Spending Money on Athletics, Not Academics

The more you learn about college sports today, the sadder you get about our colleges. Many see sports as their raison d'etre, a money source - but a source for more sports, not better academics. Here are some facts from a NY Times article by Laura Pappano today"

• between 1985 and 2010, average salaries at public universities rose 32 percent for full professors, 90 percent for presidents and 650 percent for football coaches.
• Spending on high-profile sports grew at double to triple the pace of that on academics. For example, Big Ten colleges, including Penn State, spent a median of $111,620 per athlete on athletics and $18,406 per student on academics.
• “Here is evidence that suggests that when your football team does well, grades suffer,” said Dr. Waddell, who compared transcripts of over 29,700 students from 1999 to 2007 against Oregon’s win-loss record. For every three games won, grade-point average for men dropped 0.02, widening the G.P.A. gender gap by 9 percent. Women’s grades didn’t suffer.
• For a Tuesday night game against Duke in Columbus (for which there were enough seats, according to Mr. Collins, the Block O president), Ohio State students pitched tents along the outside wall of Schottenstein Center starting at 5 p.m. on a Sunday. (Who attended classes on Monday and Tuesday?)
• In the last 10 years, the number of college football and basketball games on ESPN channels rose to 1,320 from 491.  All that programming means big games scheduled during the week and television crews, gridlock and tailgating on campus during the school day.
• “We no longer determine at what time we will play our games, because they are scheduled by TV executives,” it laments, going on to complain about away games at 9 p.m. “Students are required to board a flight at 2 a.m., arriving back at their dorms at 4 or 5 a.m., and then are expected to go to class, study and otherwise act as if it were a normal school day.” And: “our amateur student-athletes take the field with a corporate logo displayed on their uniform beside ‘Duke.’ ”