5 college sports myths

The NCAA’s annual men’s basketball tournament, which started Tuesday, is both a great athletic contest and a crassly commercial enterprise — a dichotomy common to college sports that has led to legal and ethical questions about whether student athletes should be paid and organized like professional employees of their universities. Even aside from the confused status of student athletes, college sports is burdened with myths. Here are five of the most common ones.

1. College sports provide enormous profits for schools.

College athletics generate eye-popping sums of money. The NCAA sold 14 years of TV rights to its March tournament for $10.8 billion in 2010, and athletic programs routinely generate more than $20 million a year in ticket sales. In 2013, the University of Texas athletic department pulled in $165.7 million. It’s logical to think that the universities’ non-athletic programs benefit from all that money. Even the Chronicle of Higher Education has made the connection, writing that “there is no revenue in training doctors and lawyers, but colleges and universities make a substantial, direct and immediate income from their student athletes.”

In fact, most schools lose money on their sports operations, as the NCAA confirms in its financial reports. Extravagant compensation for athletic department employees, especially coaches, as well as waste and mismanagement leave many programs in the red. In 2009, Duke’s highly successful men’s basketball team lost $2 million, Florida Atlantic University had a profit margin of minus 253.7 percent, and Louisiana Tech posted one of minus 306.9 percent. Schools including Rice, Tulane and Colorado State all lost more than $1 million on their men’s basketball programs that year. When a sport does turn a profit, that money is far more likely to stay in the athletic department, subsidizing other sports, than to fund academic programs.

2. Title IX has allowed women to participate equally in college sports.

In many ways, Title IX, the law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in schools, has succeeded. When it was implemented in 1972, just 16,000 women played college sports; today the number is more than 200,000.

But in one glaring way, the law’s passage has seen equality for women in sports decrease: coaching. As of 2012, only 43 percent of women’s college teams were led by women, down from more than 90 percent in 1972, the year two former professors began tracking the numbers. Title IX created higher salaries for the coaches of women’s programs — and the better pay ended up attracting men to those positions. Judy Sweet, the first woman to be president of the NCAA, has said she doesn’t expect the downward trend to stop: “It requires breaking this cycle of male university presidents hiring male board members hiring male athletic directors hiring male coaches.”

And even the presence of men has not led to pay parity for the coaches of women’s programs. The average salary for a coach of a NCAA Division I men’s team was $267,007 in 2010. Coaches of women’s teams on average earned $98,106.

3. Multimillion-dollar coaching salaries help teams win.

The University of Michigan has high hopes for head football coach Jim Harbaugh. The school lured him from the San Francisco 49ers by matching his NFL salary — $5 million a year — and adding a $2 million signing bonus and performance incentives. The Wolverines expect that he’ll help them win the Big Ten and take them to the College Football Playoff. The previous coach, Brady Hoke (who was making $2.8 million a year), was fired in December after the team finished with a losing record.

That happens all the time in college sports: Losing coaches are dumped and replaced with more expensive ones. “Schools justify these salaries on the grounds that it’s a competitive marketplace, that they have to pay to get a good coach,” says Andrew Zimbalist, an economist with a focus on sports.

But the coaching arms race doesn’t pay off. New hires often produce poorer records than the coaches they replace — in short, they are paid more for losing more games. A 2012 study following the highest-paid football and men’s basketball coaches over six seasons showed that replacing a coach with a higher-compensated one resulted mostly in no short-term change — most of the teams that were not ranked in the top 25 did not climb into that echelon with the new coach. In fact, 20 percent of the new hires triggered “short-term downward mobility,” meaning their teams fell in ranking, sometimes dropping out of the top 25 altogether. In the longer term, over four seasons, the numbers were comparable.

4. Sports generate great publicity for schools.

Countless publications and entire TV networks cover college sports, and schools pay nothing for those sweeping shots of campus broadcast during big games. Applications tend to spike for schools appearing in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. “We couldn’t afford to buy the kind of exposure our team earned,” Butler athletic director Barry Collier said of the school’s surprise success in the 2010 tournament. George Mason University estimated that its 2006 tournament run won it $677 million worth of free publicity.

But when scandals occur on or off the field, the media does not disappear — in fact, more reporters arrive on campus — and the bad PR costs schools dearly. After enjoying years of good press for its athletics, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is now being roiled by a massive academic fraud scandal in its athletic program. At least one top recruit to the men’s basketball team says the scandal has made him hesitate about committing to UNC, and the university made the unprecedented move of hiring a vice chancellor for communications and public affairs — a former spokesman for Disney — at the cost of $300,000 a year. (That sum pales next to the $3.2 million Penn State had spent as of 2012 on investigations, PR and legal advice as a result of its child sex abuse scandal. This does not include the $60 million fine levied by the NCAA.)

5. College sports bring in alumni donations.

College presidents and school officials frequently explain their obeisance to their athletic departments by saying that without big-time sports programs, they’d never get any money out of their alumni. As Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt told the Wall Street Journal, “Nothing can unify a community and alumni base of a university like college football can.”

While some studies have shown that winning can have a positive effect on alumni giving, others have shown no correlation or even that a winning record can decrease donations. A more general examination of alumni showed that the economy and news stories about an alma mater most strongly influence giving among young alumni; athletic performance ranked lowest, along with diversity initiatives. The U.S. News &World Report annual college rankings for schools with the highest percentage of alumni who give are filled with schools that do not play big-time football or basketball. Small liberal arts colleges, almost all in Division III, post the best numbers.

Murray Sperber teaches in the Cultural Studies of Sport in Education program in the University of California at Bekeley’s Graduate School of Education and is the author of four books on college sports, including “Beer and Circus.”

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Opinion

toon
Editorial cartoons for Tuesday, March 19

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

Students use a 3D model to demonstrate their groups traffic solutions at Hazelwood Elementary School on Wednesday, March 29, 2023 in Lynnwood, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Editorial: Your choice, drivers; slow down or pay up

More traffic cameras will soon be in use in cities and highways, with steep penalties for violations.

Protect Affordable Care Act by rejecting Trump

The stakes are high in this year’s presidential election. If candidate Donald… Continue reading

Support candidates who support schools

I promised I would stop writing these letters because the gates of… Continue reading

Biden must stop supplying weapons to Israel, Ukraine

Bad foreign policy will come back to haunt us in the long… Continue reading

Comment: Flow of U.S. guns into Mexico is other border crisis

Guns, legal and illegal, are contributing to crime and instability in Mexico, driving many to seek asylum.

RGB version
Editorial cartoons for Monday, March 18

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

Carson gets a chance to sound the horn in an Everett Fire Department engine with the help of captain Jason Brock during a surprise Make-A-Wish sendoff Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023, at Thornton A. Sullivan Park in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Editorial: Everett voters will set course for city finances

This fall and in coming years, they will be asked how to fund and support the services they use.

Devotees of TikTok, Mona Swain, center, and her sister, Rachel Swain, right, both of Atlanta, monitor voting at the Capitol in Washington, as the House passed a bill that would lead to a nationwide ban of the popular video app if its China-based owner doesn't sell, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Lawmakers contend the app's owner, ByteDance, is beholden to the Chinese government, which could demand access to the data of TikTok's consumers in the U.S. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Editorial: Forced sale of TikTok ignores network of problems

The removal of a Chinese company would still leave concerns for data privacy and the content on apps.

Rep. Strom Peterson, D-Edmonds, watches the State of the State speech by Gov. Jay Inslee on the second day of the legislative session at the Washington state Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Editorial: Legislature has its own production of ‘The Holdovers’

What state lawmakers left behind in good ideas that should get more attention and passage next year.

Comment: Measles outbreaks show importance of MMR vaccinations

The highly contagious disease requires a 95 percent vaccination rate to limit the spread of outbreaks.

Harrop: Should ‘affordable’ come at cost of quality of living?

As states push their cities to ignore zoning rules, the YIMBYs are covering for developers.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.