You would not believe how much disposable income my family spends to follow NC State athletics. The lifetime rights to our seats, tickets, paraphernalia, food, Wolfpack Club dues and other sundry items adds up to more than $5000 per year (and that estimate is conservative). Only Wolfpack fans would pony up for such consistent mediocrity in all sports. Our Sears Cup standing (a ranking of collegiate athletic programs on the whole ) is a whopping 89th in the country.
Don’t worry, this column is not going to be — “woe is the Wolfpack.” Though our athletic futility does bother me a great deal, my hobby has a value beyond wins and losses. The fellowship of friends and family at a tailgate party on a sunny fall day is priceless.
But enduring another basketball season of getting our asses handed to us by those we despise has raised a larger question about college athletics. Have we reached a stage where large universities have essentially agreed to license their school’s logo to semi-professional sports teams?
Looking at some 2006 data I found on the web, NC State’s athletic budget was more than $44 million. Yes, you read that right. Ohio State’s athletic budget was more than $105 million. These tens of millions of dollars go for activities that at best, play an ancillary role in educating students.
Let’s be honest – most of the scholarship athletes at any large university are enrolled primarily because of the sport that they play and the scholarship that was offered to them. It’s not like Joe Quarterback was enrolling at State come hell or high water, and then, on a whim, decided to try out for football.
So now we have major universities recruiting students for the sole purpose of having a winning athletic program. The athletes come to play ball and win games. The more games they win, the more tickets are sold. Boosters such as myself, give more money, to pay for athletic scholarships, to get more athletes and win more games because college sports are entertainment. In sum, the beast is feeding itself largely apart from the university it is supposed to represent.
But do these college athletic programs truly represent their universities? I am proud of my degree from NC State and know that I am a graduate of a top-notch public university. My school’s athletic mediocrity has little, if anything at all, to do with the value of my education. Can we just admit then that most major universities have allowed their school logo to be used to build semi-pro sports teams and entertain the masses? Is there really a difference between the Wolfpack and the Washington Redskins (other than the obvious parallel of how great we “used” to be 
)?
How cool would it be if we had true student athletes? It is easy to forget that all of this started recreationally. A group of students at State thought it might be fun to go put on whuppin on the nancy-boys in Chapel Hell. The fun spread and students started coming to see the contests, and then the general public, and the beast was born.
More than a century later, we have reached a point where the kids who put on a uniform for our university are athletes first and students second. Wouldn’t it be more fun if we stopped recruiting athletes to come to the school, and gave sports back to the student body? Why let athletics stand alone and perpetuate itself? I would love to reconnect my pride in NC State as a school, with athletic pride. Right now those two things are separate.
Of course, I am no dummy. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. There’s too much money involved in college sports to ever go back to a simpler time. And certainly the very presence of an athletic program helps attract students to the university because football games in front of thousands have come to be part of the expected college experience that prospective students seek out.
Let’s at least admit what has happened and have no pretense that universities are in essence licensing sports teams to entertain the masses. Once we do that, there is no need for the gazillion NCAA rules that are meant to preserve the “integrity” of the game and the “student-athletes.” Let’s pay these athletes some amount of the revenue they bring in, call a spade a spade and be done with it.
Yeah, I know, it’ll never happen. But hey, I’m a State fan so I’m allowed to dream right?
8 responses so far ↓
Political Junkie // February 29, 2008 at 3:40 pm
what more is there to say…you pretty well covered all the bases, baskets and 1 yd. lines. Isn’t it a shame universities don’t at least match the funds spent on athletics to funds spent on academics..it’s totally out of balance.
Englewood // February 29, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Luv ya-mean it, SMD, but….
Aren’t YOU part of the problem? Alumni willing to pony up over $5k a year are a vital cog in the system- a system which can be broken if said alumni stop the madness and divert their athletic contributions to academic ones.
Granted, Saturday afternoons in the parking lot of the Engineering School can be pretty boring but you’ll be making your school stronger. I bet they’ll even let you cook a pig, provided the contribution is big enough.
Then again, maybeI’m just jealous because alma mater’s athletic prowess is on par with that of the NC School of the Arts.
englewood
southernmaledemocrat // February 29, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I see what you’re saying Englewood, but isn’t that sort of a chicken and egg argument? Which came first, the rise of college sports as entertainment or the donors to fund it?
Were I a donor back in say the 1950’s, your point would be stronger. As things exist today, there is virtually no difference in myself, and someone who has PSLs and season tickets for the Carolina Panthers.
Like I said, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle, I just want the system to be honest about what we’re all taking part in.
FYI - Wake placed 6th in the country in this year’s Sears Cup, (well ahead of Duke and UNC-CH) so buck up about the Deac’s athletic prowess. They’ve got plenty.
And that’s without 20k donors in a kick ass stadium!
Steve // March 1, 2008 at 2:53 am
With the rise of satellite TV and computer packages, D2 and Ivy League Sports are always an option.
Redneck // March 3, 2008 at 10:18 pm
if nc state had winning programs, you wouldn’t give two hoots about the money involved. and, nc state is more on par with oakland these days than washington - at least the skins made the playoffs.
Sammy Kent // March 4, 2008 at 10:50 am
I have long advocated to a non-listening world that the following should be in every LOI and athletic scholarship agreement for every school:
Student athlete agrees that if he/she should withdraw from Whoshotjohn State University prior to exhaustion of his/her athletic eligibility to pursue a career playing a sport as a professional, s/he will repay Whoshotjohn State University the entire sum of the athletic scholarship funds they have thus far used, and will also contribute at least an equal amount to the non-athletic scholarship fund of Whoshotjohn State University.
This in itself won’t make student athletes better students, but it would create a bit of assistance for other students that have to struggle for four or five years to get through school because they just don’t have the athletic gifts that the schools are more willing to pony up for. It would also end the practice of these “student” athletes manipulating the system without penalty to merely use college as their personal stage to get to the show rather than an opportunity for an education. And it might, just might, encourage some of them to stay in school and actually get the education they are supposedly being paid to get.
Damon Circosta // March 11, 2008 at 1:20 pm
In agreement that we really have semi-pro teams out there, but what is wrong with that? Do I have any less kinship with some hot-shot scientist type who comes here to study nematode mating habits?
I guess what I am saying is a university is a broad collection of people pursuing different interests. I don’t begrudge the other disciplines who (under the banner of the same university I attend) pursue excellence in a field wholly unrelated to why I came to school. Why should athletics be any different?
southernmaledemocrat // March 11, 2008 at 1:29 pm
That’s not a bad point, Damon.
I guess the only real counterpoint is that while athletics may be an interest, it’s far from a “discipline.”
My main point of the piece was just to point out the hypocrisy in calling such athletes amateurs. Let’s just be done with that and let them be paid some amount based on the revenue their sports brings in.