year of $12.2 billion, 25 times that of the NCAA. In other words, it takes Nike two weeks to earn what the NCAA does in a year. Gannett Inc., owner of USA Today, posted revenues of $7.2 billion.
To put NCAA revenues further into context, if the $470 million in revenues were applied to running member institutionsâ athletics departments, a total of only eight I-A programs would be sustained. The rest of the NCAAâs 1,000-plus members would have to suspend operations under that model.
What about individual athletics departments? Are they the big businesses that reporters purport them to be? [COLOR=red][B]Ohio State Universityâs total athletics budget in 2004 was about $88 million.[/B][/COLOR] That would run the institution, whose budget is $2.8 billion, for about 11 days.
If college sports is a business, itâs not a very good one.
âIn basic business, the bottom line is to have enough revenue to cover all expenses and then have net profit,â said former University of Tulsa President Bob Lawless, also a former chief operating officer of Southwest Airlines. "But if you look at athletics in higher education, there is no institution at which the revenues generated could â or are trying to â support the entire university. If athletics was really all about business, then you would be trying to generate enough money in athletics to operate the entire university.
âItâs like saying the toy department at Wal Mart is supposed to support the whole store.â
NCAA President Myles Brand said intercollegiate athletics, and higher education in general, have business elements that must be adroitly addressed. Bills must be paid, salaries have to be provided and difficult personnel decisions must be made, Brand said, but similar decisions face other nonprofit enterprises that rely on major revenue streams.
âCollege sports may be a business with respect to the revenue side of the equation,â he said, âbut it is a nonprofit focused on the values of higher education with regard to expenditures.â
[B][I]Feeding the claim[/I][/B]
Then how does the perception â and the criticism â that college sports is big business persist?
âThe tendency to point that out in print would come from a $6 billion television contract; it would come from an [COLOR=red][B]$80 million athletics budget at Ohio State or Texas; and it would come from coachesâ compensation packages that routinely hit $2 million per year[/B][/COLOR],â said USA Todayâs Steve Wieberg, who has covered the NCAA since his paper was established in 1982. âI was at the NACDA convention in June, and thereâs no doubt that the No. 1 topic for athletics directors is money, finances and revenue generation. Iâm not even sure that anyone would argue that college athletics â at least football and basketball â isnât business, and pretty big business, too.â
To be sure, the protestations that college sports is all about big business typically are prompted by the businesslike behavior inherent in Division I athletics in particular â signing high-profile coaches, negotiating football and basketball television contracts, refurbishing old stadiums or building new ones, and cutting nonrevenue sports programs.
Others who cover the college beat say itâs more the day-to-day behavior on individual campuses that incites them to make the claim. CBS SportsLine.com writer Gregg Doyel says heâs reminded daily that college athletics directors and university presidents make decisions he believes are based on the bottom line more than on student-athlete well-being.
Take basketball scheduling, for example, Doyel said. When lower-tier Division I schools play the big boys in the name of higher guarantees, thatâs money talking, he said, not athletesâ best interests. Perhaps one or two of those games would be understandable, Doyel said, but he claims reporters have a legitimate beef when that type of behavior becomes a pattern.
âThose schools donât schedule that way just so their kids get the âexperienceâ of playing Michigan State, Kentucky and North Carolina. They do that so their program makes money,â Doyel said. "Now, that may be in the best interests of the institution, but is it in the best interests of those 12 players to get demoralized that many times during their season?
âWhen schools schedule five or six of those games and a program enters its conference schedule with its season down the tubes because it chose to play a schedule simply for business reasons, I donât think thatâs in the studentsâ best interests. The school is simply making money at the expense of its playersâ egos.â
Doyel said the same business-first behavior often emerges in football when a I-A school brings in a I-AA program for the so-called âguarantee gameâ â not only is a win guaranteed for the I-A school, the check is guaranteed for the I-AA institution. âThe I-A players donât want to play that game because they know theyâll win it easily,â Doyel said. "But the I-A school needs a home game to sell tickets, and theyâre not about to schedule a really good team because the AD knows he might have to fire his coach if they play too many good teams in a year, so they decide to spend $300,000 to get a bad team in there to guarantee a win. That doesnât do anyone any good.
âWhy do we reporters claim college sports is all about business? We use that phrase because weâre cynical, for one thing. But our cynicism is hard-earned.â
[I][B]Adding context to the claim [/B][/I]
The most recent example of business behavior that drew the cynicsâ ire was in April when the Division I Board of Directors adopted legislation providing for a 12th regular-season I-A game. Many in the press said it was solely a revenue-based decision. Reporters also challenged the Association for its recent acquisition of the preseason and postseason National Invitation Tournaments four years after the NIT sued the NCAA over antitrust concerns.
Associated Press reporter Mike Marot said the perception about the 12th game was bound to be negative because âit looked like it was adopted simply for financial reasons,â and made perhaps at the expense of a greater good. âI donât know if thatâs bad or good, but itâs the appearance that mattered in that case,â Marot said. âAs long as the NCAA is in the money game, the perception will follow. Maybe the NCAA doesnât want college sports to come across as a business, but to a lot of people out there who see the money, thatâs what it is.â
NCAA President Brand said the whole âcollege sports is a businessâ mindset is an example of sloppy thinking. Most large institutions have budgets of $2 or $3 billion, Brand said, and if the president and university board do not handle those sums correctly, there not only are fiscal-responsibility consequences but also legal ramifications.
Yet the university is not seen as a business, but rather as a higher education institution. Why doesnât that carry over to college sports? Brand said part of the answer is that unlike the university, college sports has a parallel professional activity that really is a business â pro sports. While there are a few for-profit higher education institutions (the University of Phoenix, for example), they are not in the public eye.
âThereâs nothing comparable to higher education institutions in terms of for-profit entities as there is with college sports,â Brand said. "Intercollegiate athletics is so visible that there is a tendency for slip-shod, sloppy thinking to align college sports with professional sports.
âPeople need to stop running the two together just because it sounds good. Itâs no more accurate to say that athletics is only about big business as it is to say that higher education, which has enormous and larger budgets and the same types of relationships with the commercial world, is also about nothing but big business.â
One doesnât have to look deep into a campus to find those commercial relationships. Every major research university has a technology transfer arm, Brand said, and many of them own equity in emergent companies. Many even have components supported by commercial dollars, with classrooms, buildings and in some cases entire programs bearing the name of the enterprises that help underwrite them.
âWe have chairs endowed by commercial entities and named for them. We have schools within departments that bear the names of companies that are major contributors,â said the NCAAâs Wally Renfro, Brandâs senior advisor. âBut we donât have the âGeneral Electric Football Team,â and I donât think thatâs going to happen. Athletics is not behaving inappropriately compared to the rest of the campus when it engages in relationships with commercial entities.â
Itâs interesting, then, said University of Oklahoma Athletics Director Joe Castiglione, when the media disagrees.
âNo one sits back and criticizes the colleges of business or journalism or engineering or education or fine arts for being innovative about how to compete for the best and brightest students,â he said. âThose entities of the campus â like athletics â want to make it attractive for prospective students to choose the institution.â
[COLOR=red][B]Castiglione said higher educationâs ties with corporate America have grown just as quickly, if not faster, than intercollegiate athleticsâ commercial relationships. Look at campus facilities, he said. "They used to be named for a champion for education or an outstanding student or faculty member or elected official. Now they use corporate support. Some schools even use corporate names on the actual colleges of business or whatever. But all of that is OK because it flies under the academic banner. But when it touches intercollegiate athletics, it becomes a debate about commercialism. Iâm not saying thatâs good or bad, Iâm just saying thatâs the way it is.[/B][/COLOR]
âWhy arenât people just expressing the full truth? If itâs OK for one, why not for the other? Is it because people within the athletics enterprise have become more entrepreneurial than they would have wanted?â
Wieberg said it may be because thereâs an entire section of the newspaper devoted to athletics. âHigher education is big business, too,â he said. âBut it may not routinely make the front of a newspaper section like college football and basketball do on the sports section. Thereâs a financial bottom line in everything, and higher education is not exempt, and college athletics is not exempt.â
[COLOR=red][B]A recent example of such scrutiny is Indianaâs decision to add a $2 million scoreboard/videoboard system in Assembly Hall that includes advertising, something previously not seen in what had been a commercially clean basketball facility.[/B][/COLOR] But Indiana Athletics Director Rick Greenspan said in a press release, âWe are looking to create a positive fan experience. A vital part of our mission is to continually develop new sources of revenue that will sustain our total athletics program. However, we have been careful in this process not to negatively affect the aura and aesthetics of Assembly Hall.â
Yet, the move made headlines and stirred debate, whereas a similar decision elsewhere on the Indiana campus would not.
Castiglione said, âWeâre in an environment in which weâre expected to be pristine and nothing is ever supposed to go wrong, and when something does, or if we make an innovative decision, weâre seen as wrongdoers. Then even more ironically, if we donât balance our budgets, weâre criticized for operating our programs in the red, which by the way most Division I programs do.â
[I][B]Reliance upon two products[/B][/I]
There are any number of reasons for intercollegiate athleticsâ businesslike behavior. Being competitive at the highest level doesnât come without a price. Scholarships, travel, facilities and equipment alone for a 16-sport program (the minimum required for Division I-A) are expensive, particularly when all but two of those programs at most institutions do not produce revenue. Throw in costs voted in by the Division I governance structure, such as health insurance, medical expenses and expanded participation opportunities for women (the so-called âunfunded mandatesâ), and itâs easy to see how the [COLOR=red][B]athletics operating budget reaches $27 million, the reported average operating budget for a I-A athletics program.[/B][/COLOR]
Most, if not all, of that is up to the athletics department to fund.
[COLOR=red][B]âWe have 36 sports and 900 student-athletes, and we have to make that work with essentially two products,â said Ohio State Athletics Director Gene Smith.[/B][/COLOR] âBut I can tell you that the experience our synchronized swimmers, gymnasts and fencers have is just as quality of an experience as our football and basketball players â and itâs because of the latter two sports that the former sports have those quality experiences. And I think itâs perfectly fine how we run the business.â
Oklahomaâs Castiglione agrees, saying if an athletics department wants to compete with others that are trying to be successful at the highest level, some tough decisions must be made. âMost campuses have at their disposal two or three products, usually football and basketball, that can generate a profit. It puts a great deal of pressure on those sports to be successful so they can fund the rest of the operation,â he said. âIâm sure that in many cases schools would rather have other (more non-businesslike) options. If given the choice, theyâd like to stay with more traditional approaches, but the bottom line is they donât have that choice. Theyâre trying to maintain sponsorship of their athletics program in a very difficult, if not impossible, economic environment.â
Renfro cited an athletics director who recently put the two-sports business theory in perspective. The AD told Renfro that several sports at his school had poor attendance. However, he wouldnât think of doing away with them, even though they exist almost solely for those who participate in them â they were valuable on that basis alone. But to pay for them, the AD said, his school had to succeed in football and basketball.
âIn other words,â Renfro said, âhe had to take a socialistic approach to athletics, while at the same time being a constant capitalist to help pay for it. Thatâs the world we live in. To provide participation opportunities, schools have to be very successful in one or two sports. If you were going to operate intercollegiate athletics purely as a business, you wouldnât maintain those sports that have no chance of covering the cost of conducting them.â
[I][B]Responding to the claim[/B][/I]
Renfro said thatâs a good example of how college sports is not a business in the traditional sense of the term. He said in fact if the âbusiness modelâ of college sports were to be floated to a corporate board, it likely would be laughed out of the room.
âIf it makes people feel better to attribute business characteristics to the operation of football and basketball, then go ahead and say it,â Renfro said. "If youâre not successful in those sports, the institution is either going to have to eliminate sports or subsidize. This is not Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland deciding to put on a show in dadâs barn. Thatâs not how college sports works. It really costs something to put a lacrosse team on the field, or to have a water polo team, or to have a field hockey team. And the money for those sports is probably not going to be generated by the gate they are able to provide.
âThe object of a business is to sell products at a profit so that you make money for the business and its shareholders. That is not the standard by which intercollegiate athletics operates.â
âIn the business world,â Castiglione echoed, âthe athletics economic model would be attacked. But also in the business world, if you presented the schools that in spite of this dysfunctional approach have made it work, there are many business experts who would say, âBravo.â We certainly are unique.â
Jim Delany, commissioner of the Big Ten Conference, which annually generates the most revenues of any Division I league, said anyone who thinks that the enterprise doesnât require extensive funding âis fooling themselves.â However, Delany said, two important distinctions separate the collegiate and professional models.
âFirst,â he said, "the collegiate model has another mission in addition to providing facilities and scholarships and travel expenses. Those things merely go toward conducting activities that are sponsored by institutions of higher learning that have full-time students moving toward a reasonable education.
âSecond, there isnât much if any profitability in this system. Itâs a business not with shareholders, but with stakeholders. In a real business, the CEO, board and management team are focused on one thing, which is share value and profitability to benefit the shareholder. In the collegiate world, there is no such focus. The focus of college sports is to generate resources to provide opportunities, facilities, to allow the stakeholders â coaches, student-athletes, fans â to compete within the conference or nationally. So are we a business? Yes, broadly defined, because we are engaged in some activities that look like revenue generation. But the difference is the profitability or shareholder value is not an issue.â
Then how does Division I keep from being criticized for its businesslike behavior?
Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford said one of the reasons college sports is attacked for its business aspects is because the enterprise hasnât done a good job over the years of explaining its distinction from the real business world or the professional sports model.
âWe need to talk more about what makes a truly successful program,â he said. âIn the minds of most, itâs winning. Thatâs part of our society â the reason you compete is to win, but we need to go beyond that in what we deem to be successful in the collegiate model. Maybe it stops at winning in the pro model, but it needs to go beyond that in the collegiate model.â
Doyel of CBS SportsLine.com said thatâs a tough goal to accomplish.
âI understand why the two revenue sports have to be run as a business,â Doyel said. âAt the same time, when those are obviously run as a business, under my watch, Iâm going to point that out. I know why they do it, but the average fans really donât get it. They think itâs a Pollyanna world in football and basketball and that everything is done for the good of the individual player from small-town USA. Itâs for those people that I point out that while I love college football games and March Madness, understand that decisions are being made on the basis of how to grow the business called college sports, more so than to make sure that the individual from small-town USA has a good experience.â
But Ohio Stateâs Smith disagrees. He said every decision made under his watch has the best interests of the student-athlete in mind. âAny business deal that we make, whether itâs a corporate sponsorship, a donor-recognition program, a TV contract, whatever, I always think about how does this affect the student-athlete â does this add value to their experience? Then I go from there to whether this deal is consistent with the principles, values and mission of the institution. I never stray from that.â
Smith said he heard plenty of doubt from those who questioned him about the 12th game. Smith, who was on the Division I Management Council as Arizona Stateâs AD and heard the pros and cons as the proposal was making its way through the legislative cycle, admitted that the 12th game was about money.
âBut it also was about opportunity to play,â he said. âNot everyone goes to a bowl game. And the reality is that kids would rather play than practice. Football only has 12 games. Put that in relation to the practice schedule. The thought that the decision simply takes advantage of the players is just a perception â the players want to play. If athletics were subsidized differently and the decision wasnât about money, I still would have advocated for the 12th game, because the players want to play it.â
Renfro pointed out that NCAA President Brand has talked frequently about institutions having to make âvalue-based decisionsâ about how to fund college sports. [COLOR=red][B]While a handful of Division I-A institutions â perhaps two dozen â do have self-sufficient athletics programs, [U]most are subsidized by the university[/U].[/B][/COLOR] And itâs up to the institution to decide that value structure.
Renfro said, âInstitutions need to ask these questions about how they want to fund athletics: Are you educating student-athletes through intercollegiate athletics? Are you contributing to the academic success of student-athletes? Are you engaging appropriately in commercialism? Do you allow commercialism to drive important decisions over what you know is good for the experience of the student-athlete?â
In the end, the NCAA is a membership organization, and the membership in Division I has become comfortable with â and probably wonât apologize for â its business behavior. Conferences sign television rights deals on behalf of their members, institutions subsidize athletics according to the value they bring to the university, and athletics administrators and college presidents agree on legislation affecting revenues and expenses through a democratic process. And most would recoil at the suggestion that their business engagements have caused them to lose their way with regard to the educational mission.
âCollege sports needs to think about the business aspects and embrace them for what they are,â Castiglione said. "That doesnât mean we donât recognize our role in the overall institutional mission. It should not cause people to make decisions that are outside the greater good of the institution they represent. But it is quite frankly silly for people to run away from the economics of the enterprise that weâre trying to build or sustain.
âItâs quite clear that intercollegiate athletics on many campuses has been asked to seek ways to sustain its economic model. So people, including the critics, need to be more careful in how they characterize what is happening generally in college athletics, or if they are speaking about specific cases, then make that clear. Most of us do everything above board, and weâve been creative and innovative in the way weâve sought to fund the enterprise to provide opportunities that enhance the educational experience. I donât see why that is viewed as having done something wrong.â
those are just opinions
