Why SEC football should be embarrassed

Commentary:

(MoneyWatch) What does it take to have a hugely successful team in college football?

Spending insane amounts of money at the expense of your own students, for one. And if you want to know who the biggest offenders are, I can sum it up in a three-letter word: SEC.

The universities in the Southeast Conference, which pride themselves on their juggernaut football programs, spend more than 12 times as much on their athletes as they do on their students who hope to walk out of their schools with a degree. (And too many of their students never graduate.)

Eye-opening new study

According to a new damning report by the Delta Cost Project at the American Institutes for Research, the universities in the SEC in 2010 spent a median of $163,931 per athlete versus $13,390 per student for academic programs. The SEC spent 60 percent more on its jocks than the PAC-10, (now the PAC-12) and 40 percent more than the Big Ten schools.

The Big 12 schools are the second worst offenders. They blow more than nine times as much per athletes ($131,286) versus the students who watch football on the couch. It's nauseating how much money the schools in most conferences sink into their athletic programs.

Athletic and academic spending by conference

Here is the Delta Project's rundown of the money that athletic conferences are spending on their athletes:

The myth about big-time sports programs

Athletic directors and coaches, who are getting rich on the backs of athletes, want you to believe that football and elite basketball programs are money machines that more than cover their expenses and subsidize wimpy sports like tennis and golf.  At most schools this is not true.

This fixation on building football and basketball juggernauts does have its costs. According to the study, less than a quarter of the Division I programs in the FBS generate enough revenue to cover their own expenses. 

Why the money suck?

In 2010, schools sunk $6 billion dollars in its Division I sports teams and these costs continue to spiral. Why are sports, particuarly football and basketball, such a money suck? The researchers suggested these main culprits:

• Multimillion-dollar coaching contracts
• Demand for more staff and better facilities.
• Rising cost of athletic scholarships to keep up with rising tuition

Forgetting the real purpose of college

For many institutions, spending on athletics is sacrosanct, even when academic spending (such as for faculty pay and academic programs) is being cut or frozen. The Delta Project also notes that studies have shown that the schools don't enjoy any sustained admissions benefit for having winning football teams and most recent studies show no connection between alumni contributions and athletic success.

SEC vs. Big 10 Schools

Schools in the SEC and other conferences lose big time in the most important area of all: educating students.

According to the latest federal statistics, the University of Alabama, which crushed the University of Notre Dame in this month's BCS National Championship Game, only managed to graduate 37.9 percent of its students in four years. Notre Dame graduated 90 percent.

Which school would you rather attend if you were serious about getting a degree?

Of course, 'Bama fans might say that's not a fair comparison since Notre Dame is a private institution.

Okay, let's look at how four-year graduation rates at some SEC schools such the University of Mississippi (33.9 percent), University of Tennessee (30.6 percent), Louisiana State (26.2 percent) and Auburn (35.7 percent) compare with some Big Ten schools such as the University of Michigan (72 percent), University of Illinois (67.4 percent), Penn State (62.3 percent), Indiana University (49.5 percent), and Ohio State (48.6 percent). When you focus on graduation rates among these two conferences, it's a rout. 

Some advice

Wouldn't it be great if the SEC, as the alpha dog, and the other conferences decided to stop the spending insane amounts on football and focus on what's really important - educating students.  Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. And the real victims are taxpayers and the students who watch those Saturday football games.

[sincity_q]

Some sectors of our culture have taken up the cause of attacking anyone and anything that is successful. In the sports media, we have come to expect words specifically designed to incite anger and bad behavior between fans. These poor souls are used to generate traffic on the web and assure good ratings on TV. But... as we can see here, this kind of behavior is not limited to the desk jocks at ESPN.

What is the reasoning to attack the SEC? Because they are successful and despite all the slander, these are fine institutions that turn out well-rounded scholars? Or is it politics because SEC schools are located in what is nauseatingly referred to as 'red states'? Who would it benefit to do harm to this conference and these institutions?

The negativity displayed here by this author has no foundation other than to create and spread discord in a nation that is already fully polarized and most disturbingly, already a house divided unto itself.

[Osprey4]

Aside from convoluting academic performance and AD budgets in one article (so we're not sure what you really care about), the fact remains that AD budgets are separate from academic budgets. So exactly ZERO dollars would be available to academic departments if every athletic team was disbanded and every coach fired.

It is not athletics but administration that is sucking the life blood out of our universities. As has been demonstrated over and over, the vast majority of higher tuition costs has gone toward bloated administration, not instruction.

Wouldn't it be great if colleges decided to stop the spending insane amounts on needless administration and focus on what's really important - educating students?

[Sax1031]

we love the haters