Debate is raging over a coach’s worth and where the payoff goes
TUSCALOOSA — University of Alabama President Robert Witt’s white colonial mansion sits almost equidistant from two symbols of the institution he oversees. To the north, facing his two-story, six-columned dwelling, across University Boulevard and the grassy quad, is the Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library. Its echoing stairwells lead to five floors of ivory aluminum stacks bearing the bulk of the Capstone’s 2.5 million volumes. It is a hub of scholarship for the university’s 21,414 students and 1,148 faculty members who began the year at Alabama last fall. Its resources aided many of last year’s 4,369 graduates and those who performed $75 million in research last year in aeronautics, health, transportation and education. To the west of the mansion, towering over its corner of campus, is Bryant-Denny Stadium. Four bronzed legends stand guard, surrounded by their national title inscriptions. Wade. Thomas. Stallings. And, yes, Bryant. In their semi-circle shrines, with arms crossed or folded behind their backs, they wait at attention for whomever will follow and make his place in a vacant fifth well. After a six-week search, the University of Alabama hired the man Crimson Tide faithful hope will restore the glory those statues represent. But some among the academic set wonder what they might see for themselves in exchange for Nick Saban’s $4 million annual salary, the richest deal in college sports history. A Crimson cashbox The athletics department at Alabama was one of 23 NCAA Division I programs nationwide to operate at a profit last year, according to data reported to the Office of Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education. Tide athletics officials are quick to note that their department pays for itself. The Legislature allocated the university $171 million this fiscal year, and the 13 percent increase requested by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education for fiscal 2008 — to $193 million — doesn’t include any requests for athletics. Instead, the 90,000 fans who swarm campus six or seven Saturdays every fall pay for their tickets and those licensed houndstooth caps, jackets, sundresses and purses, and thus the bulk of a $61.5 million athletics budget. At Alabama, as at just about all other college programs, the popularity of 12 or 13 football games every year means scores of swimmers, golfers and high-jumpers can enjoy the intercollegiate athletics experience. Football’s $27.2 million profit in 2005-06 more than covered the $18.8 million in expenses incurred by 325 athletes in 15 other sports. Men’s basketball is the only other Tide sport to turn a profit. Numbers like that led to Alabama’s ranking of No. 7 on a Forbes magazine list of the most valuable college football teams last December, behind the likes of Notre Dame, Texas, Michigan and Ohio State, and ahead of Tennessee, Oklahoma and Louisiana State. When Saban’s hiring — and record-breaking contract — led nearly every national sports radio and television broadcast Jan. 4, university officials knew more attention to Crimson could mean more black on the balance sheet. “The figures we’ve seen indicate that this program can pay for a coach of that magnitude,” said UA trustee John England. “A coach the magnitude of Nick Saban can enhance what is already going on. … As long as the program continues in the direction it is in now, it will be able to handle it without a problem.” An eight-year study published by the NCAA in 2003 showed no direct relation between spending and winning percentage. But results from other schools with recent football success offer a glimpse of the bounty that could await Alabama, should the Tide’s fortunes on the field improve. A 6-6 record earned the Tide the Southeastern Conference’s ninth and final bowl slot this year, a bid to the Independence Bowl. The conference uses a four-tiered system to decide how much money athletics departments receive from their postseason appearances, depending on how much the bowl game pays out for each team. In the SEC, a team takes its set share off the top, and the remainder is split 13 ways — one equal piece to the conference’s 12 teams, and a final share to the conference. The Independence Bowl paid Alabama athletics $840,000 this season, and each SEC team earned $20,000. For its appearance in the BCS National Championship, Florida collected $1.84 million, and each SEC school received nearly $1.2 million. The title gave the University of Florida its second in nine months; the men’s basketball team won the championship in April. That success could mean sales of Gator apparel will top $10 million for the 2006-07 year. Florida is among 143 university clients of the Atlanta-based Collegiate Licensing Co. The school charges manufacturers a flat fee ranging from $250 to $1,000 for the initial license to produce Gator gear, plus 8.5 percent of the wholesale price. Most schools charge 8 percent. So, if Nike makes a blue and orange Florida cap and sells it to a retailer for $10, the university collects 85 cents. Florida ranked sixth in earnings among CLC’s clients in 2005. After nationally prominent seasons, Auburn University jumped from No. 15 to No. 11, and Louisiana State University — under coach Nick Saban — climbed from No. 21 to No. 5. “Certainly we have seen a growth of shelf space for the college brand,” said Heath Price, director of university services for CLC. “Over the years, it has become more fashionable, more hip and cool. It is no longer just a bookstore business.” |
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Success equals students Every Wednesday at noon, textbook-laden upperclassmen shuffle to the second floor of domed Shelby Hall. Sixteen weeks of lectures and research on cytochrome c — a small protein useful in examining evolutionary divergence — await them. Exciting stuff for hardcore biochemists and rabid fans of professor John Vincent’s writings in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” but come finals week in May, their work isn’t likely to draw the papalesque throngs that greeted Saban upon his arrival at Tuscaloosa. Vincent, also the Faculty Senate president at the Capstone, said that doesn’t mean the two are mutually exclusive. When Alabama won its most recent national championship in 1992, applications to the university’s graduate program in chemistry doubled, Vincent said. “You wouldn’t think necessarily a discipline like that would see that kind of spinoff,” he said. “But there’s a tremendous example of just how much that gets us in the public eye and affects student interest nationally.” A 2000 survey by Baltimore-based Art & Science Group published in the Chronicle of Higher Education found that access to jobs and internships, student club offerings, community-service opportunities and intramural sports all weighed heavier on the minds of college-bound high school students than varsity sports. Among those surveyed, two-thirds could not name an athletics conference, and only 10 percent had ever heard of the Southeastern Conference. But information from two schools that recently attained national prominence doesn’t bear out those findings. The fall after winning the 2003 BCS National Championship, Louisiana State received 11,077 applications, nearly 1,000 more than the year before. The university enrolled 22 percent more out-of-state students than the year before. Auburn saw similar results the next year. The 2004 Tigers went 13-0 and received national attention after being snubbed from the BCS title game despite achieving a perfect record. In the fall of 2005, the number of applicants to Auburn rose by more than 1,400. The number of out-of-state freshmen jumped 22 percent. A championship team in Tuscaloosa could provide a boost to Witt’s goal of enrolling 28,000 students at Alabama by 2013. Though the average Alabama professor earned anywhere from $74,427 in humanities to $137,015 in the law school — dwarfed by Saban’s lucrative deal — Vincent said most on campus understand they could stand to benefit from increased attention on football. “Clearly there is displeasure about the general magnitude of pro athletes’ and coaches’ salaries, and how it has come to the college level,” he said. “But they realize we live in a competitive market. If our alumni and fans and supporters want the best, that’s what they deserve. … Given the importance of the position and a positive attitude it creates in terms of everything, most take a realistic approach.” Payoff in the classroom At the 2006 Rose Bowl, coach Mack Brown led a comeback over the all-but-coronated University of Southern California to win Texas its first football national championship in 35 years. As a result, burnt-orange apparel sales more than doubled from the year before, and the Longhorns collected $8.2 million in sales. Among the 143 university clients at the Collegiate Licensing Co., the University of Texas jumped from No. 3 to No. 1 and ended the University of North Carolina’s five-year reign as the top-selling school. Alabama, which finished the 2006 regular season out of the Top 25 football standings, ranked ninth in licensed sales. The athletics department at Texas had no set formula for directly sharing money with the university’s academic side. But the windfall set up a new agreement between the two entities. From now on, the athletics department will donate 10 percent of its apparel and licensing profit to the Texas president’s discretionary account for academics. On top of that, the Longhorns made a one-time $1.3 million donation to a fund for Texas’ academic priorities and gave $200,000 to the university’s film institute. And next fall, the university’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs will hire a professor to sit as the Mack Brown distinguished chair for leadership and global studies, established through a $500,000 donation from athletics. “Through confidence from our alumni and the football and many other sports’ success, we had a record-setting year,” said Chris Plonsky, senior associate athletics director at Texas. “We haven’t been bereft of participation across campus previously. Sometimes it was based on requests. But now we have a set plan for the future.” Eight athletic departments in the SEC confirmed they make donations to their universities. Auburn, Mississippi and private Vanderbilt did not respond to requests for information. South Carolina did not donate any money. Gifts in 2006 ranged from $200,000 at the University of Arkansas to $2.5 million at Florida. Louisiana State charges its athletics department the same 3 percent fee as every auxiliary unit that operates on campus, this year totaling $1.63 million. The athletics department also donated $1.67 million on top of that. Six days after accepting the Alabama job, Saban donated $100,000 to the university’s general scholarship fund. But schools find other ways to generate academic support from voracious sports fans. The University of Kentucky athletics department already made a standard $1 million donation to the school’s general fund. In 2004, it sold the 10-year media rights to all Kentucky sports to Host Communications for $80 million. The deal included $1.36 million over the length of the contract to the university’s Singletary Scholars program for high academic achievers. In addition, the agreement called for radio stations carrying Kentucky sports broadcasts to provide two minutes and 30 seconds at half-time and 30 seconds each in pre- and post-game segments to advertise for the university. The 80 outlets around the state also must allow the school 15 30-second spots every week, year-round. Each time the Wildcats play on their regional television network, viewers see President Lee T. Todd standing on a stairway inside the school’s $58 million, 362,000-square-foot William T. Young Library. With his unique drawl, he encourages the state to dream, challenge and succeed. Big money, big plans Even on a Friday afternoon, when a suitcase college would have spilled onto the outbound highways, the Capstone’s campus bustles. Joggers try to march in place waiting for the light to change, bobbing to the beat on the iPods strapped to their upper arms. Students with no late classes camp out under a tree with a novel for pleasure. Faculty meet for lunch on the strip, and visitors pick up their new “Got Nick?” T-shirts at Alabama Express. Witt wants to increase enrollment to 28,000, and with it Alabama’s vibrancy, both social and financial. The school has raised about $300 million on its way to a $500 million goal by 2009, half of which will provide scholarships. In 1996, two professors from Chicago’s Lake Forest College published a study in “Social Science Quarterly” showing that while winning football records did not directly translate to higher gift totals from alumni, bowl appearances did. That season, 36 teams went to the Division I-A postseason, so some teams with winning records did not receive a bowl bid. For the 2006 season, 64 teams participated in bowls, including some with 6-6 records, like Alabama. Considering the average annual alumni giving of $1.36 million in the authors’ public university sample, they estimated a bowl appearance to be worth another $500,000 from alumni donations, or a 40 percent increase in giving. “I think for higher education as a whole, athletics is a window to the university,” said David Wolf, vice president for development at Alabama. “Lots of folks are interested in athletics and academics. I think athletics benefits from having great alumni who have a positive experience and go on to be successful. It’s all connected.” According to data reported to the nonprofit Council for Aid to Education, alumni giving to Auburn increased by $2 million after the Tigers’ 13-0 season in 2004. Louisiana State did not report to the group, but Scott Madere, spokesman for the LSU Foundation, said the school’s endowment grew by $42 million after its 2003 national title. The endowment increased by $18 million and $6 million the two years before. “Everybody loves a winner,” he said. “People want to be part of that. We recruit better students, set higher academic standards, see better performance in research. I know some folks who feel you compete for the same dollars between athletics and academics. I would say that might have been the case 20 years ago, but not now. It all stems from sort of a cultural shift to believing we all can win.” |
