Public schools competing in the Mountain West and Western Athletic conferences shell out an average of $1,177 and $718 per student, respectively, to subsidize their athletic programs, among the costliest subsidies in the NCAA's 120-school Football Bowl Subdivision, according to a new report.
These numbers are much larger than the per-student subsidies in the six power conferences enshrined in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and illustrate the financial inequities that abound in intercollegiate sports, according to the report's authors.
"Rich, famous and athletically well-known schools have only been trivially impacted at the institutional level by the explosion in [athletics] costs, while a significant number of schools that are, on average, poorer, less prestigious, and athletically more marginal have been clobbered," says the June 1 report by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The Mountain West, home to the University of Utah and Brigham Young University's sports programs, and the WAC, the stage for the Utah State Aggies, don't have access to lucrative revenue streams enjoyed by big-name conferences like the Big Ten, said report co-author Richard Vedder, CCAP's executive director. So schools in "wannabe" conferences are forced to tap their own resources, taxpayers and students in the mostly vain hope of competing with the nation's top football and basketball programs.
"It's coming at an awfully high cost," said Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor and American Enterprise Institute scholar. "I don't see it getting better. At some point it becomes a significant financial strain on the institutions. It's getting to be a luxury that we increasingly find we cannot afford."
The study could fuel the debate over reforming the BCS, which denies undefeated football teams from unfavored conferences, such the WAC's Boise State or the MWC's 2009 Texas Christian Horned Frogs and 2008 Utah Utes, a shot at a national title and the financial windfalls that come with it.
"This just shows why the BCS system is so unfair and why Utahns should be concerned about it," said Orrin Hatch, Utah's senior Republican senator, said in an e-mail. "No one is saying that every school should be guaranteed the same amount of revenue. But the system should, at the very least, provide equal revenue for equal performance."
Hatch noted that MWC and WAC teams have outperformed some of their BCS counterparts on the field and in terms of attendance and TV ratings in recent years.
"Yet, they have received only a fraction of the revenues paid to the other conferences," Hatch said. "This disparity has a negative impact on the schools, the students and, ultimately, the taxpayers."
MWC and WAC officials declined comment, as did the U. athletics department.
According to Vedder's data, USU spent $750 per student subsidizing sports in 2008-09 — the year before the school raised fees by $130 — and the U. spent $335.
Teresa Theurer, a Board of Regents member who represents the Logan area, said the state's governing board of higher education endorses institutions' judgment in supporting their athletic programs. She singled out USU for praise in the way it sought student support for last year's fee hike.
"They are difficult decisions, especially in tough budget times. I've attended enough Aggie basketball games and seen the excitement in the Spectrum to see that it's an important part of the community," said Theurer, a Logan resident.
Recent USU graduate Tyler Riggs, who campaigned against last year's fee hike, agrees that sports enriches the university experience, but wonders if the cost is skewing priorities.
"I understand you want to compete and have a Division I program. Look at the Big Ten or the Pac Ten: They have a much larger booster base, so they don't need the student subsidy," said Riggs, a business and journalism major headed to the U. for graduate school. "But when we're laying people off, furloughing faculty and raising tuition, at what point is it not worth it?"
Vedder said subsidizing sports teams in the hope of producing a national contender, as Boise State has done, is like buying lottery tickets to get rich. Sports is a money pit for Boise, which paid $651 per student last year.
Vedder's study, co-authored with Matthew Denhart, is based in part on USA Today's new database that breaks down athletic-program revenue streams by source for the 99 public schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Because the database tapped only public records, private schools like TCU and BYU were not included.
The CCAP crunched that data and expressed it in various ways that highlight the NCAA's uneven financial playing field. While a few schools make money off their high-profile teams, sports is a losing proposition for most, a situation that imposes what amounts to a "regressive tax" on schools that tend to be least able to pay, the center reported.
"These are subsidies that have to be paid by someone," Vedder said. "It forces tuition to go higher, or forces the quality of education to go lower."
In 2008-09, MWC and WAC schools covered 43 and 47.5 percent of their athletics costs, respectively, through student fees and institutional support, compared with the 3.6 percent among storied Big Ten teams such as Ohio State and Michigan State, according to the report. And these subsidies equal 17.3 percent of annual tuition collected at WAC schools and 15.5 percent at MWC schools, on average, versus less than 1 percent in the Big Ten, where sports subsidies are just $67 per student. USU's subsidy was 19 percent of tuition.
At the U., the athletics subsidy amounts to 5.41 percent of tuition and fees, compared with 41 percent at the University of Wyoming, which is on the high end of range in the MWC.
bmaffly@sltrib.com
