Who is in Control of College Football Grid-Iron?
To understand the platform and the power of athletics, one needs to start at the amateur level and work their way up. For instance, according to “ Donna Desrocher’s for Research (2013), she explains that athletics at public colleges and universities at the Division-I level were a $6 billion enterprise in 2010. Desrocher goes further explaining that while schools spend less on athletics than they do academics, student athletics represent about 5-11 percent of the entire academic institutions operating budget.
The amount universities spend on a student versus an athlete is substantial. They spend about six times the amount on a student athlete compared to the $11-13 thousand the average institution spends on a student who attends the university for only academic reasons (Desrocher 2013). The Power Conferences’—South-Eastern, Big 12, Pacific-10, Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, and Big East—median athletic spending per a median student athlete is $163, 931 a year compared to $13,390 for the median student (Desrocher 2013)). According to Desrocher (2013), the SEC spends more than any other conference, spending 60 percent more than the most economical BCS conference. Many would beg the question, “why?” Why would people invest so much money into a pastime that is supposed to be recreational and does not align with the overall goal of the institution? Why are these sports so important to the collegiate landscape?
Simply put, the investment has proven to provide a great deal of financial dividends for the institutions both on and off the field. Winning is everything, and the schools that are able to create a culture of winning on the field see their bank accounts rise as quickly as their athletes and coaches raise the trophies over their heads. Adam G. Walker, author of Division-I Intercollegiate Athletics Success and the Financial Impact on Universities writes, “when a male graduate’s former team wins its conference championship, his donations for general purposes program increase by about 7% and his donations to the athletic programs increase by about the same percentage.” Moreover, a study from Humphreys and Mondello (2005) reviewed a comprehensive data set for 320 colleges and universities from the years of 1976 to 1996. From that data set, they found that restricted giving appeared to rise when an institution’s basketball team was successful, and the same was true when the football team reached some measure of success (Humphreys and Mondello 2005).
Humphreys and Mondello (2005) noted that athletic success can have direct and indirect benefits. Direct benefits can range from higher attendance at the school, increase in ticket prices, parking prices and concession stand revenue. The indirect, non-financial benefits of having a successful athletic program can be viewed as increased applications and enrollment and an enhanced ability to attract higher quality students from around the nation. Additionally, having a high successful program can increase the donation pull from alumni and other groups. Winning matters and people are prepared to pay for it.
Martin Greensberg (2008) explains in “College Athletics-Chasing the Big Bucks” that from 2002 to 2007, the nation’s most profitable athletic conferences, made $3.9 billion in just capital expenditures. In the Chronical, he found that 27 athletic programs raised more than $20 million for their university and 10 programs brought more than $30 million into their universities (Greensberg 2008). Boosters such as T. Boone Pickens, who made his fortune in the oil industry and stock market, pledged $30 million to Oklahoma State so that it could update its stadium (Greensberg 2008). Pickens also gave $165 million to build an athletic village on campus. Such a generous donation could only be rivalled by Philip Knight, the co-founder of Nike, who gave $100 million to The University of Oregon.
According to Martin (2008), the top athletic programs have seen an astronomical improvement in the amount of fundraising dollars that have been stimulated by athletics, creating a financial artery of funds that many schools now see as a critical lifeline. With many campus facilities growing to keep-up-with-the-Joneses fashion, university leaders have found themselves in an arms race that depends on the money winning programs generate and they will go to any lengths to make sure the well doesn’t run dry.
Take, for instance, the University of Alabama. In 2016, the football team reported $103.9 million in revenue along with a $47 million profit, which was 3.6 percent higher than the previous year. Moreover, the school has profited from a lucrative deal with The Collegiate Licensing Company which it netted $98 million in royalties since its founding in 1981 (Garcia 2017). In the case of the SEC, its self-operated cable network enjoys over 75 million subscribers which, at an average of $1.40 per subscriber, produces over $611 million in revenue (Dahab 2016). Advertisements on the network channels contributes another $70 million to this total, making SEC college athletic departments among the most profitable in the country (Dahab 2016).
However, winning does not come without an aggressive financial commitment. Alabama’s football head coach, Nick Saban, winner of six national championships, five at the University of Alabama, made $7.6 million in 2019 (Potter 2019). His offensive coordinator, Steve Sarkisian, made $1.6 million and his defensive coordinator, Pete Golding, made $1.1 million (Potter 2019). Before Saban, the Tide were on probation and struggled to put winning seasons together. Now that things are turned around, many people who remember the tougher times would consider his salary a bargain.
According to Business Insider, there are several schools willing to bid on this arms race and make that commitment because they know what type of financial pay-out awaits if they’re successful. Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, a young and energetic coach in South Carolina, took over the program and has led the team to three national championships and five ACC championships. Jim Harbaugh of the University of Michigan and Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M each made over $7.5 million a year. Head coaches Kirby Smart at the University of Georgia, Gus Malzahn at Auburn, Tom Herman at Texas, Jeff Brohm at Purdue, Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma, and Dan Mullen at Florida all make over $6 million a year (Cash 2019). And yet of these top ten highest paid coaches, not one is African American.
A lack of diversity has been an unfortunate reality when it comes to leadership roles within major college sports from the beginning. James Franklin is the highest paid African American coach as the leader of the Penn State Nittany Lions, making $5.65 million (Cash 2019). A handsome amount, yet he often finds himself alone in leadership rooms due to the lack of African American Head coaches. Paul Newberry of The Chicago Tribune, reports that of the 130 FBS schools in division-I college football, which is the most competitive division, only 13 coaches were African American. The Pac-12 has more diversity of than any conference with five African American coaches out of 12 teams and the Big Ten currently has three African American head coaches out of its 14 teams. Syracuse’s Dino Baber is the only member of the ACC and there are none in the Big 12. The South Eastern Conference has one, Derek Mason, who heads a Vanderbilt program that is unable to compete due to higher academic requirements and fewer resources. This is the breakdown of the demographic system of leadership on the field of play in college football.
In Keith Michaels Champagne’s “Black Male Intercollegiate Administrators: Ascending the Career Ladder A Qualitative Analysis of a Cast Study” (2014) the writer refers to the race and Gender Report Card (RGRC) report from the Institute for Diversity and Race in Sports that found;
White men held the overwhelming percentage of positions in all three of the NCAA’s divisions at 88.8%, 92.7%, and 96.2% in Divisions I, II, and III, respectively. This compared to 90.0%, 92.0% and 97.0% in 2007-2008 respectively. In comparison, African-Americans (Black men) held 7.4%, 3.1%, and 2.2% of the positions respectively in Divisions I, II and III. This is in comparison to 7.2%, 3.8%and 1.8%in 2006 respectively. In addition, at the Associate Director-level positions, White men comprised 88.5%, 82.8%, and 92.6% of the total population at Division I, II and III respectively. And, African Americans held 8.2%, 14.4%, and 5.4% of the positions at each level. Moreover, as of October 2010, there were eight African American athletic directors at Football Bowl Series (FBS) institutions; and of the 120 Athletic Directors who oversee FBS football-programs; there were 106 (88.3%) who were White men.
What makes this even more unacceptable is that the young men on the field are predominantly African American. According to Ramsey Dahab, in “Class, Race, and Corporate Power” (2016) when looking at the South Eastern Conference, “69 percent of all SEC football players who received athletic aid from their college or university in the 2013 fall semester self-identified as black, race differentials among declared majors could be assessed across a team’s depth chart” (Dahab 2016). So, what does it say for the uplift and organizational long-term investment that just one coach in the entire conference is African American?
Simply put, there doesn’t seem to be much of a long-term investment in the students. The red carpet that was so freely laid out during their high school recruitment is just as quickly rolled up when their eligibility is exhausted. When student athletes are given a stage, they should use that platform to advocate not only for themselves, but for social change both in the school and in the world.
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