Own a Piece of USC for a Mere $250,000 : Buy a Position on the Football Team and You Get Your Name on a Plaque

Presumably the water boy will become available at a more affordable price, but for the moment it will cost you $250,000 to buy a position on the USC football team.

Obvious question: Why do they call them free safeties if they’re retailing at a quarter mil? Answer: There is no such thing as a free safety. (Old athletic directors’ joke.)

This is only at USC, you understand, where some fund-raising whizzes have come up with the idea of endowing athletic scholarships by position. Twenty-four have been put up for grabs, 22 starters and 2 kickers. No water boy. For now at least, it’s strictly a limited-edition type of thing, with the donor getting a nice plaque, by position, with his name on it at Heritage Hall for his dough. Maybe a tax break, too, but that’s his business.

The idea is that the endowment, invested in the university’s vast portfolio, will throw off in interest alone the $15,800 required for a full athletic scholarship these days. That’s projected at just a 6% return, and you know those Trojan bookkeepers can do better than that. The excess, above and beyond the $15,800, will be added to the principal and, thanks to the miracle of compound interest, will offset inevitable cost increases. Till the end of time.

Do you see what they’re doing here? Do you understand this concept?

The first-string quarterback will be taken care of in perpetuity. Room and board, tuition, books--it’s there forever, pass completion percentage notwithstanding.

Imagine the athletic director, battered by rising costs of tuition at a private university--scholarships are not just forgiven, you understand; the athletic director must pay for them somehow--pacing back and forth. “Hey, how we gonna come up with the money for the starting center this year? Clip a coupon, Jack. Ain’t life grand?”

This is Don Winston’s brain storm. He’s an associate athletic director at USC, in charge of extracting meaningful sums from alums.

Up to now, the best way to fund a scholarship was through--you guessed it--the Scholarship Club. Some 60 folks anted up the price of an athletic scholarship each season. It’s a lot of fun to be in that club, you bet.

This was not a bad idea in itself, except that Winston began worrying about eventual club attrition. When Winston came to USC four years ago, for example, a scholarship cost the athletic department $11,500.

“How many people can keep affording to give you $15,000, year in year out,” he wondered. Especially as the price of membership keeps rising. An average tuition increase of, say, 10% means that the department has to raise at least $370,000 more each year to stay even.

Endowment, on the other hand, is a one-time thing. With 24 positions endowed, out of 95 scholarships, that’s 25% of the football program’s scholarship expenses taken care of forever. “That,” Winston says, “is a load off my shoulders.”

See, now Winston has to make just one approach one time. Of course, that’s quite an approach. “Can I have $250,000?”

How’d you like to sell that notion. Oh, here’s his closer: “We’ll give you a plaque.”

Aren’t you glad you’re not Don Winston?

Actually, the positions have been selling quite briskly. The offense went on sale first and only two positions from that unit remain.

Skill positions went first, as you might imagine. Tailback went like that. Although the center, for reasons we will soon get into, went surprisingly quick, too. Winston was working on the kicker when last heard from.

Who are these people? Well, they’re people with money, for one thing. And they seem to be somewhat interested in USC football.

“I guess you could say I’m a dyed-in-the-wool fan,” admitted the man who coughed up the $250,000 to fund the fullback position.

He requested anonymity because of the “wackos out there.” Reminded that his name will be emblazoned on a plaque, he suggested that Heritage Hall probably gets a better breed of wacko.

But his interest was more from a businessman’s point of view. “I could see that this was a way in which we would be able to stop having the athletic department pinch pennies and stop begging,” he said.

Beyond that, he didn’t seem to have any dangerously zealous interest in the football program. He said he was a fan but, as far as that went, he was fairly casual about which position he would pay for.

“I wanted the tailback or quarterback, but they were gone,” he said. “So I was going to take linebacker or defensive end, which I played.”

But offense first, so he settled on fullback.

He said he can’t imagine that his interest in the actual play will change. The idea of “that’s my fullback” doesn’t really click. Of course, what does the fullback at USC do, anyway?

The man who paid for split end, a split end himself in high school, also requested anonymity. “People read this, the fund raisers would be coming out of the woodwork,” he said.

He also saw the business sense of endowing a position. “I’ve always allocated a certain amount of my resources to two schools,” he said. “This way I could do it (at USC) in one fell swoop.”

Also, the changing tax law had something to do with it. “Last year of the 50% deduction,” he explained.

Although this man said he was merely a “fond follower of USC football,” he did hope that the program would include a donor-recipient relationship. “Be nice to meet that particular person,” he suggested. Businessmen like to see if they’re getting their money’s worth.

Dick Alden, who got through USC on a football scholarship during the ‘40s, is both a businessman (he’s the vice chairman at Hughes, and not the market) and a football fan (former center, yes, that one). But mostly, happily, he is a grateful alum. “I just think that if you’re capable, financially able to do this, you should put something back into the well,” said Alden, adding that he couldn’t have paid for a private school education on his own.

“It may sound corny, but an opportunity was given to me once. Kind of like motherhood, I guess.”

Alden, who went from third-string quarterback to the first team with a single check, is reassuringly devoid of any ambition of becoming a sugar daddy. As a fan, he said: “I’ve matured. I’ve since learned that there are a billion and a half Chinese who don’t care whether USC wins or loses.”

He said he’ll watch the center during the game, but that’s about all. So somebody will be watching him.

By the beginning of next season, it is expected that each player in the starting lineup will have somebody with a vested interest watching him. This edition will probably be sold out by then. Winston’s thinking of the basketball team next. Maybe even a second string on the football team.

And when that’s sold out, too? Well, you can still endow a professorship at USC. Cost you, we’re happy to report this, $1.5 million, or the entire interior line. You get your name on a chair.