Here’s the main reason I know that college athletics would never go the way of the dinosaur: schools use their athletic programs to draw students. Someone on Facebook mentioned that they thought that schools used sports as a revenue stream; as I showed yesterday, this is not true. It’s much more nuanced than that and it’s all about applications and thus tuition as a revenue stream. If you know much about finance in colleges today, the revenue stream of student tuition is increasingly more powerful in the money pot.
Here are some numbers from a paper published by a VT professor: co
“College basketball teams that make this year’s cut for the Sweet 16 may boost the number of students applying to their schools by as much as 3 percent next year, while the winner of the NCAA basketball tournament, often called “March Madness,” may see a 7 percent to 8 percent jump in applications, according to a Virginia Tech researcher.
Pope combined data from the Peterson’s college guide, which records information about the incoming freshman classes of 330 NCAA Division I colleges and universities, with information on how well these schools did in football and basketball each year from 1983 to 2002. According to the study, the 64 schools that make it into the NCAA basketball championship tournament have a 1 percent increase in student applications the next year, schools in the Sweet 16 have a 3 percent increase, the Final Four have a 4 percent to 5 percent increase, and the championship winner has a 7 percent to 8 percent increase.
In addition, colleges and universities with football teams in the top 20 have a 2.5 percent gain in the number of student applications the next year while teams in the top 10 have a 3 percent gain. Schools that win a football championship see a 7 percent to 8 percent jump in applications. For each school, the spike in the number of applications due to basketball or football success continues for several years before returning to normal.
“These numbers tend to be larger for private schools than for public schools,” Pope said. “For example, private schools in the Sweet 16 see a 4 percent to 5 percent increase in applications compared to a 2 percent to 3 percent increase for public schools.”"
Translation: you win, you get more applications. More applications (in theory) equals higher enrollment. Higher enrollment equals more dollars.
In the book “Beer and Circus”, Murray Sperber compares college athletics to Roman gladiatorial contests (more on this later in the week), saying that the sports program is used to distract students from the fact that undergraduate education has declined in quality. He also explains that big time college sports connect deeply with a culture of binge drinking.
On a personal level, I’ve certainly seen this in action with students and I’ve never been at a school that had a truly elite athletic program. I can see how the attitude of students at a school with consistently top-ranked athletic programs would fit under Sperber’s assumptions though.
An education at the University presents bigger and better opportunities for you.
Great post! I certainly saw this while working at UNLV when the men’s basketball program was led by Jerry Tarkanian.
The quote “He also explains that big time college sports connect deeply with a culture of binge drinking.” really got my attention. What are the moral implications of this? We’ll sacrifice a few students for the sake of a higher application rate & higher enrollment? Yikes!
Thanks Jeff!
Mike,
Clearly the implication that binge drinking and athletics are connected does not surprise most of us, but it should raise some eyebrows. I loved the authors comparison with the Roman gladiatorial contests, football fits this description especially well; not surprisingly, football is also the most connected with a culture of drinking.
Clearly we all recognize that drinking and debauchery are common on college campuses, but I think we cross a line when instead of cautious acceptance we become enablers.
I would have to disagree with Sperber. College athletics is like the gladiators of Rome?? If he is saying that they are both entertainment, than yes I agree. I don’t see further comparisons.
I also don’t see how he thinks that sports are used as a distraction from the quality of education. Is that the case at UNC, reigning basketball national champs? I don’t think so. I’d say Chapel Hill is doing a good job of educating students. What about my alma mater , the University of Florida? It’s a highly respected research university. Is the football team just a distraction?
I also would want to know more about his view of the connection between sports and binge drinking. In my experience college in general is a catalyst for binge drinking. Using a sporting event as a reason to drink is a common occurrence, but not even close to the only one. College students will use any event as an excuse to drink . What about last weekend? Halloween is prime drinking season as are most Fridays, Saturdays, and whatever week night has drink specials and ladies night. Putting the blame on college athletics doesn’t make sense to me.
Of course I have a considerable bias, since I work in college athletics. I find it tiresome though, the amount of uneducated criticism directed toward college athletics and in particular college athletes who overall are outperforming their peers in every way. Just my two cents.
All good points Jared. I’m glad someone from athletics chimed in.
Obviously there are exceptions to be considered and discussion to be had, and I’d say Sperber’s bias is definitely something that would be up for debate.
Just for the record, here’s his record:
Murray Sperber taught at Indiana University, Bloomington, from 1971-2004 and is now a Professor
Emeritus of English and American studies of the school.
At Indiana, he published seven books, most recently, Beer & Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education. His previous books on college sports include: College Sports Inc.: The Athletic Department vs. the University; Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football; and Onward to Victory: The Crises That Shaped College Sports. His books have won many awards – Sports Illustrated placed Beer & Circus on its list of “100 Best Sports Books of All-time” and named Shake Down the Thunder as the second best sports history book.
Sperber is also a former chair of the Drake Group, a national faculty committee advocating reform of college sports. In conjunction with his work on college sports he has appeared on many national TV and radio programs, including ABC-TV’s Nightline and Good Morning America CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes, NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation, and PBS-TV’s Lehrer Newshour. He also frequently contributes op-ed pieces to The Chronicle of Higher Education and other periodicals, including The New York Times.
He received his B.A. from Purdue University in 1961, and both his M.A. (1963), and Ph.D (1974) from the University of California, Berkeley. He currently lives in Concord, CA; he continues to write and lecture about college life and college sports.
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Frankly, I think you could make the argument that many students choose schools because of the athletic program. How many students at Carolina went to Carolina largely because they’ve been “tarheels” since birth?
I don’t think anyone’s “blaming” anyone for drinking. As I mentioned in my comment, drinking and debauchery are common to youth and the college experience. However, I don’t necessarily think we as staff should encourage it.
Also, no one is criticizing college athletes. I recognize that many of them do an unbelievable amount of work both in their sport and in the classroom. Your argument is akin to saying that you don’t support the troops because you don’t support the war – that doesn’t make sense. Clearly, it’s more nuanced.
Sperber’s main point in Beer & Circus was that “well respected, research universities” use big-time athletics to attract undergraduates. They need large numbers of undergraduates to support the salaries and other costs involved in research. Undergraduates, no matter what kind of argument you make, do not benefit from research conducted at their schools, and the notion that students are rubbing shoulders with world renowned academics is simply not true.
Undergraduates are packed into huge impersonal lecture classes and have little, if any, contact with professors. Big time athletics are seen by school administrators as a way to mollify undergraduate students. If teams win then the number of undergraduates will increase for the reasons that other posters above, and Sperber himself, mentioned.
Beer & Circus is a very interesting book. Anyone interested in the link between educational sport, money and colleges should read it.