Zemek Blog - Money In College Football

Harvard, Yale, and other Ivy League schools are having to confront the size of their endowments... and they're not the college football heavyweights they used to be. It's time for today's pigskin powers to take a hint and reconsider for themselves the value of a dollar.

It is said that financial advisors insist on giving no more than 5 percent of one's overall assets to charitable or otherwise discretionary outlets. This makes a certain amount of sense for working people, but it doesn't make sense for philanthropy, which adheres to this principle. Neither does it make sense for America's universities and their athletic programs.

When Harvard and Yale sit on nine- or ten-figure endowments (before finally being prodded into action in recent weeks), it's hard to shake the deeply unsettling feeling--in the pit of one's stomach--that a business philosophy is carrying far too much weight at a place ostensibly devoted to learning.

Much as journalism is a profession not designed to make profits, so it also stands that academic institutions are not in existence to make money. No, a university is created to enrich minds, bodies and souls. When hundreds of millions of dollars lie dormant at Ivy League schools, causing gifted middle-class youngsters to be locked outside the schoolhouse gate, something is very wrong. College football's power center might not reside in the Ivy League the way it once did, but the sport still has something to learn from the scandal of oversized endowments that are only now beginning to be utilized.

When Nick Saban got hired by Alabama for a king's ransom roughly 14 months ago, some people defended the move as being a necessary expenditure in the service of the money-making football program. Given the size of Alabama's endowment, the move was supported in some corners of the college football world because it kept a certain financial pipeline alive in Tuscaloosa. This argument is not without merit, and from a cold business standpoint, it makes sense.

However, the view here is that while college football acts like a business (and will undeniably continue to do so), an ideal world would bring about a very different set of dynamics. In a more enlightened America, a readily available supply of endowment money would not lead universities to think they could open up their wallets to an unprecedented degree, just so they could snag the hottest coach to prop up the biggest cash cow on campus, King Football.

Yes, this is a lonely voice in the wilderness, but just like the prophets of the Bible, one must proclaim it in spite of--or perhaps, precisely because of--its lack of popularity or attractiveness. When all is said and done, our universities ought to view money as something that doesn't grow on trees. Even if boosters and endowments can readily replenish coffers, why not inhabit a different mindset where dollars are spent in relationship to urgent needs, not revenue centers?

Harvard and Yale are finally tapping into their endowments to open their doors to students from the middle class. Big-time football schools have an opportunity in future years to follow their Ivy League cousins and use their considerable financial holdings for projects much more urgent than the nuclear arms race for sexy coaches or souped-up facilities. It's time to spend each individual dollar as though it won't be easily replaced. Accordingly, each dollar spent by a university should be increasingly devoted to academics, not athletics.

Write that on a chalkboard 100 times if you need to, university presidents. Time to endow students, not sports, with even more of the dollars that sit in your endowments and reserves.