[Ed. — In case some of you snowflakes aren’t tipped off by the header, this post is about your least favorite subject. Don’t say you weren’t warned.]
Just thought I’d share a little round-up of what’s happening on the economic/player compensation front this past week…
- Eastern Michigan decided to drop four varsity sports in a cost-saving move. The move affects 58 male student athletes and 25 female student athletes, and will ultimately save about $2.4 million.
- Maybe that’s even true, but it’s worth considering this post on opportunity costs and Title IX. Bottom line is that it’s hard to get a handle on things like this because athletic department bookkeeping is such a murky business.
- I probably scour the Internet more than most folks, so it may be more apparent to me, but I’m seeing more and more of these kinds of opinion pieces cropping up lately. NCAA, when you’re losing place like the Deseret News…
- “Big-time college football and basketball now produce about $8 billion in annual direct revenue. This is nearly 40 percent more than the entire National Basketball Association (the average NBA player makes $6.2 million).” Add to that the part of the $16.49 billion in gift income raised by P5 schools in fiscal 2017 that can be attributed to sports and you are talking about some real money. Real enough for there to be plenty to spread around to the kids who help bring it in.
Get The Picture 
Waiting for those who are triggered by these facts …
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Please, please. please some of you who regularly insist that I have no idea what I’m talking about when I say that offering an athletic scholarship at Georgia literally costs the school almost nothing, please read the Title IX article. Hopefully it will open your eyes. Yes, I know it’s about women’s sports but there are concepts in there that explain the economics of college scholarships.
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College football, specifically Georgia football, is my favorite sport and I’m passionate about it. If you choose to report on something that doesn’t interest me (financial or legal/regulatory matters) I simply ignore it. I certainly realize that everyone has their own interests and that complaining does no one any good. Does that make me a snowflake?
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MUH BUZZ WORDS!!!
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I’m fully in favor of paying players. And, I’m fully not in favor of any rules preventing players from being paid.
With that said, I do find the comparison between the money brought in by college football AND college basketball combined with what the NBA earning figures to be disingenuous. I mean, that’s football AND basketball. And even if you’re only going to talk about Division I in both sports, that’s a LOT more teams that the NBA’s got. The average NBA player makes 6 million? Great. There are 491 of them. Meanwhile, there are 347 TEAMS in Division I basketball.
I don’t disagree that the amount of money flowing into NCAA sports is obscene when you consider that the athletes are only bringing in scholarships and perhaps some measure for cost of attendance (and, sorry, walk-ons but you aren’t even getting that). I just think that the problem is bad enough that we don’t need to make it seem worse with apples to oranges comparisons.
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I agree with your sentiment.. lets say there are 100k players in basketball and football (FBS) combined. If you take the 6 m figure times it by 491 and then divide it by 100k you get…
~29k
Which is roughly the cost of… education for a year for school.
Seems like the cost is baked in.
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My only request/demand/suggestion is for schools to stop collecting a mandatory student athletic fee before player pay is instituted. Seems to me everyone participating financially is doing so of their own free will – except the students.
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As a parent with a child soon to attend college, I fully agree. Looking at the cost is scary enough, and then to have bullshit charges like this added in is just absurd.
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Agreed. It’s insane that a non-optional athletic fee goes directly into the coffers of an athletic department as a cost of just attending the University.
It’s one thing if that fee is fully supporting Ramsey or the intramural fields, you know – those things students likely don’t mind funding because they directly benefit from their existence and maintenance. It’s another thing when part of your tuition is a guaranteed revenue stream to an athletic department regardless of on-field performance that likely inefficiently allocates those funds anyways.
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The facilities fee covers the operation of the Ramsey Center. The recreation fee covers the operation of the intramural sports program. The athletic fee provides “free or reduced price admission to UGA athletic events.”
I would suggest all of these should be considered “opt in” fees. If I don’t use them, why should I pay for them?
Click to access fees_description.pdf
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Having one currently enrolled and another possibly attending next year, I agree in theory. In practice, that fee subsidizes the price of the student tickets to all events whether that’s a home football game or free attendance at a swimming event.
I personally think it should be an optional fee. If you opt out, you get no access as a student to sporting events using your student ID during the semester. If you opt in, you pay the student ticket price or get in free for non-revenue sports.
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So one of the articles listed above stated that by his assessment the average athlete should be paid around $750,000 a year. Cool. I have no problem paying them, but I have a few questions. Does Oren Morgan (SN) get the same amount as Jake Fromm (QB)? Do you pay walk-ons? Do they have to pay for their own scholarship (to include room and board)? Since these athletes would be considered employees, should the school still provide educational assistance? Is there even a reason to worry about an education. All of this doesn’t even delve into paying the equestrian, lacrosse, or swim teams.
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I assume you think you’re scoring some rhetorical points here, but why would the decisions an athletic director would have to face with regard to student-athlete compensation be any different that what anyone else running a business faces?
Bottom line, they’ll do what they think is best in obtaining talent, subject to how much they can spend. You know, the kind of analysis every working business engages in.
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Didn’t know we were keeping score. My bad.
Also, while I understand your assumption that the AD would be making this decision due to his/her position, wouldn’t it make more since for the Head Coach to do it since they are the ones doing the evaluation? I mean the AD could give the HC a pot of money and say this is what you have to work with.
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At Georgia, that would certainly be preferred, but who’s to say?
Keep in mind, one possible way this goes down is for each conference to impose a roster spending cap. Another factor may be that schools decide to implement this the way they do the COA stipend, with one number for every scholarship player.
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Totally agree that allowing the coach to do it at UGA is mucho preferred.
I do have another (honest) question about the rest of your post, because I don’t know. Based on previous discussions we have had, would conferences setting a spending cap be a form of collusion?
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Unlike the pros, college sports aren’t a monolith. Conferences are seen as competing against each other, so as long as each set limits on their own, there wouldn’t be collusion.
It’s letting the NCAA set rules for everyone that caused antitrust problems.
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I guess it could happen, but most likely not.
Probably not.
Assuming you’re referring to walk-ons, how’s this any different than what they do now?
If they want to, sure.
That’s cute that you think education is a top priority in this business.
Here’s my question to you guys that act like figuring out how to pay people with differing skillsets and values to an organization is some impossible task that no other organization in the history of the civilized world has figured out. Can you stop asking these questions with no basis in economic reality and just stop at “I don’t like athletes getting paid”?
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I was not talking about walkons when referring to paying foe their scholarship. My bad, i should havr clarified that one more.
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Deduct room/board/tuition from their salary just like insurance and taxes are deducted from my paycheck. Sure, I suppose a school could pay athletes and then require them to turn right around and pay for their own expenses. That is of course assuming they have a shitty business department that is prone to creating pain in the ass payment processes for no apparent reason (not uncommon in the field of higher education). If I’m a recruit I’m going to take all of this into consideration and attend the school that takes care of everything for me. It would seem to be much easier for accounting to deduct the expenses than it would be to have to call collections on a 19 year old. But what do I know?
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Why stop at room and board. Deduct access costs to their gyms and every other perk they get as well.
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Deduct whatever you want. They’re going to come out majorly in the black regardless. Remember, an open market creates competition with other Universities who are also offering money. If UGA decides to nickel and dime then the athletes will just go to Bama.
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So is the NBA a free market? Is the NFL? No. Why compare free market to monopolies.
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Did they change it from “free agency” to “monopoly agency?” I must have missed that post.
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I have a question – why does every proposal to let the market determine value always result in counter-points suggesting that those in favor of the free market here are advocating for forced equality? Where is the disconnect?
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I can’t be the only person surprised that NCAA football/basketball bring in that much more than the NBA.
The NCAA is closing in on what the NBA and NHL bring in together.
That is amazing.
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And some don’t think the Power 5 should ever play the smaller schools. Those games mean the world to the little guys.
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Am I a dick for not caring about the little guys? I’m just not interested in UGA v FCS, or even G5 for that matter. I could handle maybe one per year, but if BM expects me to shell out for Austin Peay, MTSU and UMass they’re dreaming. I work in JuCo athletics if that makes a difference.
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I’m not against paying the players. What really gets to me is all those who say pay the players, but offer no solutions to the questions raised by paying the players. I don’t have the answers, but I do know it is not as simple as just spending money and letting it go at that. Which is the sense I get by reading some of these post.
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Since no one here will be employing the players, how can we offer “solutions” to your problem?
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You can always offer a solution, its called an opinion. Nobody is saying to type it up and and send it to McGarity. I mean crap, opinions are like… well you know the rest.
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Exactly.
The problems he suggests he has are his opinions, rather than real world problems an AD or conference commissioner would likely face. When I know what those are, that’s the time to jump in with suggestions.
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“You can always offer a solution, its called an opinion.”
calls an electrician to fix his plumbing
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Interesting stuff. It may be a tiny bit (not too much) unfair to single out athletic department book keeping, at least at public institutions. I’ve been in public education for 12 years, the last 5 in higher education (after a long career in the private sector).One of my colleagues, also a former private sector person, said that what passes for accounting practices in the public sector would be five to ten in Leavenworth if you used them in the private sector.
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On your last bullet point that is exactly why the Gubment is starting to engage with the NCAA/corruption cartel. The Gubment is always interested in figuring out how to generate more revenue for itself. It sees a cash cow out there that needs a milkin.
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The moment the SEC puts a spending cap on total school allotment for the football team players, two things will happen
1) Red Elephant Club will totally ignore that conference cap
2) Auburn will always do what… you know the rest
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