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Date Posted: 09:10:04 03/01/05 Tue
In reply to:
ramMan
's message, "According to an article in the March 4 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, a rule that Div. I-A football teams must average 15,000 fans/game is about to be eased, arousing consternation among Div. I-AA officials, who want to avoid an exodus to the big time." on 09:04:23 03/01/05 Tue
The Cost of Empty Seats
By Welch Suggs
Kent State University's football team drew an average of 10,631 fans at its six home games last season. That was better than average for Kent State, but it was still bad news for the Golden Flashes.
Under a rule that took effect in 2004, home attendance must average 15,000 for an institution to remain in college football's "big league," Division I-A of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Kent State and at least three other institutions should have been headed to Division I-AA, where they would have much less prestige, fewer football scholarships, and less ink on local sports pages.
But such a demotion appears unlikely. The Division I Board of Directors -- one of whose members is Kent State's president, Carol A. Cartwright -- has voted to modify the rule at its next meeting, in April.
The board's action has aroused consternation among two groups: universities with big-time sports programs, whose officials believe that Division I-A members ought to be able to show that they have widespread support from their fans; and officials at Division I-AA colleges, who want to protect their ranks by having the Division I-A bar set high enough to prevent a wholesale exodus.
The Division I board is backing away from the attendance criterion out of respect for its members, including Ms. Cartwright and Sidney A. McPhee, president of Middle Tennessee State University, which also has not met the standard. These presidents argue that having an absolute cutoff for a variable that is beyond their control is not fair to their athletics departments. The board is debating two options: Maintain all of the requirements except the attendance standard, or, more radically, do away with the I-A and I-AA labels altogether.
For the colleges involved, the stakes are enormous: Institutions like Ball State, Kent State, Middle Tennessee State, and San Jose State Universities spend millions of dollars to field I-A football teams so that they can be considered in the same league as, say, Ohio State University and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Their presidents have no intention of risking those investments.
"There's no question for Middle Tennessee State University that moving to Division I-A has been a great influence for the institution's image among its alums," says Mr. McPhee. "Division I-A has propelled us onto the front page of the newspaper. Athletics really is the front porch of the university. It's not something I'm particularly happy about, but it's the reality."
A New Era
Middle Tennessee State was a member of Division I-AA until 1999. Belonging to the lower division is much cheaper. Football teams can award only 63 scholarships, as opposed to 85 in Division I-A, and typically employ far fewer coaches and other staff members. But the payoff is also smaller. Division I-AA teams compete in a 16-team playoff that crowns a national champion but pays nothing to participating colleges. Division I-A teams, of course, play in bowl games, which pay a minimum of $750,000 to participating institutions.
The NCAA's requirement that Division I-A members demonstrate a certain level of public support for their sports programs dates to 1978, when the association created the I-A and I-AA subdivisions, which apply only to football.
The most obvious way to quantify public support is attendance at games. I-A institutions were required to average at least 17,000 fans per game, but teams had numerous waivers and loopholes. Colleges with 30,000-seat stadiums, for example, had to average just 17,000 at least once every four seasons.
Even the new standard is subject to bending: For example, Rice University moved a home game against Louisiana Tech last November from its campus stadium to Reliant Stadium, in Houston, so it would not have to count the expected paltry attendance (it amounted to 8,317) for the game in its home average, which squeaked by at 15,585 for the season.
Ms. Cartwright, president of Kent State, says judging an athletics program by its football attendance is unfair. People assume that the I-A label applies to all sports, although it doesn't.
"Everything else on the list [of Division I-A membership requirements] represents an area where we can make a commitment and be held accountable," she says, referring to minimum numbers for scholarships and teams. "But in an area like attendance, you've got all kinds of different variables playing out across the nation."
Mr. McPhee says he would like to see a menu of options for colleges to demonstrate that the public supports its athletics program.
"For an element of community support, you could measure it with respect to the amount of dollars you raise in private donations, the number of season tickets you sold, or you could measure that in terms of people attending the game -- any combination of those factors, along with the academic performance of students in your program," he says.
Sources of Revenue
Doug Fullerton, commissioner of the Big Sky Conference, a I-AA league, says that what distinguishes colleges that should be in I-A is where they get their athletics revenue. If an institution can make a profit from fans, donors, television contracts, and advertising sales, then Division I-A is where it belongs, he argues.
Fan support "is what the 15,000 criterion really defined," Mr. Fullerton says. "Presidents use that as a negative and say it's the one regulation we can't control, but that's a good thing. The regulation looks at the market value of your program."
Division I-AA has lost many of its stronger teams to Division I-A because they wanted a higher profile in football. Thirteen colleges have moved their football teams from I-AA to I-A since 1990. Few of those programs have been successful, either at the box office or on the field, but the upward migration has exacerbated the perception that I-AA is second-rate -- and getting rid of the 15,000-fan requirement would clear the way for dozens more teams to consider making the move.
Doing so is costly, however. Teams cannot sustain themselves with ticket sales alone, so they must depend on university money and on early-season visits to much stronger teams' stadiums, where they are paid several hundred thousand dollars to suffer lopsided defeats.
Mr. Fullerton argues that if the 15,000-fan requirement falls by the wayside, Division I-AA will need a few concessions to make it a viable option for teams without large fan bases. "We need to make I-AA attractive, as a good place to be," he says.
He is pushing for four changes:
1. Allow Division I-A teams to count wins against Division I-AA teams toward the minimum of six needed for bowl eligibility every year. Under current rules, Division I-A teams may count only one such victory every four years.
2. Allow Division I-A home games against I-AA institutions to count toward the NCAA minimum of five home contests per season.
3. Do away with the I-A and I-AA labels, separating colleges and conferences instead by their intention to compete in bowl games and the lower-profile playoff.
4. Get the NCAA to spend more money on the I-AA playoff, to make the games more like bowl games for participating institutions.
If the Division I-A Board of Directors does not pass some version of his plan at its April meeting, Mr. Fullerton says, the Division I-AA programs would try to restore the 15,000-fan standard with an override vote. According to the NCAA rule book, any rules change can be suspended if 100 members request an override. If that doesn't work, the Big Sky and other Division I-AA leagues might vote to join I-A en masse.
Indeed, the plan might draw support from Division I-A members. Michael L. Slive, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, has spoken approvingly of eliminating the distinction between I-A and I-AA.
"The I-AA enhancement package is a good compromise," Mr. Slive said during a recent seminar in Nashville. "You could declare, given your needs, for the NCAA championship, or you could declare for the bowls."
Some details would need to be worked out, such as when a team or conference would be allowed to switch its affiliation from the playoff system to the bowl system. But proponents say the new arrangement would remove what they see as the stigma of second-class status from Division I-AA institutions.
Institutional Egos
Of the 13 Division I-AA institutions that have moved up to Division I-A in the past 15 years, only the University of Connecticut and Boise State University ranked in even the top 80 in attendance in 2004. Marshall and Northern Illinois Universities, which have had the most on-field success among the former I-AA teams, ranked 81st and 82nd, respectively.
Most of the 13 made the move for the reasons that Mr. McPhee, of Middle Tennessee State, articulates: Division I-A football buys an institution more room on the sports page and inclusion on ESPN's weekend roundup.
But belonging to Division I-A is expensive, and colleges with low-profile I-A teams can lose hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars on the sport.
Myles Brand, the NCAA's president, has made financial integrity in college sports his top priority. For that reason, Mr. Fullerton thinks the association should do more to help I-AA present a viable and cheaper alternative for its own members and even some struggling I-A members.
"If you want to take away standards, we need something stronger to hold I-AA together," he says. "I'm optimistic the board will say that's a fair deal."
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