3 thoughts on “Twitter: RT @midmajority: http://tmm7.me/2zc …”

  1. David K.

    I’m not opposed to some of the suggestions, but there are some significant holes in his argument.

    First, he completely ignores non-financial benefits that college sports, in particular the revenue sports like football and basketball might provide such as:

    1) Increased donations to non-football funds at the schools
    2) Increased exposure and awareness of school (think Gonzaga’s b-ball programs success hasn’t benefited them there) which leads to increased admissions applications
    3) Revenue generated to area buisnesses from visiting fans, game day fans, etc.

    Second, he ignores the effect the recession had on some of his numbers, particular when he points out only seven programs had continuous profit over the last five years. Well DUH we had a major recession! The UW athletic department has consistently turned a profit and been self funding but dipped into the red for a couple of years because of the combination of recession and crappy football team (but largely the recession). So 1-2 years of a glitch mars his arbitrarily chosen date range to try and make a point.

    Third, some of his suggestions don’t really improve things or would make things worse for student athletes. Reduction in scholarships? How does that help student athletes?? And while I think there is some merit to his proposal of tying graduation success rate to post season play, until the success rate calculations are fixed to take into account things like students choosing to transfer and students leaving early for the pros its a bad number to rely on.

    Having said all that I think there could be some merit to looking at how revenue from post season play is used by the NCAA in particular (well profit generation by the NCAA in general should be looked at more deeply but thats another can of worms.) Limits on team personnel isn’t a bad idea either. I’d also be willing to listen to arguments on some sort of salary caps on coaching staff as well.

  2. Brendan Loy

    To be clear, you say “his” (possibly meaning Kyle Whelliston), but the authors are actually a “they,” namely William E. “Brit” Kirwan and R. Gerald Turner
, co-chairmen of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. Kyle is just linking to their article. [/nag]

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