USA Today's report last week of athletic budgets at universities around the country raised some eyebrows in Mississippi.
The headlines told us Jackson State ($7.6 million), Alcorn State ($6.7 million) and Mississippi Valley State ($4.3 million), which all compete in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), all were among the lowest spenders in Division I. Valley ranked No. 228 of 230 schools, Alcorn No. 225, and JSU No. 220.
Meanwhile, Ole Miss' athletic revenue was highest among Mississippi universities at $110.5 million, followed by Mississippi State at $94.9 million.
Southern Miss's athletic budget checked in at $25.9 million.
Of course, everything is relative, and all the Mississippi schools were near the bottom of their respective conferences. JSU, Alcorn and Valley were all at or near the bottom of the SWAC. Ole Miss and State were among the lowest spenders in the SEC. And USM was next to lowest in Conference USA.
More figures: Texas A &M is the nation's highest athletic revenue producer at $194.4 million. Six of the top 10 and 10 of the top 20 highest athletic budgets in the nation were in the SEC (thank-you SEC Network).
And who knew that Old Dominion has by far the largest athletic budget in CUSA at $44.6 million? (I had no idea.)
Now then, let's really raise some eyebrows.
I have in my files a Clarion-Ledger sports section from June 6, 1989, when the newspaper reported on the athletic budgets of Mississippi's state-operated universities. For perspective purposes, you should know that in 1989, Brett Favre was a junior quarterback at Southern Miss, Rockey Felker was the football coach at Mississippi State and Warner Alford was the athletic director at Ole Miss.
The big news was that Ole Miss's athletic budget was the state's largest at – drum roll, please – $8.5 million. That's right: $8,500,000, or roughly $100 million less than it is today.
Hell, Hugh Freeze makes almost $5 million these days. State's budget was at $7.5 million, followed by USM at $4.9 million, JSU at $2.9 million, Alcorn at $1.3 million and MVSU at just less than a million.
Remember, this was less than three decades ago.
If my math is correct, the Ole Miss and Mississippi State athletic budgets are about 13 times larger than in 1989. Meanwhile, USM's is about five times larger, JSU's three times larger, and so on.
In other words, the rich are getting richer – and much faster.
And the poor are staying poor.
The June 6, 1989, story that accompanied those budget figures reported that then-USM baseball coach Hill Denson was getting a whopping 15.6 percent pay raise – all the way to nearly $37,000 a year. Meanwhile, MSU's Ron Polk, who had already been National Coach of the Year twice and been to the College World Series four times, topped the state's baseball coaches at just short of $50,000. Now, first-year coach Andy Cannizaro's four-year contract calls for more than 10 times that annually.
In 1989, then-MSU athletic director Larry Templeton made $75,000 a year. MSU's current athletic director, John Cohen, who was playing baseball at State in 1989, now reportedly makes $750,000, 10 times what Templeton made in '89.
Sure, there's been inflation, but that much?
No, the price of a new luxury car between now and 1989 has roughly doubled. So has the cost of a gallon of gas.
Coaches, at least those in the SEC, can afford plenty of both.
Rick Cleveland is a Jackson-based syndicated columnist. His email address is rcleveland@mississippitoday.org.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Rick Cleveland: Showing you the money
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12 comments:
One word. "BUBBLE"
And even though the black bears, under the direction of St. Beaver of Briarcrest Parking Lot, generate more revenue than any program in the state, they felt the need to cheat their way to success. Dark cometh for the confederates. Dark cometh.
I wish people would realize how asinine the whole business model of college sports has become. The NCAA spends millions trying to figure out if some 21 year old took 500 bucks from someone so he could go buy a case of beer or pay his cell phone bill while coaches and staff become millionaires building monuments to themselves.
The cost of Ole Miss all inclusive is around 25,000 a year I believe. Ole miss may have 400 athletes on scholarship a year. So the school spends more on the salaries of the football and basketball staff than is does on the total body of athletes.
AS ALWAYS---"IT'S ABOUT THE MONEY"---everything including education, church, medicine, law, oil, etc.---you name it.
Not just money, but TV money, is funding all of this revenue expansion. National TV has no interest in Div 1AA (FCS) football, and not much interest in Conf USA.
The only thing that stops this train will be continued viewer losses at ESPN. Fewer TV subscribers, fewer dollars from ESPN to the colleges.
Given the disparity with the athletic program budgets, and the history of how the HBCU athletic programs have ben decimated by "integration", perhaps HBCU's should explore a new athletics model where they actually pay their "student-athletes" their market value (think what Malik Newman would have made if he played over seas after high school, rather than hurt his stock by going to MSU). This would attract a higher caliber of player back to the HBCU's who once had the best athletes in the country competing for them. There is already an economist who is shopping this idea around.
https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/59zejz/the-plot-to-disrupt-the-ncaa-with-a-pay-for-play-hbcu-basketball-league
It makes sense, especially considering that the NCAA appears to be little more than rich, mostly white guys getting richer off of the bodies and talents of young mostly black athletes who play football and basketball.
The real inquiry should be: What have the students who generate all that money got for their efforts. One can easily see the huge difference in salary and profits the money schools have garnered. But, what difference has it meant for the student athletes they depend upon. Relatively speaking coaches and administrators have much more than doubled, tripled, quadrupled their take, yet they allow the NCAA, the SEC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, ACC, etc. to rake in all this money and hardly utter a peep about the relative poverty of the "kids" generating this bonanza. If the coach can make 10 times more money, the student ought to have 10 times more benefits. But that would be socialism, right?
Malik Newman would then be an average but paid basketball player.
Great God! Those knuckleheads over at Jackson State waste so much damn money! And they still want more. Jeez.
A college football coach in Mississippi makes more than the President of The United States---something is wrong with this---I've never seen a coach that was worth more than $200,000 not even at Ole Miss.
Larry Templeton owes State an apology and a lot of $$ back. What a joke of an AD, and I'm a State grad....
St. Beaver of Briarcrest Parking Lot
That's funny right there, I don't care who you are.
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