The NCAA's program to study intercollegiate athletics finances is the oldest research sponsored by the Association, dating back to the first Revenues and Expenses of Intercollegiate Athletics report in 1970.

But more than 30 years later, with heightened interest among the membership, public and media regarding financial aspects of intercollegiate athletics, the research may be the most timely current effort in NCAA research.

The first reports were compiled and analyzed by Bradley University professor Mitchell Raiborn. In 1993, the Association's research staff assumed responsibility for data collection and asked Daniel L. Fulks, an accounting professor at Transylvania University, to tabulate and analyze the information.

"We are looking for financial trends over time," Fulks said about the program. The reports provide a complete financial analysis of intercollegiate athletics programs, broken down by division and within Division I by subdivision, and currently provide data from as long ago as 1985.

"The reported financial trends and relationships are useful within the NCAA administrative offices in policy decisions and are used by member schools in assessing the efficiency of their programs, as well as their levels of revenues and expenditures, relative to other schools," Fulks said.

Collection of revenues and expenses data received a boost in 1996 with passage by Congress of the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA), which Todd Petr, NCAA managing director of research, credits with providing "the first truly national look at finances of intercollegiate athletics." The legislation specifically addressed interest in gender-equity concerns, but also focused more attention on the growing financial impact of intercollegiate athletics on higher education in America.

Fulks said that EADA's primary benefit for his work is that it made it easier to collect data from NCAA institutions: "We just piggyback that EADA survey."

But the legislation also has contributed to increasing public interest in financial aspects of college athletics. He estimates that he receives an average of three telephone calls per week from media representatives who are interested in findings from research into revenues and expenses of athletics.

Fulks also believes that NCAA research is influencing the growing debate over financial issues.

"I think lots of people have something to say about intercollegiate athletics, and about something other than winning and losing," he said. "There's a group of people who think we spend entirely too much on college athletics, and then there's another group that thinks, well, it's not costing us any more than band or the drama department or the art department, and it's worth paying for.

"The debate has been stewing for a while, and what we do with it -- what we've done for that debate -- is provide some data, provide some factual information, rather than just anecdotal information."

Fulks said the revenues and expenses study is "extremely valuable in either confirming or dispelling common beliefs about athletics spending." The data directly address such questions as whether there is a financial arms race in intercollegiate athletics' operating expenses, whether there are relationships between spending and winning or spending and fund-raising, and whether a divide exists between financial "haves" and "have-nots."

"Our data are the best source of factual bases for these discussions," Fulks said.

-- Jack Copeland