What athletic directors don't get about NCAA athletes' finances, by ex-NFLPA president Domonique Foxworth

During the first day of the IMG Intercollegiate Athletic Forum while on a panel about cost-of-attendance stipends, North Carolina State athletic director Debbie Yow voiced a concern. “You try to teach student-athletes about financial literacy,” she said of the school’s student-athletes, “but know you failed when you see them on their new hoverboard.” Shortly after, the white-haired Alabama athletic director, Bill Battle, interrupted the moderator to add “tattoos and rims.”

(He later told that he was referring to the incident at Ohio State that led to Jim Tressel’s resignation).

To me, a former college and NFL player, it feels like a couple of out-of-touch executives mocking line-workers, the people whose names don’t appear on an org chart but collectively are more indispensable to the operations of an organization.

Yow at least gets credit for trying to teach financial literacy and having the self-awareness to know that she is failing, but that is where the self-awareness stops. Maybe what psychologists call “projection” is driving Yow’s comments. Prior to taking over at NC State, Yow was the athletic director at Maryland, where I played football. The sports teams performed well for much of her tenure. She left the teams in pretty good shape to compete on the field, but left the athletic department business in financial crisis with $83 million of debt and a growing annual deficit.

Most adults can point to something they purchased during their college years as “dumb” or “impulsive” or “regretful.” For example, at least once a week, one of my college teammates would get a new tattoo. I couldn’t embrace the idea of having something permanently inked onto me so I graduated with no tattoos. However, rims were a different story. I put some chrome feet on the whip, an Isuzu Rodeo. Like the previous sentence, my rims were cool in ‘05 and I would embarrassed by them today. It was an ego purchase. Coming off of Maryland’s first ACC Championship season since 1985, I felt I deserved a little reward.

AP Photo/Chuck Burton

AP Photo/Chuck Burton

People expect questionable financial decisions from college students — they are just learning (in many cases by trial and error) how to manage money. But school officials are expected to be responsible stewards of both the students’ well-being and the school’s resources.

I’m not sure I would give Yow a passing grade for her tenure at Maryland. There were a series of questionable financial decisions made while she led the Terps. Maybe they are defensible, but like the coaches she is tasked with hiring and firing, she is judged by outcomes, and $83 million in the red is not a good outcome.

If the NC State “hoverboarders” Yow referenced failed to budget properly, they will certainly feel the impact of their carelessness and hopefully learn from the pain they’ll experience when their money runs out. Yow may not understand that pain because she left Maryland before seven teams were cut — a result of the questionable financial decisions made under her watch and those of the athletic directors before her.

My intent is not to expose Yow for having been a poor athletic director at Maryland. That is a tough job at any school — with the possible exception of Alabama.

Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports

Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports

Battle’s strategy is pretty straightforward:

Step 1. Inherit Nick Saban
Step 2. Pay Nick Saban
Step 3. Pay Nick Saban more
Step 4. Allow the massive budget surplus, created by Nick Saban and the players, to pay for everything else
Step 5. Attempt to teach athletes financial literacy

If Battle and Yow, or any athletic director, want to get serious about step 5, I would recommend they read ‘Scarcity’, by economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir.

It is not a financial literacy book, it is a book that outlines their theory of how differently the human mind behaves when it experiences scarcity versus surplus. Based on Yow and Battle’s comments and healthy salaries, I suspect they fully understand surplus. But they would likely have a difficult time seeing the world through the eyes of someone experiencing scarcity. For the collegiate athlete, scarcity is omnipresent: not enough money, not enough time, not enough energy.

So rather than judging choices they’ve made, or putting them in ineffective seminars, Yow, Battle, and the rest of the adults getting paid money generated by the players, should stop paying this lip service and start taking their obligation to the players seriously. They should take the time needed to understand the real challenges faced by the university’s unpaid labor, make the effort to engage experts who can help create effective solutions and don’t assume they always know best.

Domonique Foxworth retired from the NFL in 2012. He played for the University of Maryland from 2001-2004. He is also a former president of the NFLPA.

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