More than a few tongues are wagging around Texas Longhorn athletic circles this week over this blistering Texas Observer op-ed on the UT football program authored by UT professor Tom Palaima, who just happens to serve on the UT Faculty Advisory Committee on Budgets and is UTís representative on the Big 12 steering committee of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics. Hereís a flavor of the article:
The NCAA program at the University of Texas at Austin generated $138 million in revenue last year, $87 million from football. Yet its profit margin is less than $2 million. The programís cumulative debt and debt service are in the high-risk neighborhood.
Longhorns Inc. has wrapped its tentacles around the now-hemorrhaging academic budget. The athletics department gave a $2 million raise to head football coach Mack Brown as colleges across the university are laying off staff. In foreign languages alone, $1.6 million was cut. The head of the student union recently announced the closure of the Cactus CafÈ, a historic music venue, to save just $66,000 over two years.
Worse, the university has ceded trademark and royalty revenues. Longhorns Inc. keeps 90 percent of this income, roughly $10.6 million last year. The yearly debt payment on building bonds for the nearly $300 million in stadium expansions since 1998 is $15 million. The debt run up by the athletics department has risen from $64.4 million in 2004-05 to a staggering $222.5 million in 2008-09.
Unfortunately, Palaima main criticism is how well the UT athletic department and its personnel are doing financially in comparison to the UT academics, whose average salary has increased by ìonlyî 30 percent over the past 20 years or so.
Somehow, however, Palaima utterly misses the most corrupt aspect of big-time intercollegiate athletics. That is, the perverse and discriminatory regulatory scheme that restricts compensation to the players ñ mostly young black men ñ whose talent actually generates most of the wealth for the athletic departments.
As Iíve noted many times, big-time college football and basketball is an entertaining form of corruption. Too bad that someone as bright as Professor Palaima fails to understand the true nature of that corruption.
By the way, below is a video of a lively debate between Professor Palaima and longtime UT Law professor Lino Graglia over college football in which Palaima is actually the defender of the entreprise (a colleague asked Palaima ìDeLoss Dodds must have given you priority seating at [Darrell K. Royal-Memorial Stadium]î. The transcript of the debate is here.
He may not have emphasized it, but I don’t think Palaima “utterly misses” the comp issue. He writes:
“In contrast, a battery of regulations prevents the players, whose hard work generates all these revenues, from earning what they deserve from their own athletic prowess. What could be better than to have 85 workers producing tens of millions of dollars in revenues while earning a minimum wage?”
I think the op-ed is a rambling, generally incoherent piece, but it does point out 2 serious problems. First, the comp issue mentioned above. Second, the risk the take by borrowing to invest in athletic programs. It’s pretty gross to read Goble’s “we eat what we kill,” when it may turn out that they ate well and never really killed anything.
Lets not kid ourselves, the reason UT is the 47th ranked national university is because the academic side of the school finds that acceptable. Maybe the academic side needs more influence from the athletic staff and not less. At least the athletic staff has figured out how to accomplish their mission at the highest level and in a financially viable manner.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings/page+2