April 2013 Education It’s Time to Fix Warped Incentives in Division I College Sports


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The Hampton Roads Messenger 11


BY ARNE DUNCAN AND TOM MCMILLEN March Madness was underway,


but the 2011 champion, the University of Connecticut, was conspicuously absent. The Huskies men’s team isn’t competing this year because it failed to meet the minimal academic requirements set by the NCAA for postseason play.


The fate of UConn’s team


sent shock waves through locker rooms, coaches offices and the suites of athletics directors and university presidents. For the first time, a powerhouse program lost its opportunity for postseason glory because of years of poor performance in the classroom. We think this is a good start toward restoring a healthier balance between academics and athletics in Division I college sports — and toward reaffirming that the mission of a university is to educate all of its students. But it is just a start.


The NCAA should be


commended for raising the academic benchmarks that teams must meet for postseason play. New NCAA regulations essentially require teams to be on track to graduate half of their players to be eligible for postseason play, and graduation and academic progress rates are up significantly for tournament teams this year. Yet governing boards of universities and college presidents also need to do more to reinforce the educational mission of their institutions. Too often, presidents and trustees undermine that mission by providing lucrative incentives to coaches that downplay the importance of athletes getting a college education.


Tom (McMillen) recently examined around 50 contracts for


head coaches of college football and basketball, many of them culled from the USA TODAY Sports coaches’ salary database. Most of what he found will surprise no one: Salaries and rewards for big-time college coaches are astronomically high. In 2011, 32 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision coaches and 11 NCAA Division I men’s basketball coaches earned more than $2 million annually. The highest paid basketball coach that year, Rick Pitino, was paid $7.5 million by the University of Louisville — a little more than $20,500 a day.


Coaches today earn whatever


the market pays. But many coaches work at public universities, funded with taxpayer dollars. In 2011, in Oklahoma, Connecticut and Maryland, a head football or basketball coach was not only the highest-paid employee at the university but the highest-paid state employee.


Oklahoma Gov.


Mary Fallin earned $147,000 in 2011, while the football coach at the University of Oklahoma, Bob Stoops, was paid $4.875 million, 33 times as much as Gov. Fallin. Moreover, nine Oklahoma football assistant coaches were paid more than the governor, including the tight ends/tackles coach, who pulled down a $240,000 salary.


Coaches receive huge financial bonuses


when their team is winning. Yet the incentives for academic success in the contracts Tom examined show how warped priorities have become at some institutions.


If academic performance


determined the winners of the NCAA women’s tournament, Princeton would come out on top. Click to enlarge.


About two-thirds of the basketball


contracts and three-fourths of the football contracts did include a bonus for academic performance. But these incentives were dwarfed by bonuses for performance on the field or court. Academic incentives averaged $52,000 per coach, while athletic incentives averaged $600,000 per coach — a


lopsided ratio of 11-to-1. When many states are reducing


funding for higher education, it is hard to justify such skewed priorities and runaway athletic spending. Even at Division I institutions, few athletic programs are self-supporting — which means that institutional funds must typically be diverted to pay for athletic programs.


A recent study by the Delta Cost


Project compared spending per athlete and student at Division I institutions. In the six “power conferences” that form the Bowl Championship Series, median athletic spending per athlete topped $100,000 in 2010, compared to about $15,600 spending per student. COLLEGE SPORTS PAGE 14


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