Athletics reformers see silver lining in pandemic
Donna Lopiano sees political cover in COVID-19. She sees a window in which college presidents could rein in the runaway spending of their athletic departments during this crisis period.
What she does not see is the will to make it work.
“This may be the only opportunity that presidents will ever get to do something really strong in athletics without being shot by their trustees, the public or their fans,” the former chief executive officer of the Women’s Sports Foundation said. “But college presidents have to have guts on this one. (And) I don’t see even one leader in that regard.”
Soaring salaries, bloated staffing and ever more opulent facilities are sure to come in for closer scrutiny as college athletics copes with the reduced revenues of a delayed, diminished or canceled football season.
But what Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard fears as a “return to the financial Ice Age,” strikes reformers as a needed market correction.
“I think it would be fine for athletics to hit the wall on this baby,” said Lopiano, a longtime athletic administrator at the University of Texas, “and to use the pandemic as the opportunity to reset the economic structure, which the public would support.”
According to a 2017 analysis by Business Insider, college football brings in more money for Football Bowl Subdivision schools than the next 35 sports combined.
It accounts for roughly 70% of the athletic revenues at traditional powers such as Michigan and Texas.
Yet as those revenues have risen, so have football’s costs.
According to the Knight Commission’s College Athletics database, both the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville more than doubled their football spending between 2008 and 2018.
Meanwhile, the two schools’ athletic debt loads have multiplied during the last decade: Kentucky’s from $22 million to $100.4 million; Louisville’s from $5.2 million to $95.6 million.
Committed to multi-year coaching contracts and long-term debt service, many major athletic departments will be facing a cash flow crisis if the football season is contracted or conducted without spectators.
Anticipating a significant shortfall, U of L athletic director Vince Tyra has already announced layoffs and furloughs affecting nearly a quarter of his department’s employees.
“How long have we said that college athletics is headed for a tipping point?” asked Ohio University’s David Ridpath, president of the Drake Group.
“Nobody probably thought pandemic, but here we are . ...
it was a
“There are a lot of things we do that are ‘want-tos’ rather than ‘have-tos.’ It’s a real critical time, but I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing. I don’t want to say there’s a silver lining to a pandemic. Yet it is something we can use to our benefit to redirect college sports.”
Ridpath messaged Ohio University President M. Duane Nellis on April 15, urging him to consider cutbacks to football and basketball as an alternative to slashing non-revenue sports.
“Let’s not cut sports,” Ridpath said in a telephone interview.
“Let’s go after and cut the fat. Do you really need a director of football operations, a director of high school relations and all these other things? Look, Alabama can afford it. Louisville can definitely afford it better than most, but clearly there’s fat that needs to be cut in that department . ...
“Maybe we’re at the time, too, where the Power 5 (conferences) separate. Schools like Louisville and Kentucky can likely make it through this and afford it, (along with the) Ohio States and Alabamas. And then the other schools can play at a level they can afford.’’
Prominence, of course, is no guarantee of profitability. Administrators at both Ohio State and Texas A&M – two of the nation’s three highest-revenue athletic departments – have said they would likely eliminate sports if their broad-based programs ran a significant deficit.
Last month, the commissioners of the Group of Five conferences sent a joint letter to NCAA President Mark Emmert seeking a reduction in the number of sports required to maintain Football Bowl Subdivision status.
“We’re certainly planning for the worst,” said Mike Moyer, executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association.
“Of the 130 FBS athletic programs in the country, maybe 30-35 turn a profit and the others are being subsidized by about $21 million. That tells you it was a strained intercollegiate business model even before COVID-19 hit.”
Lopiano would encourage college presidents to exploit the emergency to shame coaches into accepting salary cuts, to slash some sport budgets to club funding levels, to temporarily reduce travel costs by scheduling for proximity rather than conference affiliation and to dramatically trim administrative staff.
Lopiano said her last count showed 29 or 30 assistant athletic directors at Penn State University.
Including deputy ADs, senior associate ADs, associate ADs and assistant ADs, that list now numbers 34.
“The 30,000-foot view of the economic system is it’s been floating along like a fat cat,” Lopiano said.
“It uses up every dollar that it gets its hands on. . .
“The solution is bringing it back into reality.”