The problems created by big-time college sports on university campuses were identified back in the 1920s by such notables as President (of the United States and Princeton University) Woodrow Wilson and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Upton Sinclair. A major article in Harper's magazine in 1928 described college football as a "first-class octopus which is strangling many of the legitimate concerns of [our] educational institution[s]."
We may wonder why the octopus is bigger and stronger than ever after eight decades of high-minded calls for reform. My concern as University of Texas representative on the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics is the poor academic experience of many student-athletes.
A main reason is that big-time NCAA football is not education; it is big business. Ed Goble, associate athletic director for business, makes clear that, "in most general terms, 75 to 80 percent of [sports] revenues are tied to our football program." A major question to ask is: Who benefits most from the business that Texas Monthly calls Longhorns Inc.?
The answer is obvious. Our head football coach makes $3 million a year. His already-anointed successor, an assistant coach, makes $900,000 a year. The men's athletics director makes $455,000. Head coaches in other sports top $1 million, and assistant coaches have salaries far in excess of average full professors' salaries. By contrast, UT's president makes $600,000 per year and the average faculty member makes $92,000.
The schedule and starting times of games are determined by national television networks, who are in the business to take advantage of advertising markets. The university and Nike sports have a large sponsorship and advertising agreement to help sell the company's products. Nike is not concerned about student athletes at the university developing strong minds in strong bodies and learning about themselves through fair competition. In fact, it is questionable what UT football players learn by easily outscoring the mostly outmatched teams on their schedule by more than 30 points per game over the last four years. They play three or four legitimately competitive games per year and have only one Big XII title to show for their efforts in the last 10 years.
The NCAA program at UT was giving virtually nothing back to the academic mission of the university until three years ago, when they started giving small amounts to avoid embarrassment. They have now given back approximately $6 million out of well more than $300 million dollars generated in the last three years. Six million dollars is about what the head and assistant football coaches make collectively in a single year. "We eat what we kill," says Ed Goble of Longhorns Inc.
Indeed they do. They also severely wound the whole concept of amateur sports within a true educational context.
The last to benefit are businesses and wealthy individuals who use Longhorn football as weekend sports entertainment, spending between $55,000 and $70,000 to rent the hundred or so skyboxes in Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. If the university simply required that those funds be allotted for academic purposes, we could say that athletes are being exploited for better reasons than to make coaches and sports administrators rich and amuse fans who like watching our strong team beat weak opponents.
Who, then, is going to change a system that brings in football players with average SAT scores of 948; 317 points below the average male UT student's SAT score of 1265? Who is going to change the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate that leaves satisfactory athlete students almost a year short of their degrees after four years and holds them to performance levels (GPAs of 1.8. 1.9 and 2.0 in their first three years) that are strikingly below the average male student's GPA (3.05)?
Worst of all, because it is so nakedly cynical, the NCAA mandates athletes should spend no more than 20 hours a week practicing, playing and training. But an NCAA survey of Division 1-A football players found that the average player puts in nearly 45 hours per week. This figure has been confirmed locally. Longhorn football players have more than full-time jobs as athletes.
Who is stopping this clear violation of an educational principle? If an academic department hired 85 work-study students, paid them for 20 hours of work per week, and then had them work 45 hours, wouldn't a dean or provost or the president himself intervene?
A national press story in December reported that UT fans were upset that the Longhorns were excluded from the BCS title game. It continued, "But the real tragedy for this team is that only 40 percent of its players, and only 27 percent of its black players, will graduate. Texas' football players put the school on the national stage. And what do they get in return? Besides the precious few that will make it to the NFL, most will leave school without a degree and with few career prospects."
If we don't care about the education many of our student-athletes are not getting, shouldn't we at least care about our national reputation?
The writer is Dickson Centennial Professor of Classics and Big 12 representative on the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics steering committee.
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