Will the Economic Collapse Eliminate Big Time College Sports?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>With news that schools such as Stanford are reducing funding for their sports programs it makes one wonder if the economic collapse will cause all the big time media driven college sports programs to drop back to a more modest level. </p>

<p>With the massive reduction in media advertising and corporate sponsorships ,big time college football and basketball programs could see revenue decrease drastically . Combine this with the ability of local fans to afford tickets, gas, parking etc. and it could create a self reinforcing downward spiral where these programs cease to to be money generators and become money sinks. Then as funding for the college as a whole gets cut they become vulnerable because they no longer generate revenue. </p>

<p>Could all colleges be heading back toward the ivy model with low costs, and no scholarships?</p>

2

<p>This seems like wishful thinking on your part. Purely for fiscal reasons, many schools are more likely to reduce academic departments and minor sports than major sports programs. South Pacific studies, water polo, curling, and Urban Anthropology had better look out. Football and Basketball are safe, at least at major conferences. </p>

<p>17 of the top 20 USNWR National Universities play football, most at Div. I or BCS level.</p>

<p>When Swarthmore eliminated football, many alumni complained. Even though they had recruiting problems (ivies got all the linemen with adequate SAT’s).</p>

<p>Football and Basketball are such a part of the major college experience, even at the Ivies, that no institution that wants to be considered a “major college” is likely to eliminate them. </p>

<p>Hard economic times will have a Darwinian selection effect on institutions of higher education. Those which are able to maintain their culture and traditions, whether it involves football or museums, will be regarded as more fit and worthy of attendance and support.</p>

<p>Elimination of a major sport is tantamount to declaring;" We are not a major college anymore". This is the reason many institutions maintain major sports long past, or never reach, financial break even.</p>

3

<p>Small sports may go, and new stadiums may not be built for the next 5-10 years, but you won’t see them eliminating major programs or drastically changing recruitment practices.</p>

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<p>Dream on. Big-time sports channel huge sums of money into colleges. The Golden Goose is immortal.</p>

5

<p>Here is an excerpt from a blog entry I recently read. I don’t want to turn this thread into an other debate on college athletics/athletes, but I thought it was a good perspective- and one that I share.</p>

<p>"I had an absolutely ****ty day at work today. (There’s just no other way to describe it.) It was the kind of day that makes you want to go to the nearest gas station and buy $5o worth of lottery tickets. Just in the hopes that you can come in tomorrow and say “I quit.” But instead of going to the gas station, I just came home and turned on the tv. The University of Tennessee women’s basketball team, the Lady Vols, were playing. What made this game special is that, if they won, it would be Coach Pat Summitt’s 1000th victory–the most in college basketball history, men’s or women’s.</p>

<p>As I watched, the bad day faded away. Little by little, my team pulled ahead. And when victory was inevitable, I felt like a winner myself. And I realized that sports take us away from the mundane work-a-day world and helps us all be winners–even if it is vicariously.</p>

<p>I can’t dribble. I certainly can’t shoot a layup. But tonight, a coach at my school has done something that no other college coach has done.</p>

<p>Good on you, Coach Summitt. And thanks for making a bad day a little better."</p>

6

<p>MomofWildChild captures the essence of what sports offer society.</p>

<p>The front and editorial pages of the newspapers report humanity’s failures. The sports page reports humanity’s achievements.</p>

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<p>I don’t know that I would go as far as to say that the sports page is reporting on humanity’s achievements (that’s a pretty bleak picture of humanity), but there is a powerful community that can be built around sports that allow alumni to feel more connected with their alma mater in the 60 years after undergrad. Some schools this is the main mechanism to keep people connected, others do a great job without a strong sports community, but in the end, these programs don’t die because many schools live and die on alumni networking and any of the big, well known, expensive programs are central to that network.</p>

8

<p>But Melody, it’s not just the whole alumni thing. I get a lot of pleasure going to Vanderbilt basketball games, and I’m not an alum. Many of my co-workers go, too. I DO have a connection because D is a grad student there and her husband is a doctor, there, but that’s not why I go. It’s flat out FUN. To me, same with pro football, but I know not everyone agrees. I get fired up about my team(s). Call it escapism or whatever, but I have a stressful career and my family isn’t always the easiest and sports are a fun diversion. I am a competitive runner, so I’m not just a couch potato…</p>

9

<p>No way. Here at UNC they have been floating ideas of what to do in the case of budget cuts, and sports funding is pretty much the one thing that wouldn’t be touched. Like someone said, big-time sports programs bring huge amounts of cash into schools (providing that their teams are actually good). UNC got close to $2 million from the bowl game alone this past fall.</p>

10

<p>Restructuring of the academic and athletic models are in the works. Though this economic malaise will likely resolve itself, despite the mess that the President and Congress will inject into the fray, within a year or so. That doesnt mean it wont be painful and require some soul searching, some bigtime lifestyle changes and so forth.</p>

<p>Gone will be the ridiculous notion that “if I dont live and own a McMansion, I am a failure in life…or at least in the eyes of my neighbors and friends” and gone will be the notion that “my kid deserves a BMW at age 16…or at least as a high school graduation present, while they apply to colleges and seek financial aid.” </p>

<p>Athletics is a huge aspect of college, even at Division III levels. But how that fits into the picture going forward is anyone’s guess. </p>

<p>Colleges cant even agree if academic scholarships are appropriate, at least on a needs blind basis. Detractors suggest its elitist and rewards the wealthy and those who got into prep schools or even just genetically elitist…as it is almost entirely based upon SAT scores. Which itself is under deep scrutiny.</p>

<p>Booster clubs provide a lot of money to the top programs in the nation. I doubt that sports will get hit that hard, though perhaps some schedule changes can save millions in the school budget…traveling closer to home, by bus etc. </p>

<p>The scariest part of all this turmoil is the bigger picture stuff. The Old Economy is clearly dead. And no way to revive it. Those jobs are likely gone for good, overseas. The New Economy is service related and technology related. But even those are insecure and going overseas. Yet the United States is the world’s largest consumer supermarket and if we arent employed, we cant buy the goods and services and everyone fails. The information age has eaten as many or more jobs as it has created. And a lot of the jobs it created are not careers, they are just good for the latest gadget until someone else comes along and builds a better gadget, usuallly overseas. </p>

<p>Globalization was supposed to help American companies to sell overseas. What we saw was a massive increase in imports, not exports. Politicians write checks for “retraining” and think that resolves the problem. It doesnt. </p>

<p>We cant all own subway sandwich franchises. </p>

<p>There are exciting things going on at many schools in research and development. But newage technology is only part of the solution.</p>

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<p>With more Americans either unemployed or lacking funds to spend on entertainment, time spent watching and participating in athletics might actually increase.</p>

12

<p>Many universities get profit from their sport teams due to ticket cost, food etc…
If universities are reducing the fund their giving to their sports team, probably so they can countinue to get a profit from the sports if not larger.</p>

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<p>Absolutely true, but that’s not something unique to college sports, that’s true of all sports. The college system is uniquely robust because of the power it has to construct these alumni networks; they run on an economy separate from simple entertainment and on a higher pride than say, my NY Yankees local team pride. I didn’t mean to diminish this aspect of sports, just realize that that’s not why college sports are essentially invincible even in the face of economic crisis-- people can, will, and do use professional sports for all of the reasons you cited and would just turn to them in greater numbers if college sports didn’t exist for those reasons. But there are unique aspects to college sports that allow them to exist alongside professional sports.</p>

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<p>The thing many posters seem to be missing is that big time sports depend on big time money, not just lots of fans. If the cable sports channel that carries college football games can only get 40% of the advertising revenue that they used to they can only afford to pay 40% (or less) as much as before to the colleges involved. The same revenue reduction can easily happen in gate reciepts as tickets have to get cheaper, corporate sponserships drop and skybox rentals plummet. As anyone in business knows it only takes a small decrease in revenue to make a venture go from a profit to a loss. Once it becomes a loss, will the university feed it during a time of cuts to every other department, or will they scale back the cost of the program ( ie.decrease coach pay, fewer scholarships, buses instead of planes, etc). Once they do this it becomes a positive feedback loop, where things spiral down untill athletic teams settle out at an equilibrium equal to that found at the Ivies or Military acadamy’s. I am not saying these sports will go away, they will just change. Remember, the big time college sports program as it is currently run is not a creature of fan support but a creature of corporate advertising. As goes the advertising business so goes sports.</p>

15

<p>I can see the point you are trying to make shermanbus, but then again you have to look at the companies that advertise/promote sporting events. Turn to any given college game on ESPN and you’ll see more beer and car commercials than anything else. People aren’t going to stop drinking Bud Light (although they have stopped buying cars), so at least some of the networks’ chief advertisers will probably be able to continue their advertising relatively unscathed by this economic mess. And ticket revenues do not necessarily have to go down. I can only speak for my school (UNC-Chapel Hill), but the university raised football ticket prices this past year and saw every game sell out, with record attendance levels. Once again, this is only one school, but it shows how sports can weather economic downturns more so than many other industries.</p>

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<p>UNC has a relatively average sized stadium to fill so I’m not that impressed with record attendance levels there. It will be interesting to see how crowds at the larger stadiums react to the ongoing economic crisis.</p>

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<p>The NFL would never allow it to happen. Where do you think they get their players?</p>

18

<p>Steroids 101 will be the last thing to go…</p>

19

<p>Am I the only one who would be ticked if they got rid of D1 sports???</p>

<p>Maybe I should get off of CC, lol</p>

20

<p>I don’t follow the advertising business closely, but I don’t see much evidence of a major decline in sports viewing on television; consequently I don’t think it’s likely we’ll see a huge shift of advertising dollars away from sports programming. Revenue for the Super Bowl may have been down a little this year because advertisers just didn’t have the money and demand for luxury goods and big ticket items like cars is way down right now, but that’s almost certainly a temporary phenomenon. Big-time revenue sports like Div. IA football and major conference basketball will continue to be a net positive on the balance sheets of the major programs. I could see non-revenue sports being cut back, though, and that could include football at some Div. III schools. Football is an expensive program to run if you can’t fill up a 50,000-seat stadium and pull in major TV revenue.</p>