According to the NCAA News, the Southern Conference announced it will put in place cost-containment measures for the 2009-10 academic year. The measures include reducing conference baseball series to two days from three and reducing the number of qualifying teams for select conference tournaments and other cuts. The top four teams in men’s and women’s…
The economic recession is making creating tough decisions for many of the college athletic departments in the nation’s top competitive division, NCAA’s Division I-Football Bowl Subdivision. An article by the Columbia Daily Tribune noted that the University of Missouri-Columbia is cutting travel costs, scheduling contests closer to home, reducing recruiting visits, and considering other cost…
A Northern Arizona University humanities professor is calling on the institution to dissolve its athletics department in lieu of pending budget cuts to academic departments. According to the Arizona Daily Sun, Dr. Marcus Ford lists athletics along with several other programs that he states are not critical to the central mission of a university —…
“Many observers believe this invasion of commercialism appears to be inevitable given new technologies that are intersecting with consumer demand for interactivity and reality-based gaming. If college athletes’ names and likenesses are to be used in commercial products, advertisements or fantasy sports games, there must be a way to balance the inequities by providing some…
A recent article in the Indianapolis Star identified some of the cost pressures facing college athletic departments in the state of Indiana. Purdue University and Indiana University are adjusting the price for tickets to their football and men’s basketball games. In some instances, travel costs are also being trimmed in an effort to save money.…
A recent commentary by Malcom Moran was published in NCAA’s Champion magazine. Moran discussed the issue of professionalism encroaching on intercollegiate athletics, including the profluence of college fantasy sports leagues criticized by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. His commentary states, “if Fantasy Leagues and videos games are going to extend the use of (athletes’)…
At the 2009 NCAA Convention, Middle Tennessee State University President Sidney McPhee and University of Georgia Athletics Director Damon Evans were the focus of discussion on institutional reforms to improve the academic performance of their athletic programs. According to the NCAA News, McPhee discussed his support of academic reform proposals and the implementation of Academic…
A recent report in the Columbia State Herald looked at assistant football coaching salaries in the Southeastern Conference, and raised concerns that they are rapidly increasing at a rate similar to that of head coaches. The concern of rising pay to assistant coaches has led to schools protecting themselves by creating buyout clauses similar to…
In an effort to provide more detailed academic data about college head coaches in all NCAA sports, the association has approved the decision to compile individual Academic Progress Rates (APR) for coaches. The data are intended to illustrate how well their players have fared in the classroom. The APR reports are intended for use by…
The Chronicle of Higher Education investigated the amount of fundraising for athletic endowments at the nation’s largest higher education institutions and raised the issue of priorities in relation to academic fundraising in the current economic downturn. The report stated that last year, 54 of the biggest sports programs brought in a total of $1.1-billion in…