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Sports-Spending Laggards Feel the Pain, Play Catch-Up

By  Andrea Fuller
June 26, 2011

While many academic departments tightened their belts over the past few years, only a few athletic programs have done likewise—just 10 out of the 125 institutions in the Football Championship Subdivision cut their spending, according to a Chronicle analysis. They trimmed in a variety of ways, like scheduling more regional events as opposed to national ones, cutting down on the size of traveling teams, and leaving open positions unfilled.

Those athletic departments could frame their budget squeezes as a badge of honor, a way of sharing the financial burden that many institutions are facing. But some athletics officials see their low ranking as a failure in the athletics arms race.

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While many academic departments tightened their belts over the past few years, only a few athletic programs have done likewise—just 10 out of the 125 institutions in the Football Championship Subdivision cut their spending, according to a Chronicle analysis. They trimmed in a variety of ways, like scheduling more regional events as opposed to national ones, cutting down on the size of traveling teams, and leaving open positions unfilled.

Those athletic departments could frame their budget squeezes as a badge of honor, a way of sharing the financial burden that many institutions are facing. But some athletics officials see their low ranking as a failure in the athletics arms race.

“I’m not sure being able to continue to operate at less or at the same amount continually is a good thing to brag about or a good thing to have out there,” says Jim Fallis, athletic director at Northern Arizona University, which reduced its spending by 6.6 percent from 2005-6 to 2009-10, once inflation is taken into account. “It almost might create a competitive disadvantage if everyone else is spending more.”

Others believe that their lack of spending has already hurt them. “You could argue perhaps that it affects us on the field,” says Earl Hilton, athletic director of North Carolina A&T State University, where sports spending dropped by 2.3 percent in five years. “You could perhaps make an argument that we have not spent enough to be competitive.”

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Howard University, whose athletics budget declined by 17.2 percent over five years, is dissatisfied enough to do something about it.

An academic-program review this year led the university to decide to close, downsize, or restructure multiple departments, including African studies, anthropology, and philosophy. But the athletic department is about to grow. Howard plans to spend $11.5-million a year on sports by 2012, a 45-percent increase over its 2009-10 athletics budget. The university hopes to increase fund-raising efforts to help pay for that growth.

Howard doesn’t like to talk about its recent declines beyond an admission that those numbers were based on budget constraints and an unwillingness on the part of previous leaders to see athletics as a major asset. Instead, officials there say they are forward-looking.

“I don’t want to be toward the bottom of the list,” says Louis (Skip) Perkins Jr., who arrived as athletic director this year.

He is one of a series of recent hires in athletics. The university has replaced five head coaches and moved four coaches from part-time to full-time status. Howard is also adding five assistant coaches and an additional academic adviser for athletics. It has purchased software to monitor athletes’ academic performance and is spending money to send tutors on the road with players.

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Capital spending is not included in the expense figures that athletic departments submit to the U.S. Education Department, which The Chronicle used in its analysis. But Howard also has big plans to improve its facilities, which are housed in a 1960s brick building. The halls have dim lighting and the gymnasium has a stained ceiling, while the men’s locker room is filled with rusty lockers and worn benches. A $6-million infusion from the university will give the entire building a face-lift, including new floors, more lighting, and brand-new locker rooms.

Mr. Perkins knows what it’s like to oversee the growth of an athletics budget—he came from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, which had one of the biggest increases in sports spending in the Football Championship Subdivision in the past five years, according to the analysis. He notes that after Pine Bluff played in the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, the university received its highest number of applications ever.

Mr. Perkins says that Howard doesn’t need to be first in terms of athletics expenditures, but that such spending “helps strengthen and build the brand of the university.”

He and Howard’s coaches credit the university’s president, Sidney A. Ribeau, with making athletics a priority. Mr. Ribeau, who arrived in 2008, is no novice when it comes to college sports: He oversaw an athletic department with twice the budget of Howard’s at Bowling Green State University; he also served on the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors.

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“I firmly believe that a strong athletic program, run correctly, is like an energizer for the campus,” he says, citing George Mason University and Butler University as programs to aspire to.

On the other hand, Rudolph Hock, chair of Howard’s classics department—whose program was saved through a restructuring after being on the line for elimination—says some of his colleagues question the increased spending on sports when faculty salaries are lagging and academic programs are taking cuts.

“To me it’s simply a matter of priorities,” Mr. Hock says. “The athletic program would not rank high in the opinion of most people. There are far greater needs that need to be attended to than that.”

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
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