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Life's not just a football game

BRUCE SVAR, Times Union
Published 9:59 pm, Wednesday, August 1, 2012
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With all that has been written on the horrific sexual abuse scandal at Penn State University involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, little commentary has been devoted to college football and what, if any, role it should have in higher education.

This is especially important as UAlbany is constructing an $18 million football stadium. With a sparkling new infrastructure in place, we can bet on a future proclamation stating the need for a higher level of competition, more scholarship money and more athletics staff.

In college sports, football is king. It drives decisions for every other sport. The conference realignment scramble we are witnessing now is proof of this. College presidents and athletics directors are falling all over themselves to get into the best conferences that can deliver the most in TV exposure and revenues.

While no one disputes the entertainment value of big-time college football, the truth is, that based on NCAA financial reports, only seven athletic programs — not just football programs — operated in the black in each of the past five years. The other programs are a huge financial drain increasingly being paid for by escalating student fees.

A number of colleges and universities are either dropping football altogether or downgrading their programs because it is way too expensive to compete at the highest levels. Because of the arms race in this sport, which results from the need to attract the best recruits, heavy investments in infrastructure (stadiums and training facilities), coaches' salaries (which often are the highest of anyone on campus, including the president), and athletic scholarships are at the forefront of institutional financial forecasts.

College sports expert and author Murray Sperber ("Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education") forecast a number of years ago that eventually only about 50 or 60 institutions would be able to afford to participate in big-time college football. This is what is happening now with the scramble by universities to join a conference in which they can compete for the national title.

University presidents and boards of trustees like to talk about football (and basketball) as being the front porch of the institution. They conclude that this is where success on the playing fields means more media attention, more alumni donations and more applications from future students.

The leaders of our institutions of higher learning continue to drink Kool-Aid in view of reliable data from sports economists like Andrew Zimbalist ("Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports") showing that these are exaggerated claims and in some cases outright mythology.

Successful sports teams do bring in more donations, but they are typically targeted toward athletics and not academics. Applications do go up when sports teams are successful, but many are less serious students who do not become involved in the academic culture on campus, preferring instead beer and circus.

Let's also consider whether or not big-time college football is worth it when the inevitable scandals hit — academic corruption, recruiting violations, more concussions in athletes and more institutional cover-ups of malfeasance.

New to the list is Penn State's sex abuse scandals, which some legal experts estimate could cost the state of Pennsylvania somewhere close to $1 billion by the time all suits are settled.

My guess is that Penn State, and so other institutions where these scandals have hit, would wish, in retrospect, that they never started a football program.

The question is whether UAlbany, or any like-minded university, would want to have any part of this. There are more pressing needs than football.

UAlbany, like many state universities, is reeling from budget cuts. Capital improvements to a crumbling academic infrastructure are delayed, programs in the humanities are being deactivated, faculty who retire or go elsewhere are not being replaced, students increasingly are being taught by part-timers and graduate assistants, and class sizes are larger than ever.

My advice to UAlbany is to scuttle its dreams of King Football. It's time that we turned away from entertainment to education, and preparing the next generation for the real playing fields.

A degree from a university with a good football team but a second-rate educational program won't cut it any longer. Our young people, who live in a global economy that is more competitive than ever before, deserve much better than this.

Bruce Svare is a professor of psychology at the University at Albany.

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