Is it USC or Texas? How about LSU? Maybe Penn State? While fans debate college football’s national champion, football student-athletes are spending much of December getting caught up on class time missed this fall. That’s because in-season for student-athletes is a time for long road trips, unfamiliar hotels and lots of time away — away from professors, from classrooms, from libraries, and, all too often, from learning.
It need not be this way. Even far from campus, student-athletes can be plugged into their education. All they might need are laptops and the Bowl Championship Series.
The first part of this equation involves putting laptop computers in the hands of all Division I-A student-athletes. With a few mouse clicks, student-athletes on the road may type reports, e-mail homework assignments, instant-message tutors, consult professors and even attend entire classes online.
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| The Rose Bowl’s eight-year, $300 million contract
with ABC and other TV and sponsorshiprevenue could
increase the annual Bowl Championship Series take
by $10 million in 2006-07. |
To be sure, many D-I schools already have programs that allow road-bound student-athletes to check out laptops, akin to checking out library books. But few such programs have enough computers to go around. One Big Ten school, for example, limits its football team to four laptops a trip. How can a student-athlete effectively complete his homework, e-mail his professors and participate in an online class if he must share his laptop with 20 teammates, all of whom must accomplish the same academic tasks?
Collegiate student-athletes need more.
So how do we put 100 laptops — enough to allow most schools to send one laptop per student-athlete for each road trip — in each of the 117 Division I-A institutions? At bulk-rate pricing, such a plan would cost about $10 million. Where will that money come from? The answer may be as easy as B-C-S.
College football’s annual postseason extravaganza of more than two dozen bowl games is handled through the Football Bowl Association, a cooperative arrangement among 11 NCAA Division I-A conferences and its major independents: the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC (what we may call the “Big Six”); and Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt and WAC (what we may call the “Middle Five”); along with independents such as Notre Dame. These FBA institutions make up nearly all the bowl-game competitors.
The elite of these FBA bowl games — the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, Nokia Sugar Bowl, FedEx Orange Bowl and Rose Bowl — are coordinated through the Bowl Championship Series, formed before the 1998 season as a subset of the FBA. Under the current BCS format, the Big Six schools will split about $89.2 million, or 93 percent of all bowl revenue, derived primarily from television contracts and title sponsorships. That may change next year, when all 117 Division I-A institutions — the Big Six and the Middle Five together — will share in the BCS riches in what is being touted by bowl officials as a more equitable manner of revenue distribution.
And those riches are considerable indeed. Under a new four-year deal reached last fall, Fox agreed to pay a reported $330 million to televise four BCS games, a multimillion-dollar jump from ABC’s BCS contract, which is set to expire this year. In a new “double-hosting” model, Fox will broadcast the Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls, as well as an additional “BCS National Championship Game.” The 2007 title game will be hosted by the Fiesta Bowl and played one week after that bowl’s traditional New Year’s contest. Add more millions from broadcasting and operations of the Rose Bowl, which ABC will continue to televise as part of an eight-year, $300 million deal inked last year. Stir in continued naming-rights dollars and other sponsorship revenue. Add it up and the total annual BCS take starting with the 2006-07 academic year may increase by as much as $10 million.
Ten million dollars — just what it would take to outfit Division I-A student-athletes with laptop computers.
Having the BCS conferences agree to use this new money for such a purpose certainly would be in line with the NCAA’s mission. The NCAA manual says so, right on its first page, in Bylaw 1.3.1: “A basic purpose of this Association is to maintain intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body.”
Indeed, BCS officials noted in a letter to Congress announcing the new bowl plan: “None of our institutions exists to field a football team. … Our purpose is to educate young men and women.”
If this really is the case, shouldn’t the first purchases made with the new BCS money be for educational purposes?
There are certain to be critics of such a plan. Naysayers may claim that the $10 million should be spread across the diverse needs of NCAA schools from alleviating gender-based athletic-funding inequities to replacing obsolete athletic facilities. However, purchasing laptops would hardly deplete the BCS windfall. Tens of millions in new money, and well more than a quarter-billion dollars overall, still would be available in ensuing years. There will be plenty of money to go around.
Critics also may contend that the NCAA already doles out enough such money — $18.2 million, or about $55,000 per Division I institution — through the Division I Academic Enhancement Fund. Dartmouth College, for example, used its Academic Enhancement money to purchase laptops. There is no guarantee that this money will go to computers, however, since schools are free to use the funds for almost any legitimate academic purpose.
Instead, the new BCS revenue should be earmarked for such laptop purchases. Putting their BCS money where their academic mouths are may be the best way for Division I-A bowl officials to demonstrate their true commitment to the education of student-athletes. n
Ted Curtis is a professor of sports administration at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.
