Describing the “compulsive, destructive overspending” by public universities on college athletics programs, most notably on football coaching severance pay, The Atlantic columnist Sally Jenkins quotes our CEO Amy Privette Perko and Commission member Kevin Blue, former athletics director at UC Davis, on the impact of “runaway expenditures” in a “zero-sum” game.
Jenkins cites data from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database to demonstrate spending decisions that in a “normal business” would be “irrational behavior.”
Jenkins emphasizes that campus leaders “crave federal help in curbing their reflexive spending,” citing a finding from Knight Commission/Elon University Poll national survey of Division I campus leaders where “nearly 7 in 10 respondents said that they favor national legislation that would limit how much they can spend on their athletics budgets.”
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