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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:
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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.
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The ten public institutions spending the most on college sports are on pace to spend more than $250 million annually, on average, in 2020.
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Median athletics spending per athlete ranges from 4 to nearly 11 times more than the academic spending per student in the FBS conferences.
Restoring the Balance, the Knight Commission's blueprint for financial reform, offers three principles for strengthened accountability in intercollegiate athletics:
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Requiring public transparency of financial reports, including better measures to compare athletics spending to academic spending
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Rewarding practices that make academic values a priority
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Treating athletes as students first and foremost-not as professionals
Around these three principles, the Knight Commission offers several recommendations, including:
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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
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Withdraw championships eligibility for teams not on track to graduate at least half of their athletes
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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.
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Reallocate current revenues distributed for winning to fund the Academic-Athletics Balance Fund
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Examine scholarship offerings, such as a decrease of eight to ten football scholarships in the Football Bowl Subdivision
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Limit the number of non-coaching personnel assigned to specific sports
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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
Prominent higher education leaders have offered statements of support for Restoring the Balance. As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, "With this report, the Knight Commission has shown once again its steadfast commitment to protecting educational priorities and strengthening accountability in intercollegiate sports. I join the Knight Commission in calling for stronger eligibility standards for post-season play."
Visit restoringbalance.knightcommission.org to read Secretary Duncan's entire statement and to read statements from Molly Corbett Broad, president, American Council on Education; Dennis DeConcini, former U.S. Senator and member, University of Arizona Board of Regents; Rick Legon, president, Association of Governing Boards; and Peter Likins, chair, 2006 NCAA Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics.
We are proud to share these recommendations, and we hope that you will be supportive of them.
Sincerely,
Dr. William Kirwan, Chancellor, University System of Maryland
Co-Chairman, Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics
Dr. R. Gerald Turner, President, Southern Methodist University
Co-Chairman, Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics
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