Hup 1, Hup 2, Hup 3: Let’s All Tap the Money Tree!

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina— (Weekly Hubris)—10/10/11—A recent headline on the first page of the news section of the Raleigh News and Observer informed followers of sports in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) that money rather than fans had been favored in a new, lucrative contract with ESPN. In a deal worth millions of dollars over a twelve-year span, ESPN beat out the Fox Network.

The ACC is a late-comer to the sports networks’ money tree.

Long ago, Notre Dame inked a deal for its football team, and CBS cast its net over the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The Texas Longhorns, brushing aside fellow members in the Big 12 Conference, followed Notre Dame’s lead by wrapping up a package worth $300 million with ESPN. The Longhorn deal, a heavy kick in the pants for the Big 12, sent Texas A&M scrambling for a new rope to the money tree, obligingly furnished by the Southeastern Conference, eager to expand its market intoTexas.

The scrambling seems far from over. Texas Christian University, located deep in the heart of Texas, sought and found a new home in the Big East Conference, and that is where East Carolina University yearns to go, even hiring as lobbyist former Governor Jim Hunt of North Carolina to help. The Pirates are making a pitch after Syracuse University and Pittsburgh University bolted from the Big East and found a hearty welcome in the ACC. Now there’s even talk of further realignment, as four super conferences would emerge with 18 teams each. The new associations would be formed around the SEC, the ACC, the Pacific Coast Conference, and the Big Ten.

The driving force behind these completed and the possible realignments is big TV money. And big TV money obviously sees little harm in ripping apart traditional rivalries and pays little heed to the hardships imposed on fans by having afternoon games kick off at 3:30 or 4 p.m., starting times forcing fans to travel at night, a raw deal, indeed, for fans whose night vision is poor. And who’s not irked by all those timeouts for commercials in collegiate sports these days?

The sharing and spread of big TV bucks no doubt helps to account for the fact that football coaches of more than 50 colleges and universities now command salaries of a million dollars or more, the highest paid being the head coaches at Oklahoma and Texas, who, respectively, pull down three and two million, handsome figures compared to the average salaries of university presidents, reportedly in the $425,000 range. Even fired coaches fare well at the money tree, for example, Butch Davis, whose walking papers included a 2 million fare-thee-well when the University of North Carolina could no longer stomach the embarrassment of a multipronged investigation into infractions occurring during his tenure.

The megabucks going to coaches and their staffs should be enough to insure that regulations of the National Collegiate Athletic Association are known and followed, especially since in many colleges a watchdog is hired to see that no infractions are being committed. Yet, if you choose to Google the list of colleges with one of more infractions at the moment, you’ll find that almost nine pages in fine print are needed to name them. A worse case account of infractions was revealed a few years ago when an investigation showed that a slush fund had been set up at Southern Methodist University by backers for members of the football team to draw upon.

A current investigation at the University of Miami is looking into the extent of gifts by a rabid fan.

And that brings me around to a question often debated but far from resolved: Should players be awarded a branch of the money tree? In a convoluted sense, they are, since athletic “scholarships” are bestowed on them, even if a few of them fall below the minimum scores on SAT or similar instruments used to predict college performance. These special exemptions often find themselves in remedial courses. At Clemson University, I volunteered to teach classes remedial freshmen English, enjoying splendid success with European and Asian students, some of them athletes. They “aced” the course and moved on to English 101 and other English requirements readily and successfully. But for American athletes the experience was far different.

Largely because, I think, from junior high days they had been identified as gifted athletes and, having acquired that label, were coddled, allowed absences without having to do make-up work, and assigned tutors to serve as “brain coaches.” They were being groomed for excellence on the field or court and not for even basic mastery of material in the classroom.

Coddling and “brain-coaching” continue in college, and not only at Clemson. A flagrant example of such a practice appears in the current case against the University of North Carolina, in which a star athlete was allowed to take a senior-level course without having had stipulated prerequisites. Reputedly, the course was under an accommodating professor.

Such steps as the one cited keep athletes on the field but simply represent another form of exploitation. Their athletic prowess pays off in revenue gained at the ticket office or from TV contracts, but their short-changed promise of a college degree cripples their post-college days. If they find themselves playing for the best paid coach in the land, Coach Stoops of Oklahoma, they could end up with more than 50 percent of them leaving the football program minus a degree, according to figures released by USA Today.

In my view, college athletes in revenue-generating sports should be allowed, nay encouraged, to tap the money tree. They have goods to offer, services to perform, good will to create, and needs to meet. Let them bargain with colleges for the best offer, encourage them to ask for a course entitled “Dealing with Sports Agents 101,” and give them insurance policies that cover their lost prospects of livelihood if, in giving their all for the college that hired them, they suffer career-ending injuries. Let’s be upfront and honest with them, for the money tree won’t bear much fruit without them. TV networks won’t come calling without them. And let’s make the money colleges receive from these lucrative contracts taxable income.

And, finally, let’s encourage these paid performers to reap the pleasures of altruism by donating handsomely to coaches and players enjoying the life of an athlete in the non-revenue producing sports. Encourage them to be true sports and lovers of sports.