"College sports ‘arms race' not sustainable"

ThisIsAtlanta

Break In Case Of Emergency
Staff member
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
61,115
This is all GT's fault.

If we hadn't have lured John Heisman away from Clemson for $2,250 + 30% of the gate for coaching baseball and football at GT - none of this would have happened.
I believe that the morse code version of the hive was outraged at the time - when they were not receiving BOTD dots and dashes.

30% of our gate for a season nowdays, I figure, is about $4 million a season. CPJ is getting screwed by Heisman standards.
Furthermore: we got what we effing paid for.
 

NatiJacket

Clear Whiskey Drinker
Joined
Apr 24, 2008
Messages
6,907
ThisIsAtlanta

The Georgia Tech Mission Statement: "Our mission is clear: “to provide the state of Georgia with the scientific and technological knowledge base, innovation, and workforce it needs to shape a prosperous and sustainable future and quality of life for its citizens.” It is achieved through educational excellence, innovative research, and outreach in selected areas of endeavor."

From the Georgia Tech intercollegiate athletics page: "The Georgia Tech athletics program is committed to the development, preparation, support, and graduation of its student-athletes through its Total Person Program and Academic Services... The athletic program at Georgia Tech is committed to excellence and competition at the highest national level. Georgia Tech athletics serves as a compliment to the overall mission of the Institute."

In neither place do I see anything about free market or making money. Colleges and AD's are not businesses but rather non-profit organizations created to serve the people. Is there a profitable side to college athletics? Of course. But only a handle of athletic departments operate in the black and most rely on heavy support from the students or administration of their schools.

'committed to excellence and competition at the highest national level'
Unfortunately these days competing at the highest level is costing more and more money. Why? The arms race of coaches and facilities. If the point of college football is to make money for coaches and administrators, yay we're doing a good job. If however the goal is for the "development, preparation, support, and graduation of its student-athletes" then the skyrocketing costs are doing nobody any good, and the NCAA should look into limiting the costs.

You may say that I am naive, that student-athletes are a joke and that it's all about making money, and you might be right. But why sit by and watch it become more and more like that? Why not at least try to stop the crazy costs? The NCAA put a limit on scholarships for similar reasons (getting way to expensive to complete and to level playing field), and the sport is still going strong.

But already some schools are getting priced out. Schools like northeastern recently shut down their football program because it was too expensive. College sports is a celebration of athletics and should strive to be accessible at all schools, not just the elite.
 

ThisIsAtlanta

Break In Case Of Emergency
Staff member
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
61,115
GT said:
"The Georgia Tech athletics program is committed to the development, preparation, support, and graduation of its student-athletes through its Total Person Program and Academic Services... The athletic program at Georgia Tech is committed to excellence and competition at the highest national level.
It doesn't say anything about Nortwestern's student athletes in here. If they wanted to benefit from GT they should've come here. To compete at the highest level you have to compete in every category and somewhere down the road that means piles of cash need to get involved. You cannot properly advantage your students if you cannot properly exploit all advantages. Like the example I gave earlier, even if head staff salaries were eliminated and staff was volunteer only, Alabama will still make more money than GT from its football program and GT will still make more from its football program than Northwestern. That money has to go somewhere, especially if these organizations are going to be 'non-profit'.

wikipedia said:
A nonprofit organization (abbreviated NPO, also not-for-profit[1]) is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals
How do you propose that this money could be better used to develop, prepare, and support our athletes than to equip them with the highest caliber coaches we can obtain? I'm sure you can see why in any scenario the college football arms race still exists regardless of what you change, short of completely remaking the entire NCAA.
 

NatiJacket

Clear Whiskey Drinker
Joined
Apr 24, 2008
Messages
6,907
What money?

http://www.lvrj.com/sports/45463032.html

Georgia Tech laid off 13 staff members and won't fill two vacant positions
Meanwhile we are having to pay CPJ more and more to keep him at Tech. Wouldn't it benefit the athletes more to have all positions filled? If the current trend continues, and there is no reason to think it won't, Tech will have to start cutting smaller sports in order to fill the gap. How does that help student athletes? Tech, and the majority of other schools out there are struggling to keep in the black and at the same time are having to keep up with more expensive coaches and better facilities. This is not sustainable.
 

ncjacket

Dodd-Like
Joined
Jun 17, 2002
Messages
14,639
What positions being vacant impact student athletes negatively? If we sold more tickets to football games, we might not be in the position we're in. Lord only knows what the basketball mess is costing us.
 

ThisIsAtlanta

Break In Case Of Emergency
Staff member
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
61,115
What money?

http://www.lvrj.com/sports/45463032.html



Meanwhile we are having to pay CPJ more and more to keep him at Tech. Wouldn't it benefit the athletes more to have all positions filled? If the current trend continues, and there is no reason to think it won't, Tech will have to start cutting smaller sports in order to fill the gap. How does that help student athletes? Tech, and the majority of other schools out there are struggling to keep in the black and at the same time are having to keep up with more expensive coaches and better facilities. This is not sustainable.
Is there a possibility that those 13 staff members were cut because they were doing poorly, and that 2 of those positions were unnecessary? Just because we increased CPJ's pay and fired a bunch of guys doesn't mean they are related.

CPJ is a far greater advantage to our players than any of the guys we fired, I guarantee it.

FURTHERMORE. You still will not acknowledge my argument (for the third time now) that the inclusion of a salary cap won't fix the CFB arms race, because AA's will find other ridiculously expensive toys to spend this money on to get to the top. Guys as competitive as CPJ and DRad aren't going to just go "awww, allriiiight, I guess we'll be fair to everybody" and take it. They're going to attack the problem utilizing the maximum amount of resources at their disposal. If it is a new stadium, a new weights facility, new nutritional junk, or us hiring 200 more coaches so that we have 2 personal coaches per kid, we're going to spend that money to be the best and stay there, which is what we are doing right now by increasing CPJ's pay, because he is the best shot we presently have.

I'm not saying "to hell with your ideals of fairness and all that poppycock". I'm saying "salary caps are not the way to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish, if it is possible at all".
 

NatiJacket

Clear Whiskey Drinker
Joined
Apr 24, 2008
Messages
6,907
The reason I have not touched on that argument is that I'm not looking at leveling the playing field, I don't care about that. I'm looking at the issue from a financial perspective.

The reason I am concerned about rising salaries of coaches?
The fastest growing expenses in Division I sports programs are coaching salaries: in Division I-A, the median salary for head football coaches grew by 47 percent between 2004 and 2006, rising to $855,500 from $582,000, while the median salary for men’s basketball coaches rose 15 percent, to $611,900
http://ctsportslaw.com/2008/05/22/ncaa-study-shows-that-most-athletic-programs-lose-money/

Meanwhile...
Radakovich was forced to cut $3.8 million from his department's 2008-09 budget and laid off 13 employees. This coming season, Georgia Tech's football team will travel by bus to road games at Florida State and Vanderbilt. In the past, the Yellow Jackets would have traveled by chartered plane to those places.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=4314195

Those employees weren't cut due to performance, they were laid off in order to meet a budget. I'm not saying that Dan Radakovich is doing anything wrong or that we shouldn't be paying CPJ more money. He is doing the best that he can with the resources he has. I'm saying that in order to ensure that all of its members can continue to support their student athletes, the NCAA should look into finding a way to curb the skyrocketing costs of competing before schools like Tech get priced out of small sports. Womens swimming scholarships may not mean much to you, but it means the world to those swimmers
 

ramble on

Dodd lite
Joined
Oct 10, 2009
Messages
1,288
Ahh the buzz word (no pun intended) that I can't seem to get enough of here at Tech... Sustainability!
 

BerryGT

Jolly Good Fellow
Joined
Dec 15, 2003
Messages
1,549
This is all GT's fault.

If we hadn't have lured John Heisman away from Clemson for $2,250 + 30% of the gate for coaching baseball and football at GT - none of this would have happened.
I believe that the morse code version of the hive was outraged at the time - when they were not receiving BOTD dots and dashes.

30% of our gate for a season nowdays, I figure, is about $4 million a season. CPJ is getting screwed by Heisman standards.
Well done, Sir! Epic post!
 

HelluvaPilot

Varsity Lurker
Joined
Nov 1, 2009
Messages
72
A salary cap would be retarded. Look, here's the bottom line. Athletics provide an entertainment venue for students, alumni, and locals at Universities. We all highly value this form of entertainment, so we're willing to pay a lot of money to see our team win. All a spending cap would accomplish is to essentially prohibit fans from spending money on a past time that they enjoy.

Who gives a **** if its expensive. Universities that lose money on their athletics programs should spend less, that solves that problem. If they cannot compete nationally, then that's just fine. It's not like the NCAA has a shortage of football teams. Due to their small budgets, they probably have few fans that would watch the game anyway.

Northwestern may be shutting down its program, but many more other schools are opening theirs. Kennesaw, Georgia State, etc. What is happening is that elite schools are becoming less and less able to attract top-quality athletes due to rigorous academics and poor party environments. Harvard and Yale used to win all of the national championships, but now your average meat head football player could never graduate from those schools.

Athletics is not a charity, and nor should it be. Schools should not be subsidizing student athletics. Either it makes enough money to support itself or it doesn't. It's unfair to ask students to support money-losing athletics programs with loan dollars.
 

NatiJacket

Clear Whiskey Drinker
Joined
Apr 24, 2008
Messages
6,907
A salary cap would be retarded. Look, here's the bottom line. Athletics provide an entertainment venue for students, alumni, and locals at Universities. We all highly value this form of entertainment, so we're willing to pay a lot of money to see our team win. All a spending cap would accomplish is to essentially prohibit fans from spending money on a past time that they enjoy.

Who gives a **** if its expensive. Universities that lose money on their athletics programs should spend less, that solves that problem. If they cannot compete nationally, then that's just fine. It's not like the NCAA has a shortage of football teams. Due to their small budgets, they probably have few fans that would watch the game anyway.

Northwestern may be shutting down its program, but many more other schools are opening theirs. Kennesaw, Georgia State, etc. What is happening is that elite schools are becoming less and less able to attract top-quality athletes due to rigorous academics and poor party environments. Harvard and Yale used to win all of the national championships, but now your average meat head football player could never graduate from those schools.

Athletics is not a charity, and nor should it be. Schools should not be subsidizing student athletics. Either it makes enough money to support itself or it doesn't. It's unfair to ask students to support money-losing athletics programs with loan dollars.

A) Athletics exist for the athletes, not for the fan.

B) Capping or limiting coaches salaries in no way prevents fans from spending their money as they wish. The AA has extra money at the end of the year? Hey, why not give it back to the university or the students from whom they get much support, or put it away in case of a rainy day

C) If you decide to forgoe being competitive in football or basketball, you lose ticket sales, the biggest chunk of revenue, only hurting your problem. Those most likely tighter budgets are the smaller sports. (See A)

D) The quality of the school has nothing to do with this problem. Texas is a great academic school, and always one of the most profitable programs

E) Currently, student do subsidize student athletics through student fees
 

gtphd

What a time to be alive
Joined
Oct 20, 2009
Messages
23,290
Tech, and the majority of other schools out there are struggling to keep in the black and at the same time are having to keep up with more expensive coaches and better facilities.
With the exception of a handful of programs (around 5), every athletic department in the country loses money and requires the university to pick up some of the tab.

If universities stopped picking up the tab (especially via mandatory fees), athletic associations would have less money and would subsequently pay coaches less / have less elaborate facilities. This only works, though, if all schools band together.
 

FatJacket

Helluva Engineer
Joined
Jan 20, 2008
Messages
2,205
I still think it's ridiculous that college football programs pay coaches such high salaries then turn around, claim a loss, and force mandatory student fees.

I know the usual arguments "coaches are not paid by the school", "football programs increase donations", "the student fees cover the cost of your tickets", etc., but it's ridiculous that there's mandatory student fees for sports. If you want to make them voluntary (e.g. student ticket fees), that's one thing, but why should the impoverished international graduate students that know nothing about American sports be forced to pay fees?
Send em back or force them to watch American Sports (the big 3 only, FB, BB, BB, no soccer allowed)till they are converted!
 

FatJacket

Helluva Engineer
Joined
Jan 20, 2008
Messages
2,205
A) Athletics exist for the athletes, not for the fan.

B) Capping or limiting coaches salaries in no way prevents fans from spending their money as they wish. The AA has extra money at the end of the year? Hey, why not give it back to the university or the students from whom they get much support, or put it away in case of a rainy day

C) If you decide to forgoe being competitive in football or basketball, you lose ticket sales, the biggest chunk of revenue, only hurting your problem. Those most likely tighter budgets are the smaller sports. (See A)

D) The quality of the school has nothing to do with this problem. Texas is a great academic school, and always one of the most profitable programs

E) Currently, student do subsidize student athletics through student fees

Dumb*ss.
A) Atletics exist for the almighty dollar, not the athletes. They are making about minimum wage for their work, which is in high demand, but there is a forced monopoly on the FB players, for instance, something akin to benevolent slavery.

B) Give the money back to the athletes. They are the ones who have earned it, and the ones being exploited.

C) Biggest part o revenue is the TV Contract, then the merchandise, not the ticket holder. More wins leads to bigger TV contracts for the conference, and more merchandise sales for the school.

D) Sometimes correct

E)Students subsidize their Title IX atheletes, not their football players or BB players.
 

ncjacket

Dodd-Like
Joined
Jun 17, 2002
Messages
14,639
The reason I have not touched on that argument is that I'm not looking at leveling the playing field, I don't care about that. I'm looking at the issue from a financial perspective.

The reason I am concerned about rising salaries of coaches?

http://ctsportslaw.com/2008/05/22/ncaa-study-shows-that-most-athletic-programs-lose-money/

Meanwhile...

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=4314195

Those employees weren't cut due to performance, they were laid off in order to meet a budget. I'm not saying that Dan Radakovich is doing anything wrong or that we shouldn't be paying CPJ more money. He is doing the best that he can with the resources he has. I'm saying that in order to ensure that all of its members can continue to support their student athletes, the NCAA should look into finding a way to curb the skyrocketing costs of competing before schools like Tech get priced out of small sports. Womens swimming scholarships may not mean much to you, but it means the world to those swimmers
How much of PJ's salary is actully in DRad's budget?
 

StingThing

Damn Good Rat
Joined
Oct 15, 2009
Messages
1,208
C) Biggest part o revenue is the TV Contract, then the merchandise, not the ticket holder. More wins leads to bigger TV contracts for the conference, and more merchandise sales for the school.
So what happens when one conference (let's just pull one at random........the SEC) gets a mega TV contract that other networks can't match. The SEC now has all the marbles (think $) and can hire whoever they want at whatever price. In addition to getting all the best talent they also drive up the prices for the next tier talent. Now the smaller schools (think WAC) can no longer compete because they don't have huge TV contracts to offset costs. What you are left with is a 24 hour SEC fest named.......ESPN.

I know this is just hypothetical, but it could happen........
 

ramblinwise1

beware the zealot
Joined
Dec 17, 2001
Messages
18,344
Its definitely headed to unsustainability as are pro sports salaries. TV packages have got to get smaller in this economy as they get renegotiated. I wonder if TV is making any money anymore on advertising revs.

Yes, Tech is not well suited with a smaller fan base to compete in this arms war. But the bigger SEC schools will begin to feel the heat too. That next TV contract won't be so lucrative unless the economy has improved dramatically by the time it comes due. Once schools start dropping sports due to losing their asses, then the SEC won't have anyone to play but themselves and their revenues will start to drop.

I don't think salary caps are appropriate but the NCAA could enact rules to cut out the job hopping. Hell, if the member schools just enforced their contracts it would make a difference. Da Braine let O'Bleary walk and not pay his 1.5M due to the AA under his contract.

I like the rules requiring coaches to sit out if they "transfer" as we have for players. But I think they should also be put on probation for recruiting violations under their watch. Now they just get a new gig and the schools bear the consequences for their chicanery.
 

HelluvaPilot

Varsity Lurker
Joined
Nov 1, 2009
Messages
72
A) Athletics exist for the athletes, not for the fan.

B) Capping or limiting coaches salaries in no way prevents fans from spending their money as they wish. The AA has extra money at the end of the year? Hey, why not give it back to the university or the students from whom they get much support, or put it away in case of a rainy day

C) If you decide to forgoe being competitive in football or basketball, you lose ticket sales, the biggest chunk of revenue, only hurting your problem. Those most likely tighter budgets are the smaller sports. (See A)

D) The quality of the school has nothing to do with this problem. Texas is a great academic school, and always one of the most profitable programs

E) Currently, student do subsidize student athletics through student fees
Replies
A) College athletics does not exist for the athletes. That's what the YMCA exists for, and your local club teams. College athletics could not exist in any way shape or form without the money provided by viewers. It is a business.

B) Capping coach salaries does effectively limit our ability to spend our entertainment dollars as we wish. Since teams cannot pay players, the only real way they can improve by spending money is with hiring better coaches. If you had a low salary cap, massive schools like Ohio would have enormous numbers of fans disappointed year after year... while a few thousand students and alumni of some no-name school compete for the championship. It doesn't make any sense. Let capitalism work.

C) The budget for each sport is calculated separately. Why should the football team subsidize the rowing team? If the smaller sports are not making money, and do not have an added benefit of attracting new students, then they should be scaled down. Likewise, if the tennis team is indeed making a profit, then its budget will not be cut to subsidize a money losing football team. If the football programs budget cannot be cut without losing even more money, then it should probably be canceled.

D) The quality of the school absolutely affects the problem. Do you think Tech would have as good of a football team without our management programs, humanities, and the like? No way. We have a good football program because we have certain majors that a person of average intelligence can do well in, and the majority of our good football players major in those. Northwestern is an elite school... who many of those have good football programs? MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, Duke... how many elite schools can you name with negligible football programs? Stanford is the only one that comes to mind. You can probably go down the list of college rankings and barely hit a good football team until mid way down.

E) That is true, but student fees make up a small part of overall revenues. Without significant viewer support, the price of college athletics would be too high. Students would also rebel at paying high fees to watch ****ty teams.
 

gtphd

What a time to be alive
Joined
Oct 20, 2009
Messages
23,290
Atletics exist for the almighty dollar, not the athletes. They are making about minimum wage for their work, which is in high demand, but there is a forced monopoly on the FB players, for instance, something akin to benevolent slavery.
College sports are not slavery. Athletes get a free college education and free practical training for their professional career.

The thing I have a problem with in college football is the college requirement to enter the draft, which is in effect an unpaid probationary period and makes college football a de facto professional sport. Is there a way to enter the NFL draft without college experience (e.g. through the Arena league)?
 
Last edited:
Top