I bet Greg McGarity does.
The days of big-time college sports being “amateur” are long gone. The NCAA generates more than $1 billion a year in revenue. Athletic conferences and member schools negotiate multi-year, billion-dollar TV deals as well as lucrative merchandise, apparel and live streaming contracts. Some college coaches earn millions of dollars a year and take home more in pay than their universities’ highest-ranking officers. Meanwhile, the legal efforts of college athletes to be compensated for their labor and for the commercial use of their names, images and likenesses continue without resolution. Yet the “professional” elements of their collegiate experience are undeniable: college athletes at major programs play and train in stadiums, arenas and other facilities that rival those of the major leagues.
By many measures, then, college sports are professional sports.
Still, should athletic departments of public universities be privatized from the rest of their schools? Is that a step too far from the romanticized ideal that collegiate athletics and academics ought to be inseparable?
In some ways this is already occurring in Florida. As detailed by Iliana Limón Romero in the Orlando Sentinel, Florida State University’s athletic department intends to become a so-called “direct support organization” (DSO) under Florida law.
By doing so, FSU would better coordinate its athletic department activities with Seminole Boosters Inc., which is also a DSO. The boosters’ entity raises money from the private sector and then uses those proceeds to fund intercollegiate athletics, specifically athletic scholarships. The Seminoles athletic department—which will be renamed the Florida State University Athletics Association—would join the University of Florida Gators and the University of Central Florida Knights athletic departments as DSO athletic departments. Final approval for FSU’s initiative is expected by the fall.
Hmmm. So what does that get you?
Although they operate for the betterment of their universities, DSOs are partly autonomous from those universities and to some degree function as separate entities. They are not like the university’s English Department or its School of Law or any another academic department school governed by detailed academic procedures and university policies—DSOs are their own corporations, with their own rules. DSO employees work for them, not the associated university. DSOs can thus rely on different systems for payroll and benefits that are used for university employees.
DSOs’ mission statements heed to industry issues and practical applications. They are less engaged in the types of theoretical studies and scholarly pursuits often found at universities and are more about real-world engagements. Further, DSOs can take advantage of public/private partnerships and similar entrepreneurial collaborations that are sometimes difficult to pursue in a public university setting….
DSOs are also beneficiaries of Chapter 768.28 of the Florida Statutes. It is the state law for sovereign immunity. As a general concept, sovereign immunity protects public entities, including state schools, from having to defend against lawsuits. There are a variety of exceptions and limitations to sovereign immunity, but overall it diminishes a public university’s exposure to litigation. This normally means lower legal fees and lower insurance rates for universities. It also means a lessened risk for pretrial discovery, which in the public university context involves the taking of sworn testimony from university officials and sharing of emails, texts and other evidence from those officials with the party that is suing.
All this needs is some timely General Assembly lobbying to make this happen. I mean, when you’re a legislator trying to pass whatever it takes to bring Georgia that elusive national championship, you gotta do what you gotta do. And surely we don’t want those Florida peckerwoods getting the jump on our fair state’s premier athletic department!
Now, to make sure Kirby has some free time next year…
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UPDATE: Oops, I guess I should have looked. It appears the Georgia Code already recognizes direct-support organizations. Welp, get cracking… don’t want to lose this arms race, amirite?
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UPDATE #2: More here.
The story was about Florida State creating a private nonprofit organization to oversee its athletic department, a move that will effectively shield athletic officials at one of Florida’s flagship public universities from having to comply with public records law. Once the transition is complete later this year, Florida State athletics officials — just like their colleagues at Florida and Central Florida, who made similar structural changes years ago — will no longer be required by law to turn over internal financial documents, emails, text messages and other records to inquiring journalists and citizens.
To Petersen and other advocates for government transparency, the announcement prompted concerns Florida State athletics officials are trying to avoid the public scrutiny and oversight that usually comes with working at a public university.
“It’s outrageous,” Petersen said. “It really doesn’t make much sense to me, except that they want to do everything secretly.”
In a phone interview Wednesday, Florida State President John Thrasher said secrecy was not a motivation for the restructuring. Thrasher pledged that Florida State athletics officials will continue to fulfill records requests as if nothing has changed, even after state public records law no longer applies to them.
“The idea has never been to be not transparent. The athletic department’s going to be very transparent,” Thrasher said. “Nothing’s going to change in that regard as long as I’m here. I guarantee it.”
Oh, he guarantees it. Well, that changes everything.
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