COMMENTARY : College Athletics Should Have One School of Thought

From time to time in this funny little business of sports, something happens that makes the commonplace look only slightly less bizarre than a giraffe in a striped bikini.

Just recently, for instance, the athletic department at Louisiana State University donated $2 million to the school’s academic budget.

Seems that the jocks, as the result of great attendance and postseason success, had some leftover money and the eggheads needed it badly. Because of regional economic problems, the school is running about a $4.5-million deficit.

Now, when it comes to donations to dear old alma mater, $2 million is not small change. It won’t build a new chem lab or restock the library, but wiping out nearly half the school’s operating deficit is truly a magnificent gesture.

Said Grady Bogue, the school’s interim chancellor, when the donation was offered: “It is virtually unprecedented for a major-college athletic program to make a contribution of this magnitude to the academic side of the university. It will be a major boost to LSU during these hard economic times.”

The casual observer, however, might be inclined to wonder why it would be necessary for the school to get that money through a donation. Why wouldn’t the school, running that kind of deficit, simply help itself to the athletic department’s surplus?

After all, isn’t one of the major functions of an athletic department to produce cash for the school? Isn’t that why they sell tickets? Isn’t that why it is so important to get into that postseason play?

Ah, how simply we like to think.

It turns out, of course, that LSU is one of those schools--one of those many, many schools--that allows its athletic department to exist practically as a separate entity, an auxiliary to the school, so to speak. The school has its budget, the athletic department has its, and never the twain shall meet.

The athletic department is responsible for making its own money and gets to keep what it earns.

For many state-supported institutions, the first part of that proposition--the athletic department being responsible for raising its own money--is the result of legislation forbidding the use of tax money to fund athletics.

And there are variations on the theme. At UCLA, for instance, those who run the school have the right to dip into athletic department coffers. Unfortunately for them, there is nothing to dip into, since the Bruin athletic department has its own little deficit.

The point is, there is a whole bunch of schools out there whose athletic departments are calling their own financial shots. Yes, they must submit budgets for approval and go through all the proper procedures. And, yes, the schools explain that they view their athletic departments just as do other departments--housing, food service, that sort of thing.

There is a fundamental difference, though. The housing and food service departments provide services. If they break even, or make enough money to improve the quality of their services, everybody is pretty happy.

Athletics, though, are about winning. And people care desperately about winning. They care so desperately that some have been known to cheat. The people who cheat normally do it with money. If someone has the inclination and the money available to go with it, the temptation is enormous. And, as we see, sometimes irresistible.

Al McGuire, in his heyday at Marquette, where the athletic department still is very much a part of the university, would occasionally consider new worlds to conquer in his role as athletic director.

One day, casting admiring glances at Bob Johnson’s successful University of Wisconsin hockey program, he suggested that Marquette would be wise to jump aboard that bandwagon.

“If they’d let me do it my way, I’d bring in hockey,” he said. “But they’d have to let me run it the way I wanted to run it. I’d hire the coach and run the program and just not involve the university at all. We’d make a million dollars.”

Ever the realist, though, McGuire knew that it would never happen that way.

“They’d never give the athletic department that kind of freedom,” he said. “The (Jesuit) fathers would never give me that kind of power.”

And, of course, they never did.

Still, there are plenty of schools that do. They are among our country’s most respected institutions. We admire them. We send our young people to them. We read about them every day.

But some of the things we read are not at all uplifting. It is not inspiring to learn that this school has been put on athletic probation for recruiting violations, or that another has been given “the death penalty” for under-the-table payments to its “student-athletes.” Those are not the things that should make universities famous.

You wouldn’t think that the guys who run the schools would tumble to that, seeing as how they are in the smarts business.

And yet, whenever they convene to determine how sports can better serve the universities and not get them into quite such hot water, they make rules for the kids who play the games and the older kids who are supposed to supervise the players.

Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler if they just made themselves more responsible for what goes on in athletic departments? Wouldn’t it make a lot of sense for them to make their athletic departments part of the schools again, instead of separate little enclaves with separate little financial arrangements and precious little accountability?

That, of course, is more naive thinking.

Even Dick Schultz, the head of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., does not see that as a priority, and he is concerned about schools cleaning up their programs and their images.

Just last month, he said in a speech at the annual meeting of the Inland Press Assn. in Chicago that more rules are not the answer, that schools have to “regain control of their intercollegiate programs if they don’t have it today.”

When asked, however, if he might have been alluding to financially independent athletic deparments, he said that wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind.

So, apparently, we will continue as before, with lots of schools being represented by at least semi-autonomous athletic departments, some of which will take advantage of that autonomy to cheat.

Ah, but it should be comforting for the good folks in Louisiana to realize that when the university finally goes under, the financially independent Bayou Bengal athletic teams will be able to keep right on clawing and scratching and fighting and winning, all for the greater glory of dear, departed old LSU.

Talk about your magnificent gestures!