Category Archives: Money in College Sports

July 24, 2012, 12:24 pm

One AD’s Take: We Must Change the Momentum of the ‘Dollar Culture’

In the wake of the Penn State penalties, many people have written about the corrupting influence of money in big-time sports, and the troubling role that it can play in distancing athletic departments from their universities. Terry Holland, the athletic director at East Carolina University, had an interesting take on that idea, commenting Tuesday on an informal e-mail list we’re on together:

Punishing Penn State will not change the negatives of the athletic culture any more than punishing Enron changed the business culture. Overpaid coaches, overpaid executives, and everyone in such positions aren’t likely to allow a change in the culture that is making them richer than they could have imagined, and richer than is actually healthy for them. …

Until the NCAA and all of us are willing to send a consistent message about what is important to our universities, the “dollar” culture…

July 11, 2012, 4:30 am

Steve Wieberg, Longtime ‘USA Today’ Sportswriter, Is Stepping Down

By Brad Wolverton

Steve Wieberg, who started his career at USA Today nearly 30 years ago and became one of the most respected voices in college sports, is leaving the newspaper.

Wieberg, 57, has taken a job teaching high-school English and journalism near his home in Lawson, Mo. This is his last week at the paper.

The move comes amid a major restructuring of USA Today’s sports staff. Last month, 15 writers and editors there lost their jobs as the paper’s parent company adapts to changes in the industry. Wieberg, who has covered 29 consecutive Final Fours and hasn’t missed an NCAA Convention since 1983, was not a part of those layoffs. He had decided months ago to pursue a different path.

“I’ve been wanting to normalize my life, and that’s just harder do in this profession now,” he said in a recent interview. “We’re in a full-charge mode, which is what we have to do. I just had to decide…

July 10, 2012, 8:18 am

NCAA’s President Paid at Nearly $1.6-Million Per Year

By Brad Wolverton

Mark Emmert, the president of the NCAA, brought in nearly $400,000 for his first three months on the job, USA TODAY Sports reports today.

“The amount, which covered the final three months of the 2010 calendar year, means Emmert was paid at a rate of nearly $1.6 million a year—nearly 40 percent more than predecessor Myles Brand in 2008, his final full calendar year on the job,” USA Today‘s Steve Berkowitz writes.

In his previous job as president of the University of Washington, Emmert was paid $870,000 a year.

According to a statement the NCAA provided to USA TODAY Sports, executive salaries are set by the NCAA Executive Committee’s Administrative Committee, which is comprised of university and college presidents from all three NCAA divisions.

The committee employs an independent third party to conduct a market survey of like positions. As a result, the association says,…

July 3, 2012, 5:00 am

Big-Time Football Success Yields Improvements Among Students

By Brad Wolverton

Wins on the football field can substantially increase athletics donations, boost the number of applicants and enrollment of in-state students, reduce acceptance rates, and raise average incoming SAT scores, new research suggests.

In a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Michael L. Anderson, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley, found “robust evidence” that a winning FBS program translated into increased contributions and improvements in the student population.

By comparing teams of similar quality that experienced different outcomes, Anderson found that a sharp increase in season wins—from three wins to eight—was followed by large increases in athletics donations (28 percent) and applications (5 percent).

Many previous studies had found little to no net increase in donations or applications, Anderson said in an…

May 16, 2012, 5:00 am

Texas Outdistances the Pack in Sports Spending

By Brad Wolverton

“When we make it, we have a right to spend it,” Texas’s football coach Mack Brown tells USA Today Sports. “That’s the way America is.”

Brown, who earns more than $5-million a year, is Exhibit A of the Longhorns’ largesse. He pockets more than four NCAA Division I institutions spend on their entire athletics program, USA Today reports. (Under Brown, Texas won the national title in 2005, but has gone 13-12 the past two seasons.)

Texas, one of 22 Division I public institutions to operate in the black, has plenty to go around. Last year it brought in more (just over $150-million) and spent more ($133.7 million) on sports than more than 200 public Division I colleges, according to the newspaper’s annual database of spending in big-time college sports. Ohio State was a distant second in both categories.

Texas and Ohio State aren’t the only department with deep pockets. Ten programs…

May 4, 2012, 1:07 pm

Rutgers Students Pay Nearly $1,000 Each to Finance Athletics

By Brad Wolverton

Take your pick on which is the most damning statement about the Rutgers athletic department, based on a report by Bloomberg News this week examining spending in big-time sports:

a) Rutgers gave $28.5-million from the university budget and student fees, or almost $1,000 per student, to finance sports during the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011.

b) The $19.4-million that Rutgers allocated to athletics from its general budget would have been enough to hire about 256 assistant professors or 132 full professors, based on salary figures provided by the university.

c) Fiscal 2011 included the first losing football season in six years. Ticket sales for all sports, led by football, plunged by $3.1-million; donations fell $1.5-million; and income from royalties and licensing declined $477,558.

It was the second-consecutive year that Rutgers topped Bloomberg’s list of universities that…