Title IX & Profitability of College Sports (once was: Syracuse to add hockey)

Women's hockey that is... [www.syracuse.com]

Sorry swim teams.

The Post-Standard
The women's swim team, which consists of 13 members, receives 14 scholarships.

Um...what?

You're quite a tease with that subject line.

Well it's a step in the right direction. My knowledge of Title IX isn't that extensive, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't this pave the way for a mens team (atleast on Title IX)?

evilnaturedrobot
Well it's a step in the right direction. My knowledge of Title IX isn't that extensive, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't this pave the way for a mens team (atleast on Title IX)?

No. The women's hockey team will provide some institutional balance with the football team. They will start a men's hockey program right after they start a women's football team.

As for the strange women's swimming scholarship numbers, the team probably hasn't given out all of the scholarships available to it - which is kind of an indication that the program wasn't be run well in the first place.

ugarte

evilnaturedrobot
Well it's a step in the right direction. My knowledge of Title IX isn't that extensive, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't this pave the way for a mens team (atleast on Title IX)?

No. The women's hockey team will provide some institutional balance with the football team. They will start a men's hockey program right after they start a women's football team.

As for the strange women's swimming scholarship numbers, the team probably hasn't given out all of the scholarships available to it - which is kind of an indication that the program wasn't be run well in the first place.

Ugarte makes an important point: Much of the Title IX balancing of mens vs. women's scholarships and sports opportunities starts off with men's football (a redundancy, I suppose) and its many scholarships, so the women's side needs a couple dozen scholarhips in sports men don't play - or can't play because the school dropped or never started that men's team. There've been suggestions that football be considered outside the boundaries of Title IX balancing. That is, forget the 36 or whatever football scholarships and have 100 every-other-sport scholarships for men and another 100 for women.

I believe wrestling has tough going also because there's no women's wrestling. Other than maybe at Duke, and come to think of it that's not a sanctioned sport.

I don't see why Syracuse would need to drop Men's swimming and add a Women's hockey team to balence the football team. I would assume that the football scholarships where already offset by other Women's sports, it's not as if Syracuse hasn't been playing football for some time now.

evilnaturedrobot
I don't see why Syracuse would need to drop Men's swimming and add a Women's hockey team to balence the football team. I would assume that the football scholarships where already offset by other Women's sports, it's not as if Syracuse hasn't been playing football for some time now.

Probably want to add scholarships for football or some other existing mens' sport.

IMO, Football, wrestling and any other sport that doesn't have a female equivalent shouldn't be counted in the balancing. Likewise for any sport that didn't have a male equivalent (field hockey is the only sport that comes to mind, in the US anyway). But then again, the fact that football is allowed 85 scholarships (yes, 85) is absolutely ridiculous. Make the ratio of scholarships to active roster size comparable to that in other sports (e.g. 18 to 22 in hockey) and then maybe we can talk...

Don't those other men's sports have scholarship limits? I can't imagine that Syracuse hasn't already maxed out it's scholarships in money sports like football and basketball.

evilnaturedrobot
Don't those other men's sports have scholarship limits? I can't imagine that Syracuse hasn't already maxed out it's scholarships in money sports like football and basketball.

As far as I know every D1 sport has specific scholarship limits. Probably wouldn't be too hard to look up the sport by sport numbers if you were so inclined.

billhoward
I believe wrestling has tough going also because there's no women's wrestling. Other than maybe at Duke, and come to think of it that's not a sanctioned sport.

Stop trying to be funny. Please.

KeithK
IMO, Football, wrestling and any other sport that doesn't have a female equivalent shouldn't be counted in the balancing. Likewise for any sport that didn't have a male equivalent...

If you accept the underlying logic of Title IX (and we can agree to disagree on whether it is a good thing or the intrusive hand of a dictatorship), this is untenable. It is like saying the only thing that shouldn't matter in determining race-based discrimination is hiring practices based on race. Football so distorts and swallows every other consideration that to make an exception for it (as a logical starting point) is tantamount to saying that you don't actually care about balance to begin with.

Beyond the scholarship issues, the mere roster size of football (beyond the "active roster" is an entire regiment of players who are never going to see a down on the field that year) creates massive funding imbalances, not to mention the budgets for recruiting, coaching, medical care, etc.

I don't disagree that football distorts things in it's current form. But if the rules for football were changed such that they were in line with what applies to other sports I could be satisfied that the distortion was minimized. Examples of needed changes might be reducing scholarships to a proportional level (maybe 30-35 scholarships for 40 some odd active players) as opposed to 85), a reasonable limit on team sizes (80+ is ridiculous) that would drive down the other costs you cite and tightening on redshirting rules to prevent stockpiling of talent.

It is (IMO) unfair in principle to punish male athletes because there is no female equivalent to football or wrestling. But until some of the egregious excesses of college football are removed this argument has no chance of getting traction.

KeithK
Beyond the scholarship issues, the mere roster size of football (beyond the "active roster" is an entire regiment of players who are never going to see a down on the field that year) creates massive funding imbalances, not to mention the budgets for recruiting, coaching, medical care, etc.

Not only does football not create "massive funding imbalances," it actually produces funds at many universities. In the BCS conferences, in particular, football is the major revenue-generating sport. Many football programs in the Big 10 and SEC, for example, make a profit (after expenses) of $5 to $10 million or more per year. Consider the University of Michigan, which sells close to 110 thousand tickets seven or eight times a year at $50 or $60 per ticket (not including parking, concessions, and seat license fees).

The profits from football and men's basketball are used to fund the non-revenue-generating men's and women's sports. Only a handful of women's programs (e.g., Tennessee women's basketball) actually turn a profit. Cutting back on football funding would likely have the opposite of the intended effect. Instead of opening up more scholarships for other sports, there would be fewer net scholarships to go around.

Revenue generation is the main reason for arguing that football should be exempt from Title IX. Another reason is that women technically are not excluded from playing football. There have been a few well-publicized cases in which female place kickers played on D1 teams. For all practical purposes, of course, few female athletes could ever hope to make a roster.

I believe SU's been in compliance for years. It's dropped men's gymnastics and wrestling, and has added women's soccer, lacrosse, and softball.

Now they drop men's swimming, while swapping hockey for swimming on the women's side. Without the men's action, that's a net loss of 4 scholarships. Factor in the men's scholarships and you get to a net gain of 7 for the women. Now, if they just add women's fencing and gymnastics...

A couple of quotes from an article in the Daily Orange (from last fall) on adding hockey:

"If we added a men's sport, we'd have to get rid of a men's sport," said Michael Wasylenko, chairman of [SU's] Athletic Policy Board. "And that's probably not a good idea."

"Adding one and one doesn't get us toward our goal," Wasylenko said. "Adding three and one? We could."

[media.www.dailyorange.com]

One other interesting note from the Syracuse.com article is the part about 35-50 million for a new pool. With football down, I can see SU wanting to save some money. On the other hand, if SU's going to spend 35-50 million on a new facility...soft water or hard? Miami's new arena cost them 35 million. That would leave 15 million to start up the hockey programs. I love swimming as much as the next hockey fan, but, sorry, I like where this is going.

Just saw this little bit...[blog.collegehockeynews.com]

Correction: Friday's Daily Orange mentions that SU did need to add another sport for compliance reasons. It also mentions that AD Gross said last fall that women's golf may be a possible addition.
[media.www.dailyorange.com]

evilnaturedrobot
Well it's a step in the right direction. My knowledge of Title IX isn't that extensive, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't this pave the way for a mens team (atleast on Title IX)?

Not necessarily. Title IX reads "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." That's not section 2, paragraph 7 - that's the whole thing.

In 1979, the Ed Dept. issued a policy statment suggesting 3 ways in which an institution could show compliance:

1. Have a ratio of male/female athletes equal to the general student body
2. Show continual progress toward that ratio
3. Show that you're fully accomodating the desires of both genders

Not too many schools can claim #1, because of football. Not too many schools are going to stand up in court and argue that "our women just don't want to play sports," so that rules out #3. Therefore, most schools go through door #2. Unfortunately, it's all about the ratio. Anything that moves the ratio in the right direction Title-IX-proofs you for at least a few years, whether that's adding women's sports or dropping men's. Until the ratio is fully equal to the student body, all men's sports are at risk (well, not football, obviously!), because they have to show continual progress - where cutting a men's team every few years is defined as progress.

Of course, adding new, equal opportunities for men and women also generally moves schools toward the correct ratio (5/7 is closer to .500 than 4/6), but that's the expensive option. And 5/7 doesn't solve the problem, because you still have to show continual improvement from there.

Realistically, therefore, the only way for a school to get away with adding a men's team is to achieve the correct ratio first, by cutting other men's teams or adding every women's sport they can think of. Aside: If you have a daughter, get her involved in crew - colleges are adding it like crazy, and the team sizes are increasing, too. In the mid-80's, only about 25 D-1 NCAA schools offered it, and there were ~35 women per team. Now 86 offer it, and there are nearly 60 women per team. This is because crew is relatively cheap (only takes a few coaches + volunteers) and opens up a lot of slots for women.

So, no, I don't necessarily see this as "paving the way" for a men's team, unless this move brings Syracuse all the way to the correct ratio of male/female athletes.

BillCharlton

KeithK
Beyond the scholarship issues, the mere roster size of football (beyond the "active roster" is an entire regiment of players who are never going to see a down on the field that year) creates massive funding imbalances, not to mention the budgets for recruiting, coaching, medical care, etc.

Not only does football not create "massive funding imbalances," it actually produces funds at many universities.

"Many" is an interesting word. Rutgers won 10 games and a bowl last year and hemorrhaged money like a dotcom run by a CEO with a heroin addiction. Most schools lose money on football, and lose a lot. Football may be a revenue-generating sport, but rarely is it a profit generating sport.

The standard excuses about why football should be exempt rely on schools that are essentially semi-pro. Michigan's profits do not justify Ball State's exemption.

Wow, that was probably the most incisive and cogent analysis of anything I've ever read on this board.

(Maybe except for Hillel's lacrosse season preview.)

There are people who will argue until they're blue in the face that big time college football almost never makes money when you consider all of the institutional support for it (including capital expenditures and facilities). I'm not sure I believe them - I find it hard to believe that the better Big Ten or SEC schools don't rake in the profit from their football programs. But whatever.

I also find it very hard to believe that Michigan or Nebraska or Alabama wouldn stop making money if they reduced scholarships they way I suggested earlier. You'd have to thyink that this would lower the level of play so far that the many fans of these teams stop going to games, buying merchandise, etc. Wouldn't happen IMO.

Such a change could happen over time if a school unilaterally changed it's policies and became non-competitive as a result (see Ivy League). But not if everyone were on a level playing field.

KeithK
There are people who will argue until they're blue in the face that big time college football almost never makes money when you consider all of the institutional support for it (including capital expenditures and facilities). I'm not sure I believe them - I find it hard to believe that the better Big Ten or SEC schools don't rake in the profit from their football programs. But whatever.

Including the schools themselves. I mean, can you imagine a U president standing up and saying, "look, we made $20M off our football team last year, but we're going to raise ticket prices anyway!"? No - far better for them to use some creative accounting practices to show that the team is barely breaking even (or better yet, showing a small loss) so that they have excuses for continually increasing the revenue (and hidden profits) of the program, while maintaining the facade of amateurism.

Ugarte may be right. A few teams, not all the 41 major colleges, "rake in" the money. For every Notre Dame or USC, there's also

Ball State
Buffalo
Central Michigan
Eastern Michigan
Fresno State
University of Nevada, Reno
University of Akron
University of Toledo
Temple
Utah State
Virginia Poly
... etcetera (of the 41 NCAA bowl eligible teams)

I love to watch highest level college football or hoops. But I think of it as semi-pro, semi-gladiator sport. Some of the guys will go on to do well in life, and some just got used by the coaches and colleges. OTOH when you saw Cornell, Duke, Hopkins, and Delaware face off, it was sport at the highest level, played by people who have a life and are going places in their lives. If they practice twice as hard, lived in athletic dorms, had a GPA 1.0 points lower, and played lacrosse at a higher level, would it really be any more exciting that what we saw?

For what we saw this past weekend we should be thrilled that Cornell plays college sports the way it should be played. Duke, too, and Hopkins, and Delaware.

A message like Robb's has no place on a sports bulletin board. It's logical, reasoned, and worst of all, appears to be based on verifying and then citing facts.

I downloaded data on NCAA Division I-A football programs from the Office of Postsecondary Education (part of the Federal Department of Education) website that contradict Ugarte's assertions. These data are compiled from annual reports that all Division I-A schools (except for the Naval Academy and Air Force Academy) are required to submit to the Department of Education.

The table below shows the number and percentage of profitable institutions for the 2004-2005 season. Information that is more recent is not available in easily downloadable form, but I doubt that the numbers have changed significantly in the last two years.

Total Profitable 70 59.8%
Total Breakeven 7 6.0%
Total Unprofitable 40 34.2%

Total Institutions 117

BCS Profitable 56 86.2%
BCS Breakeven 1 1.5%
BCS Unprofitable 8 12.3%

Total BCS 65

Non-BCS Profitable 15 28.8%
Non-BCS Breakeven 5 9.6%
Non-BCS Unprofitable 32 61.5%

Total Non-BCS 52

At the bottom of the post is a pdf I made showing the profitability by school.

Most schools do not lose money on football. Most schools generate a profit, sometimes a huge profit. Forty-three of the schools made more than $5 million. For a BCS school, in fact, it is hard not to make a profit. It is much harder for non-BCS schools to make money, but approximately 38 percent were profitable or broke even. These data also show that the Ball States, Western Michgans, and Florida Atlantics of the world do lose large sums of money. Maybe such schools should seriously consider dropping football or moving down to a lower level of competition. If you cannot even generate $1 million in revenue, as with Ball State, you probably have no place in Division 1-A football. Harvard and Yale generated twice that much revenue.

BillCharlton
I downloaded data on NCAA Division I-A football programs from the Office of Postsecondary Education (part of the Federal Department of Education) website that contradict Ugarte's assertions.

Thanks for this. For the record, I was going off of my memory from when I studied this stuff closely - which would have been back in 1993. I imagine there are a lot more revenue sources and the real implementation of Title IX has curbed some of the worst excesses. I also wonder how much profit is required before you can say that the football program is "paying for" the non-revenue sports at the school. I imagine that many (if not most) of the football-profitable schools are still operating at considerable losses - though the schools with profitable basketball programs probably are.

Finally, I had no particular knowledge about Ball State's program. That they happen to be lose more money than Enron was a very strange coincidence.

ithacat
On the other hand, if SU's going to spend 35-50 million on a new facility...soft water or hard?

I would hope that they'd make it a soft-water facility, because, you know, it's tough to get clean in hard water and Syracuse, well, is a "hard-water town."

Where do the Ivy schools fall, in terms of profitability, compared to the D1A schools?

In revenue generation, the Ivies are at a disadvantage compared to D1 schools because, among other reasons, they attract small crowds at modest ticket prices and they do not have lucrative television and radio contracts. On the other hand, their expenses are low because they do not give athletic scholarships, they do not travel long distances, and they do not pay their coaches much. Attached is a pdf showing profitability by school.

One thing to keep in mind with these numbers is that schools may count as revenue contributions from alumni and others, institutional support, State or other government support, student activity fees, and any other revenues attributable to intercollegiate athletic activities. In other words, schools such as Harvard and Brown use funds from these sources to make athletics "revenue neutral," which is why they show a profit of zero. The other schools do not practice revenue neutral budgeting. This does not mean, however, that they do not include "general athletic" revenues in their football revenue.

Scersk '97

ithacat
On the other hand, if SU's going to spend 35-50 million on a new facility...soft water or hard?

I would hope that they'd make it a soft-water facility, because, you know, it's tough to get clean in hard water and Syracuse, well, is a "hard-water town."

ZEST!!

BillCharlton
Attached is a pdf showing profitability by school.

I find that really odd. Princeton, Penn, Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth and Yale all have athletics revenue between $1.56M and $1.98M; Cornell is at $634K and Columbia at $560K. Is that big gap between Cornell/Columbia and the range the other schools are in because all the other schools use the kind of accounting that you talked about, or do Cornell and Columbia take in significantly less money for some other reason?

Rather remarkable that revenue exactly equals expense at Harvard and Brown.

I suspect Harvard and Yale draw as many for "The Game" as Cornell for all of its home football games combined--and the ticket price is high.

One thing to keep in mind with these numbers is that schools may count as revenue contributions from alumni and others, institutional support, State or other government support, student activity fees, and any other revenues attributable to intercollegiate athletic activities. In other words, schools such as Harvard and Brown use funds from these sources to make athletics "revenue neutral," which is why they show a profit of zero. The other schools do not practice revenue neutral budgeting. This does not mean, however, that they do not include "general athletic" revenues in their football revenue.

Schools have considerable latitude in how they assign revenues to individual sports.

You are right about disparities in attendance. "The Game" drew 30 thousand in 2006. Below is a listing of the average 2006 home attendance by school:

YALE 18.5
HARVARD 15.5
PRINCETON 12.2
PENN 12.0
BROWN 6.5
DARTMOUTH 5.6
CORNELL 5.0
COLUMBIA 4.6

BillCharlton
You are right about disparities in attendance. "The Game" drew 30 thousand in 2006. Below is a listing of the average 2006 home attendance by school:

CORNELL 5.0

I'm surprised it was even this high.

BillCharlton

One thing to keep in mind with these numbers is that schools may count as revenue contributions from alumni and others, institutional support, State or other government support, student activity fees, and any other revenues attributable to intercollegiate athletic activities. In other words, schools such as Harvard and Brown use funds from these sources to make athletics "revenue neutral," which is why they show a profit of zero. The other schools do not practice revenue neutral budgeting. This does not mean, however, that they do not include "general athletic" revenues in their football revenue.

Schools have considerable latitude in how they assign revenues to individual sports.

You are right about disparities in attendance. "The Game" drew 30 thousand in 2006. Below is a listing of the average 2006 home attendance by school:

YALE 18.5
HARVARD 15.5
PRINCETON 12.2
PENN 12.0
BROWN 6.5
DARTMOUTH 5.6
CORNELL 5.0
COLUMBIA 4.6

If these are 2006 stats, then Yale stands to further outdraw Harvard in 2007 when the game (sorry, The Game) is back at Yale Bowl. If the game draws 30,000 then it ups the home team's season average by 2,000 to 3,000 fans and drops the visiting team's average that year by a similar amount. Maybe you should average attendance over a two-year cycle.

This is written by Ed Weaver of the Troy Record who has been known to get his facts mixed up, but buried in this article [www.troyrecord.com] is

And know this - Syracuse University will field a men's hockey team by 2011-12, if not one year sooner than that.

I have not heard that from anyone I know at SU that it is coming that soon. since they dont have a coach or even a facility to hold games for mens teams that seems awfully soon..

upperdeck
I have not heard that from anyone I know at SU that it is coming that soon. since they dont have a coach or even a facility to hold games for mens teams that seems awfully soon..

Maybe he meant a "men's field hockey team...."