The press has been giving college sports the business lately about being one.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, for example, claimed during conference realignment two years ago that "(C)ollege sports are nothing but big business, academics are secondary -- even for institutions of higher learning -- and far too many individuals running it are nothing but vultures eating away at our young."

"But are college sports a business?" asked the Austin American-Statesman in a 2003 story examining facility embellishments at the University of Texas at Austin. "You bet your Nike shoe contract they are," was the published answer.

Newsday in 2004 said, "Myles Brand argued that the business of college sport ought not to be confused with thinking of college sport as a business. He said that college sport is about educating athletes on the playing field and in the classroom. But holding to the notion that the spectacle broadcast into millions of homes is all about the old college try rather than a run-up the corporate ladder requires a considerable leap of faith, considering the NCAA's $6 billion arrangement with CBS."

The Chronicle of Higher Education in a July 2005 story about Title IX asserted that student-athlete populations at Division I-A institutions are disparate in gender because "sports (at those institutions) are run like businesses and athletics departments are supposed to break even or make money."

And the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel insisted in a 2004 story about a football coach's contract that: "Despite the protestations of NCAA chief Myles Brand, college sports is a business and major college football is big business."

Indeed, if reading is believing, college sports must be more like IBM and General Electric than it is about GPA and higher education.

But sentencing college sports to life in big business is not verified by data.

NCAA revenues in 2003-04 were $470 million -- a significant number, except when compared to "big business." While many reporters point to the $6.2 billion television contract, they do not often attach the fact that it is spread over an 11-year term. Actually, the NCAA revenues compare not with IBM or Microsoft or Nike, but more with Shurgard Storage, XM Satellite Radio and Eon Labs Inc. -- not necessarily household names. Those are companies that actually have annual revenues in the same range as the NCAA.

Nike, which most people consider a big business, posted revenues last year of $12.2 billion, 25 times that of the NCAA. In other words, it takes Nike two weeks to earn what the NCAA does in a year. Gannett Inc., owner of USA Today, posted revenues of $7.2 billion.

To put NCAA revenues further into context, if the $470 million in revenues were applied to running member institutions' athletics departments, a total of only eight I-A programs would be sustained. The rest of the NCAA's 1,000-plus members would have to suspend operations under that model.

What about individual athletics departments? Are they the big businesses that reporters purport them to be? Ohio State University's total athletics budget in 2004 was about $88 million. That would run the institution, whose budget is $2.8 billion, for about 11 days.

If college sports is a business, it's not a very good one.

"In basic business, the bottom line is to have enough revenue to cover all expenses and then have net profit," said former University of Tulsa President Bob Lawless, also a former chief operating officer of Southwest Airlines. "But if you look at athletics in higher education, there is no institution at which the revenues generated could -- or are trying to -- support the entire university. If athletics was really all about business, then you would be trying to generate enough money in athletics to operate the entire university.

"It's like saying the toy department at Wal Mart is supposed to support the whole store."

NCAA President Myles Brand said intercollegiate athletics, and higher education in general, have business elements that must be adroitly addressed. Bills must be paid, salaries have to be provided and difficult personnel decisions must be made, Brand said, but similar decisions face other nonprofit enterprises that rely on major revenue streams.

"College sports may be a business with respect to the revenue side of the equation," he said, "but it is a nonprofit focused on the values of higher education with regard to expenditures."

Feeding the claim

Then how does the perception -- and the criticism -- that college sports is big business persist?

"The tendency to point that out in print would come from a $6 billion television contract; it would come from an $80 million athletics budget at Ohio State or Texas; and it would come from coaches' compensation packages that routinely hit $2 million per year," said USA Today's Steve Wieberg, who has covered the NCAA since his paper was established in 1982. "I was at the NACDA convention in June, and there's no doubt that the No. 1 topic for athletics directors is money, finances and revenue generation. I'm not even sure that anyone would argue that college athletics -- at least football and basketball -- isn't business, and pretty big business, too."

To be sure, the protestations that college sports is all about big business typically are prompted by the businesslike behavior inherent in Division I athletics in particular -- signing high-profile coaches, negotiating football and basketball television contracts, refurbishing old stadiums or building new ones, and cutting nonrevenue sports programs.

Others who cover the college beat say it's more the day-to-day behavior on individual campuses that incites them to make the claim. CBS SportsLine.com writer Gregg Doyel says he's reminded daily that college athletics directors and university presidents make decisions he believes are based on the bottom line more than on student-athlete well-being.

Take basketball scheduling, for example, Doyel said. When lower-tier Division I schools play the big boys in the name of higher guarantees, that's money talking, he said, not athletes' best interests. Perhaps one or two of those games would be understandable, Doyel said, but he claims reporters have a legitimate beef when that type of behavior becomes a pattern.

"Those schools don't schedule that way just so their kids get the 'experience' of playing Michigan State, Kentucky and North Carolina. They do that so their program makes money," Doyel said. "Now, that may be in the best interests of the institution, but is it in the best interests of those 12 players to get demoralized that many times during their season?

"When schools schedule five or six of those games and a program enters its conference schedule with its season down the tubes because it chose to play a schedule simply for business reasons, I don't think that's in the students' best interests. The school is simply making money at the expense of its players' egos."

Doyel said the same business-first behavior often emerges in football when a I-A school brings in a I-AA program for the so-called "guarantee game" -- not only is a win guaranteed for the I-A school, the check is guaranteed for the I-AA institution. "The I-A players don't want to play that game because they know they'll win it easily," Doyel said. "But the I-A school needs a home game to sell tickets, and they're not about to schedule a really good team because the AD knows he might have to fire his coach if they play too many good teams in a year, so they decide to spend $300,000 to get a bad team in there to guarantee a win. That doesn't do anyone any good.

"Why do we reporters claim college sports is all about business? We use that phrase because we're cynical, for one thing. But our cynicism is hard-earned."

Adding context to the claim

The most recent example of business behavior that drew the cynics' ire was in April when the Division I Board of Directors adopted legislation providing for a 12th regular-season I-A game. Many in the press said it was solely a revenue-based decision. Reporters also challenged the Association for its recent acquisition of the preseason and postseason National Invitation Tournaments four years after the NIT sued the NCAA over antitrust concerns (see story, page 1).

Associated Press reporter Mike Marot said the perception about the 12th game was bound to be negative because "it looked like it was adopted simply for financial reasons," and made perhaps at the expense of a greater good. "I don't know if that's bad or good, but it's the appearance that mattered in that case," Marot said. "As long as the NCAA is in the money game, the perception will follow. Maybe the NCAA doesn't want college sports to come across as a business, but to a lot of people out there who see the money, that's what it is."

NCAA President Brand said the whole "college sports is a business" mindset is an example of sloppy thinking. Most large institutions have budgets of $2 or $3 billion, Brand said, and if the president and university board do not handle those sums correctly, there not only are fiscal-responsibility consequences but also legal ramifications.

Yet the university is not seen as a business, but rather as a higher education institution. Why doesn't that carry over to college sports? Brand said part of the answer is that unlike the university, college sports has a parallel professional activity that really is a business -- pro sports. While there are a few for-profit higher education institutions (the University of Phoenix, for example), they are not in the public eye.

"There's nothing comparable to higher education institutions in terms of for-profit entities as there is with college sports," Brand said. "Intercollegiate athletics is so visible that there is a tendency for slip-shod, sloppy thinking to align college sports with professional sports.

"People need to stop running the two together just because it sounds good. It's no more accurate to say that athletics is only about big business as it is to say that higher education, which has enormous and larger budgets and the same types of relationships with the commercial world, is also about nothing but big business."

One doesn't have to look deep into a campus to find those commercial relationships. Every major research university has a technology transfer arm, Brand said, and many of them own equity in emergent companies. Many even have components supported by commercial dollars, with classrooms, buildings and in some cases entire programs bearing the name of the enterprises that help underwrite them.

"We have chairs endowed by commercial entities and named for them. We have schools within departments that bear the names of companies that are major contributors," said the NCAA's Wally Renfro, Brand's senior advisor. "But we don't have the 'General Electric Football Team,' and I don't think that's going to happen. Athletics is not behaving inappropriately compared to the rest of the campus when it engages in relationships with commercial entities."

It's interesting, then, said University of Oklahoma Athletics Director Joe Castiglione, when the media disagrees.

"No one sits back and criticizes the colleges of business or journalism or engineering or education or fine arts for being innovative about how to compete for the best and brightest students," he said. "Those entities of the campus -- like athletics -- want to make it attractive for prospective students to choose the institution."

Castiglione said higher education's ties with corporate America have grown just as quickly, if not faster, than intercollegiate athletics' commercial relationships. Look at campus facilities, he said. "They used to be named for a champion for education or an outstanding student or faculty member or elected official. Now they use corporate support. Some schools even use corporate names on the actual colleges of business or whatever. But all of that is OK because it flies under the academic banner. But when it touches intercollegiate athletics, it becomes a debate about commercialism. I'm not saying that's good or bad, I'm just saying that's the way it is.

"Why aren't people just expressing the full truth? If it's OK for one, why not for the other? Is it because people within the athletics enterprise have become more entrepreneurial than they would have wanted?"

Wieberg said it may be because there's an entire section of the newspaper devoted to athletics. "Higher education is big business, too," he said. "But it may not routinely make the front of a newspaper section like college football and basketball do on the sports section. There's a financial bottom line in everything, and higher education is not exempt, and college athletics is not exempt."

A recent example of such scrutiny is Indiana's decision to add a $2 million scoreboard/videoboard system in Assembly Hall that includes advertising, something previously not seen in what had been a commercially clean basketball facility. But Indiana Athletics Director Rick Greenspan said in a press release, "We are looking to create a positive fan experience. A vital part of our mission is to continually develop new sources of revenue that will sustain our total athletics program. However, we have been careful in this process not to negatively affect the aura and aesthetics of Assembly Hall."

Yet, the move made headlines and stirred debate, whereas a similar decision elsewhere on the Indiana campus would not.

Castiglione said, "We're in an environment in which we're expected to be pristine and nothing is ever supposed to go wrong, and when something does, or if we make an innovative decision, we're seen as wrongdoers. Then even more ironically, if we don't balance our budgets, we're criticized for operating our programs in the red, which by the way most Division I programs do."

Reliance upon two products

There are any number of reasons for intercollegiate athletics' businesslike behavior. Being competitive at the highest level doesn't come without a price. Scholarships, travel, facilities and equipment alone for a 16-sport program (the minimum required for Division I-A) are expensive, particularly when all but two of those programs at most institutions do not produce revenue. Throw in costs voted in by the Division I governance structure, such as health insurance, medical expenses and expanded participation opportunities for women (the so-called "unfunded mandates"), and it's easy to see how the athletics operating budget reaches $27 million, the reported average operating budget for a I-A athletics program.

Most, if not all, of that is up to the athletics department to fund.

"We have 36 sports and 900 student-athletes, and we have to make that work with essentially two products," said Ohio State Athletics Director Gene Smith. "But I can tell you that the experience our synchronized swimmers, gymnasts and fencers have is just as quality of an experience as our football and basketball players -- and it's because of the latter two sports that the former sports have those quality experiences. And I think it's perfectly fine how we run the business."

Oklahoma's Castiglione agrees, saying if an athletics department wants to compete with others that are trying to be successful at the highest level, some tough decisions must be made. "Most campuses have at their disposal two or three products, usually football and basketball, that can generate a profit. It puts a great deal of pressure on those sports to be successful so they can fund the rest of the operation," he said. "I'm sure that in many cases schools would rather have other (more non-businesslike) options. If given the choice, they'd like to stay with more traditional approaches, but the bottom line is they don't have that choice. They're trying to maintain sponsorship of their athletics program in a very difficult, if not impossible, economic environment."

Renfro cited an athletics director who recently put the two-sports business theory in perspective. The AD told Renfro that several sports at his school had poor attendance. However, he wouldn't think of doing away with them, even though they exist almost solely for those who participate in them -- they were valuable on that basis alone. But to pay for them, the AD said, his school had to succeed in football and basketball.

"In other words," Renfro said, "he had to take a socialistic approach to athletics, while at the same time being a constant capitalist to help pay for it. That's the world we live in. To provide participation opportunities, schools have to be very successful in one or two sports. If you were going to operate intercollegiate athletics purely as a business, you wouldn't maintain those sports that have no chance of covering the cost of conducting them."

Responding to the claim

Renfro said that's a good example of how college sports is not a business in the traditional sense of the term. He said in fact if the "business model" of college sports were to be floated to a corporate board, it likely would be laughed out of the room.

"If it makes people feel better to attribute business characteristics to the operation of football and basketball, then go ahead and say it," Renfro said. "If you're not successful in those sports, the institution is either going to have to eliminate sports or subsidize. This is not Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland deciding to put on a show in dad's barn. That's not how college sports works. It really costs something to put a lacrosse team on the field, or to have a water polo team, or to have a field hockey team. And the money for those sports is probably not going to be generated by the gate they are able to provide.

"The object of a business is to sell products at a profit so that you make money for the business and its shareholders. That is not the standard by which intercollegiate athletics operates."

"In the business world," Castiglione echoed, "the athletics economic model would be attacked. But also in the business world, if you presented the schools that in spite of this dysfunctional approach have made it work, there are many business experts who would say, 'Bravo.' We certainly are unique."

Jim Delany, commissioner of the Big Ten Conference, which annually generates the most revenues of any Division I league, said anyone who thinks that the enterprise doesn't require extensive funding "is fooling themselves." However, Delany said, two important distinctions separate the collegiate and professional models.

"First," he said, "the collegiate model has another mission in addition to providing facilities and scholarships and travel expenses. Those things merely go toward conducting activities that are sponsored by institutions of higher learning that have full-time students moving toward a reasonable education.

"Second, there isn't much if any profitability in this system. It's a business not with shareholders, but with stakeholders. In a real business, the CEO, board and management team are focused on one thing, which is share value and profitability to benefit the shareholder. In the collegiate world, there is no such focus. The focus of college sports is to generate resources to provide opportunities, facilities, to allow the stakeholders -- coaches, student-athletes, fans -- to compete within the conference or nationally. So are we a business? Yes, broadly defined, because we are engaged in some activities that look like revenue generation. But the difference is the profitability or shareholder value is not an issue."

Then how does Division I keep from being criticized for its businesslike behavior?

Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford said one of the reasons college sports is attacked for its business aspects is because the enterprise hasn't done a good job over the years of explaining its distinction from the real business world or the professional sports model.

"We need to talk more about what makes a truly successful program," he said. "In the minds of most, it's winning. That's part of our society -- the reason you compete is to win, but we need to go beyond that in what we deem to be successful in the collegiate model. Maybe it stops at winning in the pro model, but it needs to go beyond that in the collegiate model."

Doyel of CBS SportsLine.com said that's a tough goal to accomplish.

"I understand why the two revenue sports have to be run as a business," Doyel said. "At the same time, when those are obviously run as a business, under my watch, I'm going to point that out. I know why they do it, but the average fans really don't get it. They think it's a Pollyanna world in football and basketball and that everything is done for the good of the individual player from small-town USA. It's for those people that I point out that while I love college football games and March Madness, understand that decisions are being made on the basis of how to grow the business called college sports, more so than to make sure that the individual from small-town USA has a good experience."

But Ohio State's Smith disagrees. He said every decision made under his watch has the best interests of the student-athlete in mind. "Any business deal that we make, whether it's a corporate sponsorship, a donor-recognition program, a TV contract, whatever, I always think about how does this affect the student-athlete -- does this add value to their experience? Then I go from there to whether this deal is consistent with the principles, values and mission of the institution. I never stray from that."

Smith said he heard plenty of doubt from those who questioned him about the 12th game. Smith, who was on the Division I Management Council as Arizona State's AD and heard the pros and cons as the proposal was making its way through the legislative cycle, admitted that the 12th game was about money.

"But it also was about opportunity to play," he said. "Not everyone goes to a bowl game. And the reality is that kids would rather play than practice. Football only has 12 games. Put that in relation to the practice schedule. The thought that the decision simply takes advantage of the players is just a perception -- the players want to play. If athletics were subsidized differently and the decision wasn't about money, I still would have advocated for the 12th game, because the players want to play it."

Renfro pointed out that NCAA President Brand has talked frequently about institutions having to make "value-based decisions" about how to fund college sports. While a handful of Division I-A institutions -- perhaps two dozen -- do have self-sufficient athletics programs, most are subsidized by the university. And it's up to the institution to decide that value structure.

Renfro said, "Institutions need to ask these questions about how they want to fund athletics: Are you educating student-athletes through intercollegiate athletics? Are you contributing to the academic success of student-athletes? Are you engaging appropriately in commercialism? Do you allow commercialism to drive important decisions over what you know is good for the experience of the student-athlete?"

In the end, the NCAA is a membership organization, and the membership in Division I has become comfortable with -- and probably won't apologize for -- its business behavior. Conferences sign television rights deals on behalf of their members, institutions subsidize athletics according to the value they bring to the university, and athletics administrators and college presidents agree on legislation affecting revenues and expenses through a democratic process. And most would recoil at the suggestion that their business engagements have caused them to lose their way with regard to the educational mission.

"College sports needs to think about the business aspects and embrace them for what they are," Castiglione said. "That doesn't mean we don't recognize our role in the overall institutional mission. It should not cause people to make decisions that are outside the greater good of the institution they represent. But it is quite frankly silly for people to run away from the economics of the enterprise that we're trying to build or sustain.

"It's quite clear that intercollegiate athletics on many campuses has been asked to seek ways to sustain its economic model. So people, including the critics, need to be more careful in how they characterize what is happening generally in college athletics, or if they are speaking about specific cases, then make that clear. Most of us do everything above board, and we've been creative and innovative in the way we've sought to fund the enterprise to provide opportunities that enhance the educational experience. I don't see why that is viewed as having done something wrong."