MACHIAVELLI
Chairman/C.E.O.
Division I-A football not always a money-maker
At many non-BCS schools, price to go 'big time' is steep
By Kyle Nagel
Dayton Daily News
When the University of South Alabama considered adding football to its athletics department in the late 1990s, the school hired a consulting firm to prepare a market study about NCAA Division I football.
Division I-A football not always a money-maker
Roundup of Tuesday's area college basketball games
The findings were passed on to the school's Athletic Council and 21 members, including the College of Education dean, the athletics director, the alumni association president and various professors, were asked to determine the prudence of adding America's most popular sport.
Despite the public perception that football provides mounds of cash and financial stability to athletic departments, the council came to a negative conclusion.
"I-A football is not contested on anything like a level playing field," the council report said. "Anyone outside of the BCS, with few exceptions, cannot compete on the field or off."
Particularly off.
In the arms race that is Division I-A college football, the monetary divide between the top and bottom schools is staggering, and it appears that difference will continue to grow. Last season alone, of 117 I-A schools (excluding Air Force and Navy), 39 lost money on football, and six more simply broke even, according to the schools' 2004-05 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act reports.
As the smaller schools attempt to keep up with the football powers ? or even the most successful in their own conferences ? many are spending themselves into debt. Even at the bigger schools, big football money doesn't always equal a fiscally healthy athletic department.
"If you would've said to me 65 were not making it, I wouldn't have been surprised," said Michael Cusack, the athletic director at Wright State University, which does not field a football team.
Cusack could be right. As economist Andrew Zimbalist notes in his book Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports, the EADA reports can be deceiving. Schools, Zimbalist writes, can shift the numbers to show profit to deflect criticism about high expenses or to show a deficit to increase calls to donors for greater need.
"The major problem is that there is virtually no uniformity in the application of accounting practices," Zimbalist writes. "Thus, one university's athletic program in exactly the same financial condition as another university's may report a substantial surplus while the other may report a sizable deficit."
Nevertheless, the EADA reports provide the quickest look at a large number of schools. And the picture the numbers paint is one of poor fiscal health among nearly a third of the country's highest-level football programs.
And something, sometime, has to make up for that debt, critics say.
"Where we're going is somewhere the presidents don't want to go ? a playoff," said Dave Ridpath, an executive board member of The Drake Group, a college athletics watchdog. "It would make billions."
http://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/content/sports/daily/0104footballmoney.html
At many non-BCS schools, price to go 'big time' is steep
By Kyle Nagel
Dayton Daily News
When the University of South Alabama considered adding football to its athletics department in the late 1990s, the school hired a consulting firm to prepare a market study about NCAA Division I football.
Division I-A football not always a money-maker
Roundup of Tuesday's area college basketball games
The findings were passed on to the school's Athletic Council and 21 members, including the College of Education dean, the athletics director, the alumni association president and various professors, were asked to determine the prudence of adding America's most popular sport.
Despite the public perception that football provides mounds of cash and financial stability to athletic departments, the council came to a negative conclusion.
"I-A football is not contested on anything like a level playing field," the council report said. "Anyone outside of the BCS, with few exceptions, cannot compete on the field or off."
Particularly off.
In the arms race that is Division I-A college football, the monetary divide between the top and bottom schools is staggering, and it appears that difference will continue to grow. Last season alone, of 117 I-A schools (excluding Air Force and Navy), 39 lost money on football, and six more simply broke even, according to the schools' 2004-05 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act reports.
As the smaller schools attempt to keep up with the football powers ? or even the most successful in their own conferences ? many are spending themselves into debt. Even at the bigger schools, big football money doesn't always equal a fiscally healthy athletic department.
"If you would've said to me 65 were not making it, I wouldn't have been surprised," said Michael Cusack, the athletic director at Wright State University, which does not field a football team.
Cusack could be right. As economist Andrew Zimbalist notes in his book Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports, the EADA reports can be deceiving. Schools, Zimbalist writes, can shift the numbers to show profit to deflect criticism about high expenses or to show a deficit to increase calls to donors for greater need.
"The major problem is that there is virtually no uniformity in the application of accounting practices," Zimbalist writes. "Thus, one university's athletic program in exactly the same financial condition as another university's may report a substantial surplus while the other may report a sizable deficit."
Nevertheless, the EADA reports provide the quickest look at a large number of schools. And the picture the numbers paint is one of poor fiscal health among nearly a third of the country's highest-level football programs.
And something, sometime, has to make up for that debt, critics say.
"Where we're going is somewhere the presidents don't want to go ? a playoff," said Dave Ridpath, an executive board member of The Drake Group, a college athletics watchdog. "It would make billions."
http://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/content/sports/daily/0104footballmoney.html
