Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values, and the Future of College Sports

Link here for statements of support from: Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education; Molly Corbett Broad, President, American Council on Education; Former U.S. Senator Dennis DeConcini and Member, Arizona Board of Regents; Richard D. Legon, President, Association of Governing Boards; Peter Likins, President Emeritus, University of Arizona

June 17, 2010

Today, the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics is releasing its report, Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values, and the Future of College Sports.

In this report, the Knight Commission proposes recommendations for financial reform in college sports against the backdrop of escalating athletics spending, shrinking state budgets and institutional endowments, and conference realignment.

As you know, over the past 18 months we have been examining the business of college sports. The findings from our research are startling:

• Median athletics spending at public institutions in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) has grown nearly 38 percent from 2005 to 2008, while academic spending grew only 20 percent.
• The ten public institutions spending the most on college sports are on pace to spend more than $250 million annually, on average, in 2020.
• Median athletics spending per athlete ranges from 4 to nearly 11 times more than the academic spending per student in the FBS conferences.

1. Requiring public transparency of financial reports, including better measures to compare athletics spending to academic spending
2. Rewarding practices that make academic values a priority
3. Treating athletes as students first and foremost-not as professionals

• Make public the financial reports filed by each institution with the NCAA, and adding to these reports measures to compare athletics spending to academic spending
• Withdraw championships eligibility for teams not on track to graduate at least half of their athletes
• Tie revenue distribution more closely to academic values by creating a new revenue distribution fund called the Academic-Athletics Balance Fund. This fund will reward institutions for teams achieving academic success and for maintaining an appropriate balance between their academic and athletics investments.
• Reallocate current revenues distributed for winning to fund the Academic-Athletics Balance Fund
• Examine scholarship offerings, such as a decrease of eight to ten football scholarships in the Football Bowl Subdivision
• Limit the number of non-coaching personnel assigned to specific sports
• Implement changes that treat athletes as students first and foremost, including reducing the length of seasons and number of events, and preventing the use of athletes' identities to promote commercial entities or products