DENNIS CLAYSON | Posted: Sunday, September 7, 2008 12:00 am
What justifies siphoning millions of dollars from academic programs into athletics? According to information published in United Faculty reports and data from the University of Northern Iowa's "Fact Book," considerable amounts of taxpayers' money and student tuition magically disappear from academic programs only to reappear as financing for more sports at UNI.
But for what purpose? The justification for this transfer remains a mystery.
I mentioned this several months ago, and it created a curious response.
Evidently, in the upper Midwest, sports are as expected from schools at any level above the fifth grade as much as someone washing their hands after using the potty. Except in this case, no one can remember what justifies the cultural norm.
Readers simply assumed that I could not be serious when I suggested that sports at UNI be re-evaluated and perhaps eliminated. I was very serious.
Let's look at possible justifications for a sports program at an institution of "higher learning."
1. Athletic programs allow students to become physically fit and teaches them skills needed in future life. Is this is true, why do these programs exclude almost all students?
Of the 12,000 or so students at UNI, at least 11,400 have no chance whatsoever of participating in the school's athletic programs. Unless we suggest that drinking beer and sitting in the 46th row at a game or cheering at a video screen is akin to becoming physically fit, this justification is closer to a joke than reality.
2. Athletics promote the school and generate lots of free PR.
3. Athletics exist to provide entertainment to the citizens of the state.
If arguments two and three above hold any validity, then we are going about it all wrong. Consider football at a school like UNI. If the goal is national PR or even entertainment at a wider taxpayer level, then this program fails on both counts.
Last week UNI played BYU. The Panthers did well. They played a smart and gutsy game, but they still lost big to a team that has zero chance of playing in a national championship game. BYU does not belong to a BCS conference.
I like football, and I like UNI football, but the truth is simple and even brutal: almost no one outside of local communities cares who wins championships in lower division sports. So the PR is limited and generally local. Successful football programs are very expensive, and Iowa already has two major football programs with historical followings.
So what could a school like UNI do that would allow most of the three athletics goals to be met?
First, select a sport that would provide a popular entertainment, along with a legitimate chance of winning a Division I national championship in a high-profile national venue.
Second, eliminate all sports scholarships except in the sport identified above. All sports programs would be eliminated unless, 1) enough students could be found on campus who wanted to play the sport as walk-ons, 2) someone will coach the sport for free, and 3) the program required no transfer of funds from academic programs.
We should pick one program and dump all of our resources into the sport that would give us the best shot at national championships and lots of free TV face and logo exposure.
The sport that would be most likely to meet these requirements is men's and women's basketball.
Like UNLV, we would go out and purchase the best college basketball team money could buy. We would stop being a coach training camp for other universities by paying our coach so outrageously that he would never leave, as long as he continued to win.
This would allow average students to actually participate in sports. We would be politically correct and throw bones to the NCAA by having a women's team, and we wouldn't have to transfer funds from the classroom into recruiting golf trips.
Since the number of players is limited in basketball, we might be able to bring into Iowa as many trophies as police arrests. The school would become a household name after four weeks of prime-time national TV exposure every spring, and the entertainment needs of the citizens could be met during Iowa's winters.
Now, wouldn't that be better than taking money from tuition and taxes desperately needed for education and dumping them into programs that no one has even bothered to justify?