Iowa Athletics Finances – Quad City Times Editorial Board Misses the Mark
My good friend Aaron Blau (@AaronBlau) brought to my attention an unfortunate piece written by the Quad City Times editorial board today titled “Iowa and its millionaire football coaches.” The unfortunate part is the errors the article contains, which form its premise that taxpayers and students are stuck paying for a University of Iowa Athletics Department “deficit.”
To quote the Times editorial board:
“University of Iowa's football coaches are getting rich. Taxpayers and rank-and-file students are footing the bill. It's just the latest example of an out-of-control NCAA culture that values football over academics, and anything else, for that matter…Last year, U of I's athletic department vaulted into the NCAA's top 20 earners. It still ran a $3.2 million deficit. And who makes up the shortfall? Students.”
In fact, the Iowa Athletics Department is self-sustaining and has been for several years. Since a key argument in the Times editorial was that Iowa's Athletics Department is run at a deficit that students absorb, I thought I would go straight to the 2015 Iowa Board of Regents budget report to try and find evidence of a $3.2 million deficit. Here’s what the Times’ editorial board would have found if it had done the same:
“The SUI Athletic Department is a self-sustaining auxiliary enterprise and receives no general university support…Student fees reported in the athletic budget fund the debt service on Student Recreation Services facilities financed through Athletics and remain flat when compared to FY 2014.” (emphasis added)
While it is true that some student fees appear under the Iowa Athletics Department budget each year as “Facility Debt Service/Student Fees,” those are, as explained in the Regents’ budget report, due to the servicing of debt on shared Recreation Services/Athletics Department facilities that benefit all students and were originally financed through Athletics. As explained at the mandatory fees page on the University of Iowa website:
“The recreation facility fee supports the operation and maintenance of Recreational Services facilities on the UI campus, including the new Campus Recreation and Wellness Center (CRWC), as well as programmatic offerings of Recreational Services. The establishment of the fee was essential for the construction of the CRWC and is used to help pay the debt service on the facility…A Recreational Services membership is included in the recreation fee…Beyond access to all recreation facilities on campus, members also receive discounts on program registration (including Lesson Programs, Rowing, Tennis Programs, Aquatics and Adventure Trips), and reduced tennis court fees.”
So thanks to the partnership between the Athletics Department and central campus, everyone benefits from several new state-of-the-art facilities, such as the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center, which hosts Iowa Swimming & Diving as well as hundreds of students, faculty, staff and community members daily. Students, through their fees, contribute to $650,000 annually of debt service on those shared facilities in return for having the facilities built and then receiving access to all of the facilities and the programs outlined above. The Athletics Department’s annual debt servicing bill, by the way, is nearly $16 million for all of its facilities projects combined. Leading off the editorial with the inflammatory statement that, “University of Iowa's football coaches are getting rich. Taxpayers and rank-and-file students are footing the bill,” couldn’t be further from the truth - student fees do not go toward paying coaching salaries.
Sadly, the Quad City Times editorial staff seems to have engaged in reactionary journalism following Iowa’s announcement yesterday of football coach Kirk Ferentz’s contract extension. I am not arguing that the current intercollegiate athletics model is perfect – in my blog post yesterday I acknowledged that coaching salaries have reached ridiculous levels, but I also made the case that those salaries are dictated by the current marketplace for universities that wish to compete at the highest level of college football. Unfortunately, many Quad City Times readers will probably latch onto the spurious claims of the editorial board and accept the erroneous conclusion that because Kirk Ferentz and his coaching staff are highly paid, students and taxpayers are being charged for it.
Hey, if the Times editorial staff disagrees with me, they should try reading one of their own – Quad City Times reporter Steve Batterson (@sbatt79) reported in July on the Hawkeye Athletics budget and wrote, “Operating 24 intercollegiate programs, the Iowa athletics department is self-sustaining and receives no general university funds. The budget does include $650,000 in student fees which is used to fund debt service on Student Recreation Services facilities that were financed through the athletic department.”