Senate commissions review of athletic issues

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

oncerned about costs in the campus's athletics programs and their impact on academics, the Faculty Senate last week called on its Program and Budget Council (P&BC) to review issues contained in the annual report of the Athletic Council.

     After the presentation of the Athletic Council's report to the senate on Nov. 15, senators passed a motion that named three areas of investigation -expenditures compared to peers, the balance between academics and athletics, and the possible cost of I-A football - for the P&BC to consider. Discussion at the meeting broadened the intent of the motion specifically to look into the relationship between costs and benefits of developing a I-A football program, the increase in athletic expenditures during a time of budget cuts in academic areas, and trends in athletics in terms of future student interests.

     In their report, Nelson Lacey and Rod Warnick, co-chairs of the Athletic Council, said the council had been unusually busy in the last year, adopting a new program to become acquainted with coaches and their programs in more detail.

     "Twenty-nine programs ranks us fairly high against other universities, so we have a lot going on in terms of the kinds of activities and sports that happens inside athletics," Lacey said. He cited athlete graduation rates and GPAs and compliance with Title IX through building women's sports programs as sources of pride for the University and inadequate facilities as a weakness the council would like to see addressed.

     Pointing to a drop from around 50 to below 100 over the past several years in a national ranking of sports programs, Lacey raised the question "What do we want UMass Athletics to be?"

     "What do we value?" Warnick asked. "Is Athletics a good value for the dollars we spend?" Warnick later answered the latter question.

     "The Athletic Council wishes to make one point clear," he said. "The Amherst campus, the University at large, and the commonwealth are receiving great value from UMass Athletics. By value, we speak of what we spend vs. what we get. We offer 29 sports. We are diverse in our offerings. We are compliant. And by all measures, we have a great group of student athletes who are excelling in the classroom."

     Rules Committee chair Roland Chilton and faculty representative to the Board of Trustees Brian O'Connor both asked why the Athletic Department had not reduced expenditures when academic areas are being cut.

     Associate professor of English Jenny Spencer said the council's report seemed to imply that having a I-A football program would "carry" the other sports financially.

     "No, the answer isn't that if you have Division I-A football [that] it will carry all the sports," Lacey said. He said the report intended to point out that some of the schools with which the University had been comparing itself have highly successful I-A programs that do cover the costs of many other sports and therefore skew the numbers when the campus considers the revenue it spends on sports in comparison with these schools.
Senators discussed the value of comparing athletic expenditures with those of other schools when it has been difficult for them to identify many schools that have similar athletic and academic profiles to the University.

     Psychology professor Richard Bogartz suggested that comparisons were pointless, that the University ought to decide what it wants its athletic program to be based on its own needs and values, not on what other schools are doing. Chilton and P&BC chair Craig Moore agreed, calling the comparisons a "fool's errand." Moore suggested that a consideration of "best practices" at other schools would be more useful.

     Moore told the senate he believes the decision regarding whether to invest in I-A football would ultimately be a political one, not based on budgets as much as a vision that some members of the Board of Trustees might have.

     "It is obvious that the faculty are more concerned with academics than sports," Moore said. "It is also clear that many trustees share a vision of this campus that includes big-time athletics as a key ingredient in boosting our public image as a flagship campus.

     "What may be useful to underscore is the impact of continued expansion toward high-profile sports on campus programs, and to emphasize that current programs are at risk. I'm not sure that the trustees have a good picture of the costs in terms of this impact on the quality and breadth of education, only the perceived benefits of big-time athletics."

     In a separate point, Moore cautioned against expanding sports like football and baseball that are waning in popularity among youth.

     The motion requested P&BC to report its findings early in the spring 2002 semester.