EXCERPT: Football 1, University Budgets 0
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Of the 128 Division I football programs, only seven finish debt-free year after year, according to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
“At the nation’s most prominent universities, intercollegiate athletics have always played a dual role in campus life,” according to a Knight Commission report. “On the one hand, they are managed for the benefit of student-athletes. On the other, they inspire the interest and passions of thousands, if not millions, of fans. For most teams at most institutions, these roles can be reconciled. But in high-profile sports, tensions often surface between the core mission of universities and commercial values.”
Smith says that, in many cases, athletics drive the bus at schools classified for their research and scholarship.
But Dr. William Broussard, who has served as an athletics administrator for two small Division I schools, Northwestern State University and, most recently, Southern University, says the allure of playing at the Division I level is one that keeps teams trying to step up to the plate.
“NCAA distributions, allocated to support gender equity and academic support initiatives, translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of student-athlete success,” says Broussard. For Southern and other historically Black colleges in the Mideastern Atlantic Conference (MEAC) and Southwestern Atlantic Conference (SWAC), the numbers are even greater. On top of the broad NCAA distributions for which these schools are eligible, he adds, there are additional competitive grant programs for extra support for which 80 percent of the teams are eligible.
Revenue vs. profit
Broussard acknowledges that “many decry the HBCU pursuit of NCAA Division I excellence because of funding disparities which create competitive gulfs between them and PWIs,” but said “there are notable benefits to [the] continued pursuit” of competition at the Division I level.
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