Colpoys 1 Conor Colpoys Professor Dietel-McLaughlin Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric 7 April 2014 An Examination on the Effects of Media

on College Athletics and Academics College basketball and football are bigger than ever before. The top ten athletic programs are set to exceed a budget of 250 million dollars by the year 2020 (Knight Commission.) The continued financial pressure that is being put on these Universities is a result of competition for TV deals and advertising. However, even though it is widely accepted among college athletic programs that higher spending will lead to better teams and thus higher revenue, this correlation has actually never been proven (Litan). If this high paced spending arms race continues to grow at exponential rates than it could very well lead to a chasm between college athletics and college academics that permanently damages the integrity of both. The nearly ubiquitous media coverage of big time college basketball and football is leading to a collapse in the true meaning of Academia and higher education. The mission of college athletics should coincide with the overall mission of the University the team represents. On one hand the athletic programs are put in place to benefit the student-athlete and help many get an education they would otherwise not receive in exchange for competing in the sport they love while trying their best to make the team a good representation of the school. On the other hand, it is necessary to recognize the business aspect of college athletics. The business end needs to be carefully considered so that it does not cause a tension with the academic mission of the institution.

Colpoys 2 College athletics are run by the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). Over the years the competition for slots in bowl games in football or deep runs in the NCAA basketball tournament have led to an increase in college spending. Due to the advertisements and constant coverage from stations such as ESPN, the average viewer would assume that these industries produced an extremely large profit. However, from the years 2005 to 2009 only 7 of the big time college programs had athletic departments finish above debt after cost was factored in (Knight Commission.) This is due to the extreme spending and the fact that many of the athletic programs do not generate revenue at all. One of the primary ways that college football and basketball generate revenue is through TV deals. In 2010 the NCAA reached an agreement with CBS on a restructured television contract for the NCAA basketball tournament (OToole). The new deal was worth ten billion dollars over fourteen years and would guarantee that the every single game of the tournament would be broadcast through CBS, TNT, TruTV, or TBS (Wolverton). The new agreement also includes internet advertising, marketing, and wireless broadcasting. CBS outbid ESPN for the right to continue to be the main provider of the NCAA Tournament. This is good for the NCAA because so much money will be generated from this deal that a lot of smaller programs will at least receive some funding that could help them stay afloat (OToole). However, this deal is just further proof that the NCAA is primarily concerned with money. The games are covered by ESPN for the majority of the year, but when the tournament rolls around, many of these college basketball experts are now replaced by CBS or NBA broadcasters, which doesnt maximize the experience for the viewer. The fact that the NCAA changes the broadcasters for the tournament just further shows the greed that is on display and that money is the ultimate driver in the decision making process in college athletics.

Colpoys 3 Television networks tailored to specific college conferences have also had a huge impact on college sports. In June, 2013, a conference realignment of epic proportions took place that disbanded many rivalries and classic games that had existed for years. This realignment can be traced back to 2007 when the Big Ten conference decided to air its own television network known as BIG Ten Network. By 2012, the Network was responsible for the distribution of 25 million dollars to the schools within the conference (Brennan). The BIG Ten began trying to woo bigger programs because they know that the fan bases would boost their ratings tremendously on the network. The main target was Texas University, a traditional Big 12 school with the largest athletic department spending in the country. Even though the Big 10 was unable to gain Texas, it caused many other teams to scramble and find deals in current conferences or other conferences for fear of being left out. This trickled to basketball in 2013 when the majority of the BIG East split into the ACC and American Athletic Conference. These moves were made because the increase in sports networks and coverage made it possible for basketball markets to make enough money to survive without the need for subsidies from their football programs. The fact is that these conference realignments have caused greater travel distance and expenses, which leads to more missed class time, and broken up storied rivalries solely for the sake of more revenue and better TV deals which take away from the mission of college athletics. Many fear that this TV deal will just lead to further increases in spending and an increase in coaching salaries. Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College, is unsure about the deal because media changes so quickly: We dont know what the TV or digital rights market will look like in 14 years- much less 5 years, said Smith (Wolverton). The immense spending leads to a collapse of the academic portion of universities across the country. According to the University of Notre Dames mission statement, the mission of the

Colpoys 4 institution is to develop men of spirit, mind, and body while helping to develop a greater understanding of the world as well as prepare students for life after college (University of Notre Dame). The primary focus of higher education should be just that, education. Instead it is being turned into a tool used to exploit athletes, students, and others as a result of greed. In 2008, the average spending per athlete was roughly 84,000 dollars compared to 13,000 for an everyday college student in the Bowl Subdivision Institutions (Knight Commission). Some of these costs, such as health insurance, are acceptable for athletes but a large reason for this extreme gap is the lucrative salaries that college basketball and football coaches and personnel receive (which often far exceeds that of faculty). These numbers have real impacts on schools. The athletic programs themselves cannot cover the vast expenses needed for all of their athletes so they must rely on the redistribution of institutional resources (Knight Commission) in order to pay for the athletic budgets. This causes tuition and fees for everyday students to rise, pressure on administration about what to keep and what to cut, and pressure on teams that do not bring in any revenue at all. The projections are even scarier as the spending trend continues. By 2020 there will be an athletic budget of 250 million dollars among top programs to cater to an average of only 600 student-athletes (Litan). These financial incentives are not fostering an environment in line with rewarding core academic values, higher education, and amateur athletics, but instead give a winner take all mentality, which pushes programs to do whatever it takes to get a win. To address this problem colleges must be more transparent with financial data which will keep the public more informed as well as keep the athletic programs more apart of instead of apart from the universitys academic mission. The biggest reform of college athletics and academics came after academic statistics

Colpoys 5 began being released the same is likely to happen if more in depth financial reports are released by individual college athletic programs. Another problem lies within the athletes taking classes themselves. Johnny Manziel, Heisman trophy winning quarterback for Texas A&M, was not on campus following his freshman football season and took his credits via online courses. Manziel was seen at NBA allstar games, concerts, making appearances on late night shows, and many other places when most of the A&M student body was at class. This reflected poorly on the school for the time being. This is an example of skating by instead of the institution calling for a stronger performance for those who wish to partake in the sport. There are many instances in which coaches will cheat in order to get a high school prospect to come to their school. Administrators may turn a blind eye to either test scores, GPA, or to illegal recruiting tactics by coaches because they know the money is at stake. One famous example of this is Derrick Rose at the University of Memphis. As a freshman Rose led Memphis to the National Title where they lost to Kansas. Shortly after the loss Rose declared for the NBA draft. After this announcement it became quickly apparent that the SAT scores used to get Rose eligible for college basketball were not valid. Someone else had taken the test for Rose. The coach was investigated as well as a few members of the administrative board and many speculated that if Rose had stayed for his sophomore season this information would not have leaked. The incentive is there to cheat and all of the media outlets today make it easier and more enticing for coaches to cheat. From texting and calling to more recent apps such as Twitter and Snapchat it is becoming increasingly more difficult to monitor coach and player interactions (Parkinson). Even worse than the amount of cheating in recruiting is the fact that the coaches who violate the rules arent punished severely at all. John Calipari is one of the countrys most

Colpoys 6 famous and successful college basketball coaches. However, he has been stripped of both a final four run as the head coach of UMass and as the head coach of Memphis for recruiting violations (Prisbell). Calipari was the head coach of Memphis when the incident described in the previous paragraph regarding Roses test scores took place. Instead of being banned or outcast from the sport, Calipari became one of the highest paid coaches in all of college basketball and landed one of the most prestigious coaching jobs in the country in Kentucky. Caliparis salary is 5.5 million plus a bonus based on how well the team performs (Prisbell). Compare that to the University of Kentucky Presidents annual salary of 500,000 (Truman). If the head basketball coach is making more than ten times the amount of the President of the University it asserts two things contrary to an institutions mission. This first is that basketball is more important to the school than academics. Hand in hand with that, it is tough to argue that the President has more power than the head basketball coach based upon their respective salaries. Universities have to realize the message they send in these situations is that winning is more important than upholding the values of integrity that their institution is supposed to exemplify. The competition to get athletes in who dont deserve to be enrolled becomes more and more fierce to see who can skirt by the rules. This isnt the competitive admissions process that universities should have; A process in which opposing schools can see who can erode away at their academics enough to allow a potential superstar onto their campus. The first step to this problem is more serious penalties for violators of NCAA rules. Long term suspensions need to be in play more often in order to reduce the urge to cheat the same way that Major League Baseball has implemented such harsh steroid testing and gotten great results. The second step lies on universities to do their due diligence and research in deciding who to place in positions of power and make sure that they place people who reflect and uphold the values of the institution for which they work.

Colpoys 7 Once these athletes are on campus it is the schools responsibility to treat them as they are often deemed, student-athletes. This term has become a mockery because so very few are seen as students. The Knight Commission made a recommendation in 2001 that to ensure college basketball and football didnt continue to neglect the academic portion of the student-athlete. The recommendation was that for an athletic program to compete in a postseason game or championship they should have at least fifty percent of their players on pace to graduate. The APR (Athletic Progress Rate) was adopted by the NCAA in 2004 and is the measure that helps to track the graduation rate of players (Knight Commission). The biggest cash flows into athletic programs are a result of the aforementioned media contracts for the NCAA basketball tournament and the media contracts for the BCS football bowl championships. If the cash was given based on institutions ability to balance academics and athletics instead of solely on winning, than it would make for more schools to concentrate on the academic portion. Many argue that one way to help fix this problem would be to pay the college athletes because of the revenue they are bringing into the schools. Jay Bilas is one of the main supporters of this argument. Bilas, a former college basketball player at Duke and a current analyst of college basketball, believes that players should be paid. There are a few problems with this approach. The first is that recruits would no longer select institutions that they believe can fit them as an individual but rather would take the highest salaries offered to them. Also, athletic programs that do not make money would not be able to stay afloat. Paying players could also lead to the dissolution of college athletics as a whole. The idea that the NCAA should split from college sports is another potential solution that is being offered. This may seem good in theory, but the fact is that college sports will always be around and the idea that the NCAA would form some sort of semi-pro league for sports such as basketball and football is not feasible in the

Colpoys 8 foreseeable future. So much of the college experience is based on sports and many institutions, including Notre Dame, would lose an edge in recruiting prospective students. Too much money is on the table and too many alumni and fans across the country have school pride for college athletics to just become obsolete. However, this potential solution could be molded. College basketball and football are the only two sports that do not have opportunities in America for professionalism after high school graduation. The NBA and NFL instituted these rules not to help promote kids go to college, but to use college athletics as a breeding ground for future prospects. This leads to many people who do not want to be in college or do not belong in college ending up in college. The players who play one year before leaving for the NBA (known as one-and-dones) used to be a phenomenon, but is now an every year thing. It is also not coincidence that there are very few scandals in other college sports like hockey or baseball. That is because these sports offer other options than college for kids coming out of high school. Some sort of semi-pro league needs to be set up for college basketball and football so that universities do not take players who know going in that the academic portion of their short career means nothing to them. Others argue that there is actually no problem at all with the current system. Critics of the Knight Commissions mission say that the success of college athletic programs is actually crucial to the survival of their universities. The Flutie Effect is the examination of the phenomenon of students applying to a school after the school had a big year in athletics (Economist). This is termed after Doug Flutie who threw a famous Hail Mary pass to beat Miami in 1984. The advertisement and national recognition from this game caused a spike in the number of students who applied to Boston College the following year. Some people have analyzed this trend and found a positive long term correlation. Irvin Tucker and Ted Amato

Colpoys 9 wrote a paper on their findings about how SAT scores, alumni donations, and even graduation rates were positively affected by success in basketball and football (Economist). Litan, Johnathan Orszag, and Peter Orszag also found a positive correlation between team wins and SAT scores, but found no correlation between athletic spending and improved student quality of life (Litan). Obviously a successful program in big time college basketball or football can have a positive impact on the school. However, the important thing is that it does not overtake the school and jeopardize the overall educational purposes of the institution. Currently there is an arms race going on between big time college basketball and football programs across the country. These athletic programs are in competition for the biggest television deals possible to bring revenue to their program. However, in the process they are undermining the academic integrity of the university through irresponsible spending, a win at all costs mentality, and placing athletics on a pedestal above academics. Coaches lucrative multimillion dollar contracts make one question who is really holding the power at a university. Some argue that this competition of some of the positive effects it has such as higher average SAT scores, but the negatives outweigh the positives. The suggestion that the NCAA separate from a tie with colleges is not feasible and paying college athletes also runs into its problems. The first step to a solid solution lies in developing leagues for football and basketball players who do not want to go to college to play in. The second step is for colleges to be more transparent about financial data so that spending between academics and athletics can be monitored more closely. More institutional money needs to go towards ensuring these athletes graduate and less needs to go to coaches and other personnel in the athletic system. Institutions who do a good job with finances should be rewarded with a bonus more so than teams that win big bowl games or go deep in the NCAA tournament for basketball. TV deals are important for the survival of the

Colpoys 10 college athletics, but colleges must be wary not to let them dictate their every move. Finally, programs need to do their due diligence before hiring athletic directors or coaches to make sure that they put people in power who are going to uphold their mission and not jeopardize an institutions reputation for the sake of wins.

Colpoys 11 Works Cited Brennan, Eamonn. FAQs for the Realignment Landscape. ESPN.com. July 9, 2013. Web. Accessed March 25, 2014. The Economist. Flutie Effect. Free Exchange Economics. January 3, 2007. Web. Accessed April 1, 2014. Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values, and the Future of College Sports. 2010. Web. Accessed on March 20, 2014. Litan, Robert. Orszag, Peter. Orszag, Johnathan. The Empirical Effects of Collegiate Athletics: An Interim Report. SEBAGO Associates. August 2003. PDF. Accessed March 20, 2014. OToole, Thomas. NCAA reaches 14-year deal with CBS/Turner for mens basketball tournament, which expands to 68 teams for now. Campus Rivalry. USA Today. April 22, 2010. Web. Accessed on March 20, 2014. Parkinson, Jerry. The Impact of Social Media on College Infractions Cases. 2012. Web. Accessed on March 20, 2014. Prisbell, Eric. Championship-winning coaches on issues facing the game. USA Today: Sports. March 20, 2013. Web. Accessed on March 22, 2014. Truman, Cheryl. UK Trustees Approve Capiloutos Salary Package. Lexington Herald Leader. June 15, 2011. Online newspaper journal. Accessed March 28, 2014. University of Notre Dame. Mission Statement. About ND. Copyright 2007. Date Accessed March 20, 2014. Web based.

Colpoys 12 Wolverton, Brad. NCAA Agrees to 10.8 Billion Dollar Deal to Broadcast Mens Basketball Tournament. Chronicle of Higher Education. April 22, 2010. Web Based Date Accessed April 2, 2014.