National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2007
« back to 2007 | Back to NCAA News Archive Index
FARs must monitor fiscal situation
|
By Alan J. Hauser
Faculty Athletics Representatives Association
Faculty Athletics Representatives Association
The following is the first of three articles planned during the coming months addressing portions of the recent report of the Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics from a faculty athletics representative’s perspective. This first installment focuses on Chapter 1 of the report, titled “Leadership’s Bottom Line,” which deals with fiscal responsibility.
Without doubt, fiscal responsibility is now a crucial issue lying before all who work in intercollegiate athletics. The presidents who produced the report of the Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics are to be thanked for insisting that the issue be placed at the front of our agendas, especially since the cost of maintaining an athletics program is growing at a rate that, as the report notes, “might not be financially sustainable.”
While most everyone agrees there are problems, key issues revolve around how serious the problems are, how we may reasonably and effectively work to address the problems, and how we may involve the entire institutional community in working to solve them. Many of these issues were discussed by the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association’s executive committee during a meeting at the NCAA Convention in Orlando, and what follows is my summation, interpretation and occasional quotation of the conversation.
The Task Force report places considerable emphasis on developing a system to produce “clearly defined and comparatively transparent financial data.” It certainly is true that the best databases currently available are filled with holes and imprecise categories, which make comparison difficult.
However, the presidents may be asking more than is achievable when they indicate that they want “accurate and comparable data.” Given the level of diversity among NCAA institutions, perhaps the most we can hope for is data that are significantly more accurate and useful than what we have now. One member of FARA’s executive committee observed that accurate is “perhaps a stretch,” and we should rather be speaking of databases that we are continually improving. An especially difficult issue in that regard is how one deals with “indirect” institutional support of intercollegiate athletics, which is often fuzzy at best.
Nevertheless, a persistent, careful effort aimed at standardizing and clarifying financial data should give us a considerably improved financial picture of intercollegiate athletics, which may be sufficiently accurate to help presidents pursue their goals.
A key matter here is facilities. As one executive committee member noted, facilities are key to recruiting, as well as to institutional image, so expenditures here may be especially difficult to bring under control. Many institutions have to take on long-term indebtedness to construct bright, shiny new facilities, which can place potentially serious stress both on the athletics program and on the institution.
Nevertheless, institutions feel constrained to do so to maintain their competitive edge. Institutional inabilities to “keep up with the Joneses” are painfully obvious in brick, mortar and turf. Institutions may seek corporate support for facilities projects, but that then raises the issue of whether the institution will be able, in the long run, to control such corporate involvement if they become heavily dependent on it.
Several members of the executive committee noted that those who can afford to spend “big bucks” on intercollegiate athletics will do so. Competitiveness is at the very core of intercollegiate athletics. One would hardly be surprised if those with the greatest skills on the court or field maximize the use of their talent in the heat of competition. One should therefore not be surprised that athletics programs that have the financial muscles will flex them. As I noted in my piece in the December issue of FARA Voice, “Will a president be willing to sacrifice the success of her or his own campus’s athletics program on the altar of fiscal restraint and integrity?”
Herein may lie the crux of the dilemma in the call of the Presidential Task Force for individual presidents to exercise fiscal restraint. The rapidly escalating cost of coaches’ salaries in Division I provides an excellent example of the intensity of competition among institutions in their athletics programs, an intensity that continues to fuel a major arms race. The arms race in salaries certainly parallels the facilities arms race discussed earlier. In such an environment, appeals for restraint that are not backed up by significant sanctions may not work any better in intercollegiate athletics than they do in the financial markets. One member of the executive committee put it succinctly, “The presidents have good ideas and intentions, but they will be difficult to implement.” Perhaps the presidents have some sort of legislative proposals in mind for helping with fiscal reform.
Executive committee members agreed it will be important to share and explain the contents of the fiscal reports the presidents are seeking with the faculty senate on each campus, as well as with the broader institutional community. Transparency in sharing fiscal information, involvement of faculty governance structure(s) in discussing the information, and close discussions of financial data among the president, the FAR and the AD are several matters the executive committee sees as crucial if progress is to be made in dealing with fiscal matters in intercollegiate athletics.
One executive committee member emphasized the importance of the FAR periodically discussing the athletics budget with the president. Indeed, FARs cannot be faulted for trying to point out problems and failing, but each FAR can be faulted for not trying to bring matters of fiscal concern to her or his president’s attention.
Alan J. Hauser is faculty athletics representative at Appalachian State University and president-elect of the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association.
Without doubt, fiscal responsibility is now a crucial issue lying before all who work in intercollegiate athletics. The presidents who produced the report of the Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics are to be thanked for insisting that the issue be placed at the front of our agendas, especially since the cost of maintaining an athletics program is growing at a rate that, as the report notes, “might not be financially sustainable.”
While most everyone agrees there are problems, key issues revolve around how serious the problems are, how we may reasonably and effectively work to address the problems, and how we may involve the entire institutional community in working to solve them. Many of these issues were discussed by the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association’s executive committee during a meeting at the NCAA Convention in Orlando, and what follows is my summation, interpretation and occasional quotation of the conversation.
The Task Force report places considerable emphasis on developing a system to produce “clearly defined and comparatively transparent financial data.” It certainly is true that the best databases currently available are filled with holes and imprecise categories, which make comparison difficult.
However, the presidents may be asking more than is achievable when they indicate that they want “accurate and comparable data.” Given the level of diversity among NCAA institutions, perhaps the most we can hope for is data that are significantly more accurate and useful than what we have now. One member of FARA’s executive committee observed that accurate is “perhaps a stretch,” and we should rather be speaking of databases that we are continually improving. An especially difficult issue in that regard is how one deals with “indirect” institutional support of intercollegiate athletics, which is often fuzzy at best.
Nevertheless, a persistent, careful effort aimed at standardizing and clarifying financial data should give us a considerably improved financial picture of intercollegiate athletics, which may be sufficiently accurate to help presidents pursue their goals.
A key matter here is facilities. As one executive committee member noted, facilities are key to recruiting, as well as to institutional image, so expenditures here may be especially difficult to bring under control. Many institutions have to take on long-term indebtedness to construct bright, shiny new facilities, which can place potentially serious stress both on the athletics program and on the institution.
Nevertheless, institutions feel constrained to do so to maintain their competitive edge. Institutional inabilities to “keep up with the Joneses” are painfully obvious in brick, mortar and turf. Institutions may seek corporate support for facilities projects, but that then raises the issue of whether the institution will be able, in the long run, to control such corporate involvement if they become heavily dependent on it.
Several members of the executive committee noted that those who can afford to spend “big bucks” on intercollegiate athletics will do so. Competitiveness is at the very core of intercollegiate athletics. One would hardly be surprised if those with the greatest skills on the court or field maximize the use of their talent in the heat of competition. One should therefore not be surprised that athletics programs that have the financial muscles will flex them. As I noted in my piece in the December issue of FARA Voice, “Will a president be willing to sacrifice the success of her or his own campus’s athletics program on the altar of fiscal restraint and integrity?”
Herein may lie the crux of the dilemma in the call of the Presidential Task Force for individual presidents to exercise fiscal restraint. The rapidly escalating cost of coaches’ salaries in Division I provides an excellent example of the intensity of competition among institutions in their athletics programs, an intensity that continues to fuel a major arms race. The arms race in salaries certainly parallels the facilities arms race discussed earlier. In such an environment, appeals for restraint that are not backed up by significant sanctions may not work any better in intercollegiate athletics than they do in the financial markets. One member of the executive committee put it succinctly, “The presidents have good ideas and intentions, but they will be difficult to implement.” Perhaps the presidents have some sort of legislative proposals in mind for helping with fiscal reform.
Executive committee members agreed it will be important to share and explain the contents of the fiscal reports the presidents are seeking with the faculty senate on each campus, as well as with the broader institutional community. Transparency in sharing fiscal information, involvement of faculty governance structure(s) in discussing the information, and close discussions of financial data among the president, the FAR and the AD are several matters the executive committee sees as crucial if progress is to be made in dealing with fiscal matters in intercollegiate athletics.
One executive committee member emphasized the importance of the FAR periodically discussing the athletics budget with the president. Indeed, FARs cannot be faulted for trying to point out problems and failing, but each FAR can be faulted for not trying to bring matters of fiscal concern to her or his president’s attention.
Alan J. Hauser is faculty athletics representative at Appalachian State University and president-elect of the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association.
© 2010 The National Collegiate Athletic Association
Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy