Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Assorted Links on the NCAA
Here is a post I wrote at Market Power from last October that has a little more information on Cal's equity seat rights package.
Jack Gillum at USA Today: "Schools Raising Fees to Keep Up with Cost of College Sports." Outside of the ivory tower, we call these things taxes. Via The Wiz of Odds, which has a bunch of other interesting links related to the pay of athletic directors that I touched on in this post.
David Henderson on the NCAA as a labor market cartel: "NCAA Fesses Up -- in Prime Time: The subsidized fix is in."
Ilya Somin writes "Against the NCAA Cartel" in which he discusses the Henderson post linked to above and calls for football and men's basketball players to get paid for their work.
I'm no fan of the minimum wage, but if some unpaid internships violate minimum wage legislation (via Greg Mankiw), how can not paying D1 football and men's basketball players not violate it as well?
The fact that athletic departments are treated as non-profits for tax purposes probably answers that question. But being non-tax for tax purposes does not preclude one, economically speaking, from seeking maximum profits. And when you think about it, athletic departments behave a lot like their professional brethren when it comes to setting ticket, concession, and souvenir prices and when it comes to hiring coaches.
Lastly, the Online Universities blog lists their "top 10 coaching scandals in college sports history." I don't see how the Baylor basketball scandal from 2002-2003 isn't ranked number 1. Thanks to Kaitlyn Cole for the link.
Labels: NCAA; college sports
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sweet Lew's Sweet Compensation Package
But Phil, you'll say, colleges are non-profit while the professional team owners do what they do for profit. Fair enough, but I'd counter that being a non-profit in terms of tax status only restricts what you do with excess income. It does not restrict your underlying motive. Moreover, colleges try to generate as much revenue as possible. Further, since most of their costs are fixed costs, as in the pros, maximizing revenue is the same as maximizing profits (or minimizing losses).
So when I see, for example, coaching salaries in the academy that look similar to those in the pros, I usually don't raise an eyebrow.
But this raised both of my eyebrows.
Lew Perkins, the University of Kansas athletic director, was the state’s highest-paid employee in 2007 at $646,281.
But that’s a paltry sum compared with what Perkins received in 2009 — $4.4 million.
Perkins’ pay is the equivalent of $85,000 a week — about 10 KU students’ average yearly tuition payments. What’s more, $4.4 million appears to place Perkins far beyond that of any athletic director in the nation.
According to the article, the next highest salary is the nearly $1 million paid to Florida's AD Jeremy Foley. Shoot, Perkins got paid more last year than KU men's basketball coach Bill Self last year, and AD's usually aren't in the same salary league as their football and basketball coaches. Where did KU get the money?
Jim Marchiony, associate athletic director at Kansas Athletics, said the more than $4 million required for Perkins’ compensation package in 2009 came from general Kansas Athletics revenue, including supporters’ donations, conference revenue, student fees and other sources. No specific fundraising effort was used to raise money for Perkins’ bonuses, he said.I don't blame Perkins for taking this kind of pay and he's done some good things at KU according to the KC Star. But $4.4 million seems like a steep price to pay for an AD, especially one that was apparently paid less than $150,000 at Connecticut. But like I said: nice pay if you can get it.
Labels: NCAA; college sports
Monday, March 15, 2010
NCAA Men's Basketball Postseason Roundup
- The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship. The "Big Dance." 65 teams in a single elimination "knockout" tournament spread over three weekends in March and April. Games are held at predetermined neutral sites across the country. The big economic news here is that this could be the last year of the much-loved 65 team format, which has been in place since 2001. The tournament had a 64 team format from 1985-2000. The NCAA generates about 90% of its operating revenue from the massive 13 year, $6 billion contract with CBS to televise this tournament. The NCAA/CBS contract is in year 10, and the NCAA has an opt-out clause following this year's tournament broadcast. Much speculation revolves around the NCAA exercising that option, putting the broadcast rights for future tournaments up for bid, and expanding the field to as many as 96 teams. A new auction and expanded field could substantially increase the value of the contract. I am a big fan of the 64/65 team format, and would hate to see it go. The NCAA seems to have a strong incentive to change the format. Stay tuned.
- The National Invitational Tournament. The second tier postseason tournament. 32 teams in a single elimination "knockout" tournament. The finals are played in Madison Square Garden in New York City. Founded in 1938, the NIT is actually older than the NCAA tournament, and for a long time it was more prestigious. The NCAA has owned the NIT since 2005, when it purchased the rights to operate the tournament for 10 years from the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA), a consortium of NYC colleges, for $56.5 million. The NIT and NCAA Tournament do not compete for teams; NCAA rules prohibit a team for turning down an NCAA bid for the NIT. Interestingly, Marquette University did just that in 1970, when Coach Al McGuire turned down the NCAA bid to play in the NIT closer to home. Marquette won the NIT that year. Most NIT games are televised on ESPN.
- The College Basketball Invitational Tournament. A sixteen team tournament operated by the Gazelle Group, a sports marketing company. Now in its third year of operation, the CBI has a single elimination format until the championship round, which is a best of three series between the last two teams. CBI games are held on campus. Up to 11CBI games will be carried on HDNet, an all hi-def channel that is available on many satellite and cable providers around North America. There is some anecdotal evidence that the CBI has tried to compete with the NIT for teams, but it has not been successful. Participants:Akron (24-10), Boston University (19-13), College of Charleston (21-11), Colorado State (16-15), Duquesne (16-15), Eastern Kentucky (20-12), George Washington (16-14), Wisconsin Green Bay (21-12), Hofstra (19-14), Indiana State (17-14), IUPUI (24-10), Morehead State (23-10), Oregon State (14-17), Princeton (20-8), Saint Louis (20-11), and Virginia Commonwealth (22-9).
- The CollegeInsider.com Tournament. A sixteen team single elimination tournament operated by, I think, the people who run the CollegeInsiders.com web site. This tournament is in its second year of operation. As best as I can tell, the CIT has no television coverage, but games will be streamed on Fox College Sports broadband. There appears to be quite a bit of competition between the CBI and the CIT for teams. A recent newspaper report on the CIT indicates that the Athletic Director at Marshall University, the #1 seed in the CIT, was offered bids to both tournaments and "struck a deal" with the CIT that included the possibility of playing 4 home games. The CIT financial model is to charge each home team $30,000 per game to participate and allow the home team to keep all gate revenues. participants: Fairfield (22-10), George Mason (17-14), Western Carolina (22-11), Marshall (23-9), South Dakota (22-9), Creighton (16-15), Harvard (21-7), Appalachian State (22-10), Middle Tennessee State (19-13), Missouri State (20-12), Portland (21-10), Northern Colorado (24-7), Pacific (20-11), Loyola Marymount (18-14), Southern Mississippi (20-13), and Louisiana Tech (23-10).
There is only one team from a "Big 6" BCS conference in the CBI and CIT: Oregon State. Three BCS teams participated in the 2008 CBI (Washington, Cincinnati and Virginia), and three participated in the 2009 CBI (Stanford, Oregon State and St. John's). The University of Michigan ruled out participating in the CBI before bids were announced. No BCS team participated in the 2009 CIT. Unlike the NIT, these two tournaments allow participating home teams to keep a large fraction of gate revenues. which would seem to appeal to major conference teams that have large arenas and large numbers of fans and students.
Labels: college basketball, NCAA; college sports
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Should the NCAA Expand Its Men's Tourney?
The NCAA didn't stand pat. Instead, it created a play-in game whose winner gets the honor of being squished by the top dog in the tourney.
One of the tradeoffs the NCAA needs to consider is the simultaneous increase and decrease in interest this would cause. The expanded tournament would redistribute the bubble, putting some teams on it and taking others off it. Is the net marginal effect on fan interest positive?
In addition, this proposal would lead to a basketball version of grade inflation. While getting an A is great for the individual tudent, it's not necessarily true if everyone gets A's (the fallacy of composition). A given grade no-longer reflects the willingness and ability of a student to do quality work. As Syndrome said in The Incredibles, when everyone's super, no-one is.
Similarly, the more teams that get into playoffs, the less interesting the playoffs become. This also has to be accounted for when thinking about the net marginal effect on overall fan interest.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Arn Tellem on the NCAA Ban on Advisors
Of all the injustices heaped on college athletes, the most draconian may be the NCAA's ban on the use of attorneys during contract talks with professional teams. Athletes and their parents are allowed to get advice about proposed contracts only if their advisors don't represent them openly in negotiations. Athletes and their advisors can discuss the merits of a deal, but to maintain eligibility at NCAA schools, the advisors may not act as a go-between or be present during bargaining sessions or have any direct contact with the team on the athlete's behalf.
The rule is intended to keep agents away from amateur athletes. By rendering agents powerless, it effectively turns them into potted plants. But if you're hammering out a deal with someone, isn't it your prerogative to get professional advice? Absolutely, wrote an Ohio judge in a 2008 judgment against the NCAA. He likened the rule to "a patient hiring a doctor, but the doctor is told by the hospital board and the insurance company that the doctor cannot be present when the patient meets with a surgeon because the conference may improve his patient's decision-making power."
Arn Tellem is a sports agent and surely has a dog in the fight with the NCAA on this matter, but he makes some excellent points regarding the rights of athletes negotiating with pro teams. It's a bit like going to gun fight with a knife handle but no blade.
Labels: NCAA; college sports
Monday, December 14, 2009
Division III Schools Look at the Academic Performance of Their Athletes
Despite these facts, athletes still they still have incentives to spend a lot of their time on their sports at the expense of their classes. Now some D3 schools are concerned that athletics, to too much of an extent, are trumping academics:
They play for the love of the game, not with the hope of landing a pro contract. Without athletic scholarships, many even pay their own way to school.What's a little ironic is that the University of Chicago famously dropped its football program back in the 1930's because of fears that athletics would trump academics. But even at the D3 level, student-athletes, coaches, and administrators feel the pressure to win. Just because the spotlight is dimmer in D3 doesn't mean those incentives aren't very real.The notion of student-athletes as students first is integral to Division III, the NCAA's largest classification. But a growing body of research shows a considerable gap in classroom performance between Division III athletes and their counterparts in the overall student body.
Update: TSE comments are usually thoughtful and enlightening, but IMHO there are especially great comments to this post. Dennis Coates makes a great point about the athlete's behavior being utility-maximizing. Since there are no athletic scholarships and the D3 students attend school on their own dime, why should schools be so vigilant about how they spend their time? If I attend a D3 school and I particularly like the History of Western Civ, is it bad for the college if I spend more time studying my Western Civ at the expense of, say, Money and Banking when I'm footing my own bill? Similarly, if I particularly like playing football, is it bad for the college if I spend more time studying my playbook than I do studying my Chemistry?
Update 2: It's been argued that a well-rounded education is one of mind as well as body. Taken at face value, if a student decides that his/her best use of time is to focus on fitness of body at the expense of "fitness of mind", is this a bad thing in all cases?
Labels: Division 3, intercollegiate athletic success, NCAA; college sports
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Report: Lower Ticket Prices for Women's Basketball is Due to Institutional Sexism
From the Chronicle of Higher Ed.:
"Colleges charge a premium for admission to see males play, even when women's basketball teams are ranked as among the very best performers in the nation," write the authors, Laura Pappano and Allison J. Tracy, both of the Wellesley Centers for Women. By charging less for admission to highly ranked women's games, the authors say, athletics departments engage in "institutional discrimination that is camouflaged as sensible economic practice."
The report analyzed ticket prices at every level, from single-game to season tickets, at 292 Division I colleges. The results showed that ticket prices for women's games lagged far behind those for men's games at the same institution at all of the top 25 women's basketball programs in the country—even at colleges where the men's team ranked lower than the women's team.
Here is the abstract to the report.
Tickets to college sports—and men’s and women’s Division I college basketball in particular—may appear on the surface no different than tickets members of the public may buy to attend professional sporting events. But unlike professional franchises, colleges are non-profit organizations and, in many cases, public institutions. Decisions around ticket prices do not reflect an actual marketplace, but internal calculations and decisions that necessarily reflect a value placed on the event by the institution. This distinction is critical because previous research shows that lower-priced events are perceived as lower quality and less worth watching or attending. Our review of ticket prices for men’s and women’s Division I college basketball for the 2008-2009 season considered entry fees charged by 292 institutions at various seating levels, including season ticket packages and single game tickets. Our results showed significant gender gaps at every pricing and seating level with colleges charging a premium for male play. This gap persisted even among teams identified by the NCAA as top-ranked women’s teams with large fan followings. Analysis of attendance figures further showed that the gender differential in price across schools is not accounted for by differences in attendance. Because athletics, and particularly college basketball, have an increasingly prominent cultural profile, the practice of effectively de-valuing women on the court has implications off the court as well. The results support the broader contention that women athletes—as women in traditionally male arenas—continue to face institutional discrimination that is camouflaged as sensible economic practice.
I do not doubt their findings, but I wonder if they took into consideration something: that basketball fans are more willing to buy men's tickets than women's tickets, and not because of sexist attitudes. Perhaps, just perhaps, sports fans find men's games, on average, more exciting to watch than women's games.
I wonder if the authors asked themselves this question: why would those in athletic departments be willing to "leave money on the table" to feed their sexist attitudes? They note themselves that top-ranked programs tend to charge less for women's games than men's games. If fans are willing and able to pay the premium, why aren't they charged the premium?
One "solution", if you want to call it that, would be to force all colleges to charge exactly the same price for men's and women's ball (and to not set lower prices for men's games). Then let's see what happens to attendance at women's games.
Here's Stacey Brook with a similar take that it is the demand side of the market that the authors of the paper are ignoring.
Cross-posted at Market Power
Labels: college basketball, discrimination, NCAA; college sports, ticket demand, ticket pricing
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Post-season college baseball & economic impact
As usual, however, the dismal scientist doesn't see that there is much to crow about in these figures. Some fans who bought a t-shirt at the regional are likely to wear it to next fall's football game. The purchases in an otherwise dull sporting period for FSU substitute from the much larger mass of purchases that stem from the crowds at home football games. Once again, the unseen is more difficult to detect than "the seen." The same goes for most of the po' boy sandwiches sold last weekend. Some of those dollars were not spent in Tallahassee grocery stores, Tallahassee restaurants more distant from the stadium, and locations in Florida from where some FSU fans traveled. Unseen, and hard to measure, but doubtless a significant offset.
The largest figure mentioned in the article is the $102,000 that FSU bid to get next weekend's super-regional (the bid for the last weekend's regional was $92,000). As stated by FSU's sports information director, any sales by the University over and above the bid are kept by FSU, and the NCAA collects the bid amount, if accepted. Now, if you are Florida State and interested in gaining national television exposure by competing, and winning in the NCAA championship, you will have to take into account the value of this exposure, and the fact that Arkansas, their competitor for the super-regional, is interested in the same thing. Competitive bidding should push bid prices to a point where the expected profit (inclusive of the value of exposure) in increasing the bid falls to zero. How much does that leave FSU?
The stadium at Florida States "seats" about 6500 (at some venues, staff, the grounds crew, and even the ballplayers are counted as those in attendance, so a hard count of actual paying customers is not easy to come by). Tickets are sold as both singles and as a block for the entire tournament. At Clemson's regional last weekend, the tournament block cost $70 for the seven scheduled games. (Note: Clemson also "seats" about 6500, and reported attendance of 6217 for Monday's championship contest, after two competitors, Alabama and Tennesee Tech had been eliminated. No doubt Alabama's fans were long gone by then.) Assuming a sell-out and comparable prices, gross ticket sales would be about $455,000. Subtract the NCAA's fee, the marginal costs of cleanup, staffing, groundskeeping, and umpiring, and a rough guesstimate is that FSU might have cleared between $200,000 and $300,000 on ticket sales. Add some additional profit from concessions, perhaps a bucks or two per attendee (as opposed to tickets sold, as FSU only played three games en route to their championship), and perhaps the larger figure is the closer to the truth.
The bottom line is that the NCAA collects a nice chunk of change for lending its brand to the sixteen regional and eight super-regional contests during this two week period: something on the order of $2.4 million. (TV revenue should be tacked on to this). The hosting schools, depending on ticket sales, might bring in enough net revenue to cover the costs of the baseball season, which in the past has not been a revenue-generating sport. The food and t-shirt sales are nice for a few local vendors, but small potatoes in the larger scheme of things.
Labels: economic impact, NCAA; college sports
Friday, May 29, 2009
Turning pro early, in Europe
Institutions change slowly, but the improvement in world basketball is a long term trend that is plain as day. College basketball has imported top foreign talent for some time, but economic forces imply that the flow will reverse. I doubt college basketball will soon mirror college soccer (where the best talent flows to the money centers fairly early, and skips college), but that is the direction it is headed.
Labels: college basketball, NCAA; college sports
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
CBO Study on Tax Preferences for College Sports
Athletic departments in NCAA Division I schools derive a considerably larger share of their revenue from commercial activities than do other parts of the universities.Congress has been looking in to the commercialization of intercollegiate athletics recently, which prompted the study. Sen. Charles Grassley is quoted in this story, whining about the problem and the study, presumably since it throws cold water on Congress' ambition to alter the nature of college sports by threatening to change their tax treatment. I think the CBO study (get it here) is a useful source of facts and analysis on the issue, with informative tables on revenue sources and estimated profitability of sports programs at the 164 D1 institutions. Recommended.
In the case of Division IA schools (a subset of schools in Division I that meet NCAA requirements for football programs), 60 percent to 80 percent of athletic departments’ revenue comes from activities that can be described as commercial. That proportion is seven to eight times that for the rest of the schools’ activities and programs, suggesting that their sports programs may have crossed the line from educational to commercial endeavors. Revenue from commercial activities accounts for a much smaller share of athletic department revenue (20 percent to 30 percent) for schools in the rest of Division I.
Nonetheless, removing the major tax preferences currently available to university athletic departments would be unlikely to significantly alter the nature of those programs or garner much tax revenue even if the sports programs were classified, for tax purposes, as engaging in unrelated commercial activity. As long as athletic departments remained a part of the larger nonprofit or public university, schools would have considerable opportunity to shift revenue, costs, or both between their taxed and untaxed sectors, rendering efforts to tax that unrelated income largely ineffective.
Labels: government, NCAA; college sports
Friday, May 08, 2009
Another College Football Player Takes a Stab at the NCAA
Former Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller is suing EA Sports and the NCAA, saying the video-game maker wrongly uses the names and likenesses of athletes and the NCAA sanctions the practice.Here is the class action complaint. The complaint notes that in EA Sports NCAA football video games, almost every player on a college roster has a corresponding video game character with the same jersey number, position, and physical characteristics. In fact, page 5 of the complaint shows the player information for Kent State's #6 and notes how similar that character is to Kent State football player Eugene Jarvis. The complaint argues this is not simply random.Keller's lawsuit was filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco as a class-action, suing on behalf of all college athletes depicted in the NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball video games made by EA Sports.
Rob Carey of Phoenix, Keller's attorney, contends EA Sports profits from using the names and likenesses of players. The lawsuit would bar EA Sports from using the names and likenesses and seeks undetermined compensation for athletes who have been portrayed in the video games.
...NCAA bylaws prohibit the use of the names and likenesses of athletes for commercial purposes. NCAA spokesman Bob Williams said in a statement Thursday that the NCAA is confident it will be dismissed from the case."Our agreement with EA Sports clearly prohibits the use of names and pictures of current student-athletes in their electronic games," he said. "We are confident that no such use has occurred."
Though names are not visible on player jerseys in the video games, the lawsuit contends EA Sports "intentionally circumvents the prohibitions on utilizing student-athletes' names by allowing gamers to upload entire rosters, which include players' names and other information, directly into the game in a matter of seconds."
No kidding?
This is another in a long line of fights in sports over who owns the rights to playing talent, player likenesses, etc. and who, thus, gets to profit from it. These sorts of issues will continue to crop up as long as big time college sports generate millions of dollars for universities off the sweat of their athletes.
Labels: monopsony, NCAA; college sports
Friday, May 01, 2009
NFL Should Reimburse Colleges -- Say What?
In other words, based on the approximately 361 athletes who will be drafted by professional leagues in 2009 it can be reasonably estimated that the total cost of putting those students through four years of college at the schools that produce most of the professional athletes is around $26 million. That's only 53% of last year's combined salaries for Ben Roethlisberger and Jason Kidd, the two highest-paid players in pro football and basketball, respectively, to have played college ball. And it's only 62% of the minimum salary the Detroit Lions are guaranteeing this year's bonus baby -- quarterback Matthew Stafford of the University of Georgia -- over six years.
Here's an idea for a stimulus package for America's colleges: the NFL and the NBA and MLB should provide a full, four-year scholarship to each school for every player they draft from that college.
First of all, this pays a debt, or at least part of it. The cost of providing a scholarship for every player drafted would still be just a fraction of what it costs to train and care for each athlete.
So, if I'm getting this right, Tennessee and Michigan, should be paid back for charging $50 per ticket (plus seat license fees) for their 100,000+ fans per game while pocketing the player's share (say 65%) of this take? We even get a quote from English professor qua sports econ non-expert "expert" Murray Sperber.
Ultimately, the "logic" here relies on the oft-repeated distortions about college athletics. (Let me first take sports that are not big revenue producers and lower tier schools out of the discussion. Those probably don't make much financial sense, but are a matter for a different post.) I'm interested in the mid and upper tier producers, where most pro players play in college, and yet including programs mentioned over the past 20 years as "losing money. These have included the likes of Notre Dame and Michigan (in a Business Week piece). Along with some others, I've tried in various ways and venues to dispel the mistakes in thinking about college athletics for major revenue sports at the mid and major producers. Here's a 2005 TSE post on the subject. These are the key problems:
- Costs are expensed at "maximum list price" -- not at incremental costs of instructing and feeding players. At selective private schools near full capacity, this incremental expense is, at most, the price an average foregone student would pay and well below max list price. At public institutions with excess capacity, this incremental expense is very low. Most of the costs being included in the $140,000 and $65,000 figures reported in the article are fixed costs that would not vary if the program is jettisoned.
- Revenues may not include transfers for grants-in-aid made from college athletic foundations to general funds. In addition, many other revenues due to athletics are not attributed to athletics. Merchandise sold is a common one. The "M" caps seen everywhere in the late 1980s or early 1990s were not because of stellar physicists or economists at Michigan.
- The lack of reported surpluses and even deficits means nothing. These are not-for-profit entities. Revenues flow back into expenses (whether in the athletic department or the general fund through subtle transfers not reflected in official NCAA data). A NCAA-commissioned February 2009 report passed to me by our President of the "Empirical Effects of College Athletics" makes a bulleted statement there is a dollar-for-dollar relationship between revenues and expenses -- that is, not net revenues from athletics. For a not-for-profit, this is akin to saying that raindrops are wet.
I would be more than happy to take on the athletic programs at Michigan, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Syracuse, USC, ... and the supposed deficits, pay the school a royalty of $2 million per year and lease facilities at a market rate. If I don't have to pay players, my personal net worth will be a lot higher after 10 years than before even if Murray Sperber thinks otherwise.
Labels: NCAA; college sports
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
More March Madness!
Things got a bit messier last year, with the debut of the College Basketball Invitational (CBI), a 16 team tournament sponsored by a sports marketing company that tried to steal a few teams from the NIT. I had a post about the CBI last year. The CBI is back again this year, although the games will be televised on HDNet, which appears to be available only on DirecTV and Dish Network. I suppose that is better than YouTube or streaming web video. The CBI field includes St. John's (16-17), Richmond (18-15), Vermont (23-8), Green Bay (22-10), College of Charleston (26-8), Troy (19-12), Houston (21-11), Oregon St. (13-17), Buffalo (21-11) , Wichita St. (16-16), Northeastern (18-12), Wyoming (19-13), Boise St. (19-12), Stanford (18-13), UTEP (19-12), and Nevada (21-12). Yes, you read that correctly: 13 and 17 Oregon State is dancin' Bay-Bee!
This year we have yet another new entrant into the market, the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament. This is another 16 team tournament; the games will be televised on Fox College Sports. The inaugural field includes Austin Peay (19-13), Belmont (19-12), Bradley (18-14), The Citadel (20-12), Drake (17-15), Evansville (17-13), Idaho (16-15), James Madison (19-14), Kent State (19-14), Liberty (22-11), Mount St. Mary’s (19-13), Oakland (22-12), Old Dominion (21-10), Pacific (19-12), Portland (19-12) and Rider (19-12).
There are now 129 postseason basketball tournament participants. A few notes on the field:
- Higest ranked (by Sagarin) teams staying home: Cincinnati, NC State, Seton Hall, Vanderbilt, Iowa, Mississippi. Power conference teams snubbed by the NIT.
- Highest ranked (by Sagarin) CBI participants: Stanford, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Houston
- Highest ranked (by Sagarin) CollegeInsider.com team: Portland, Old Dominion
- Why are they playing: The Citadel (193 in Sagarin) in CollegeInsider.com field; Troy (171 in Sagarin) in the CBI field. Oregon State (12-17, ranked 114 in Sagarin) in CBI field.
Hat Tip: Brian Soebbing
Labels: college basketball, NCAA; college sports
Sunday, March 08, 2009
College Basketball Referee Compensation
But conditions in this labor market appear to be changing. Hall, and some other college basketball referees, are now able to make a full time living as referees. According to the article, the BCS conferences now pay as much as $2,000 per game, plus first class airfare and other travel expenses. Hall works aboout 100 games per college basketball season. You can do the math to figure out an estimate of his before tax compensation. He left his day job at a broadcase software firm a few years ago.
The column contains a couple of interesting economic tidbits. First, as we would expect, the non-BCS conferences have had to increase their compensation for referees. Second, again as we would expect, this switch from part-time to full-time employment seems to have led to an increase in the quality of officiating, and an increase in the demand for the services of the full time officials. According to Feinstein:
Guys such as Hall and East Coast officials Jim Burr, Tim Higgins and Mike Kitts (among others) are in so much demand these days that the second-tier leagues have taken to scheduling more games on Tuesdays and Thursdays in order to get them to work.There's a lot of interesting economics going on here. For example, the implication about the relative quality of officiating has interesting consequences. The people who organize basketball contests appear to face heterogeneity in referee labor inputs and a quality-price trade off in that labor market. The move to full-time referees -- specialization -- and the associated increase in compensation, is a market-based solution to this particular problem. I wonder how bad the information asymmetries are in the market for college basketball referees? (Feel free to insert your own Tim Donaghy comment here).
"It has gotten to the point where you schedule with referees in mind," said Doug Elgin, the commissioner of the Missouri Valley. "The good news is we can get those guys on their off nights from the BCS leagues. The bad news is we have to pay them BCS prices. Obviously we think it's worth it."
Labels: compensation, NCAA; college sports, referees
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Stanford May Cut Back in Athletics
Stanford’s athletic department is projecting a $5 million loss in revenue over the next three years and is considering cutting staff and eliminating some sports teams, The Associated Press has learned.Times are tough all over. Because Title IX essentially puts a cost on men's teams that is not placed on women's teams, how will Title IX be used if it comes to cutting teams?The school is expected to decide in the next 30 to 60 days on staff cuts, a Stanford employee familiar with the budget issues told the AP on condition of anonymity because the person is not authorized to discuss the shortfall.
The person also said Tuesday it wasn’t clear which teams, if any, would be considered for elimination—and it likely wouldn’t be until next season so at the earliest in the fall.
“That’s the last thing they want to consider. They don’t want it to affect student-athletes,” the person said, noting another department was looking to eliminate 50 positions from a staff of about 140. “We do have some serious budget problems. We’re looking at other ways (to save).”
Reducing travel costs also was being discussed.
Labels: NCAA; college sports, Title IX
Monday, December 08, 2008
Southern Football
I think there is something to the argument made in the WSJ article, but the case is way overstated.
First, the focus in the article is on the success of the SEC over the last decade or so. Southern football extends outside the SEC and successful programs on the national stage, other than Alabama, also extend back in time. There is no doubt that Alabama is arguably the most prominent to have long sustained success. However, outside the SEC, Clemson was pretty good, both North and South Carolina (when it was in the ACC and after moving to the SEC) have had success, and Miami and Florida State have pretty rich traditions of success on the national stage. And, as commentators on the WSJ website note, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma are traditionally considered southern schools and they also have traditions of success dating back decades. SMU also was quite a powerhouse until it got the death penalty for violating the cartel rules Brian mentioned in "Indiana through the looking glass".
Toward the end, the article turns to the cultural significance of college football in the south. Not to put too fine a point on it, but until the late 1960s/ early 1970s, when the Saints, Falcons, and Dolphins came into existence, there were no professional football teams in the south outside of Texas. The St. Louis Cardinals were the most "southern" of the professional franchises. Consequently, football fans in the south became avid college fans even if they had never attended the schools. Combine that with the fact that most southern states had only one or two "big time" programs and it makes sense that fans would rally around the University of Alabama, or the University of Georgia, etc. as the focus of their football allegiance. That translates into an incredible degree of financial support from boosters so that official coach salaries are often relatively small portions of their compensation. Contrast that with the state I grew up in, New York. There were three professional football teams and, to my knowledge, only one division one university team, certainly only one of any note, Syracuse University, a private institution. (For the record, I grew up a fan of the Johnny Unitas-led Baltimore Colts despite living 50 miles from Buffalo.) I suspect the typical New Yorker had, and continues to have, far more interest in one of the state's three pro football teams than in any collegiate team in the state. It is unlikely that any of New York state's public universities has enough booster support to offer a coach a million dollars on top of his university salary. I don't have the figures, but I am confident no college or university coach at a New York state college or university makes more than the governor. (Jim Boeheim, men's basketball coach at Syracuse, is the one coach likely to be that well compensated.)
If the article is correct, the changes that have wrought the SEC dominance are the seeds of SEC decline. More population and greater wealth will foster the development of more schools with aspirations to be "big time". As that happens, it will be more difficult for the schools to get the best recruits and they will no longer have overwhelming superiority in talent. Indeed, I have already heard discussions linking the decline of Miami and Florida State to the competition for recruits from two newly successful programs, at USF and UCF.
The bottom line to me is that the SEC is riding a wave of success fueled in some small part by the economic growth and demographic changes of the past few decades, but this likely will wane and in a few years we'll be seeing articles titled "What Has Happened to SEC Football?"
Labels: college football, NCAA; college sports
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
NCAA Tourney: Big v. Big, Mid. v. Mid
Big v. Big: 7I've included in the Big v. Mid category matchups that fall on the margin such as Michigan St. v. Temple or Oklahoma v. St. Joseph. Even doing so, 11 of the 16 place teams from similar conferences against each other. The 2007 tourney arrangement is similar.
Mid v. Mid: 4
Big v. Mid 5
Why would the Selection Committee go this route?
Consumer demand? One of the attractions of the tournament is pitting David v. Goliath. That doesn't make a lot of sense. After all, mid-level teams can and do face off in home-away series in the regular season. The same holds for big conference teams. Maybe there are some natural rivalries in the mix that might spark more interest. Yet, nothing really jumps out from that perspective.
Increasing chances of advancement for big conference teams? It ensures mid majors reach the second round, but does it reduce their chances of going farther? I calculated the likelihood of advancing to the sweet 16 a couple of different ways -- using historical winning percentages from seedings. There was no clear advantage one way or the other. Pitting mids against mids ensures that both teams cannot reach the sweet sixteen, but the same effect holds for the big conferences.
Labels: NCAA; college sports
