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Inflated
Ducks
Giant
poster displays runaway athletic spending.
By
Alan Pittman
"Duck!" writes ESPN columnist Bruce Feldman. He compares
the 10-story, $250,000 poster of star UO quarterback Joey Harrington in downtown
New York City to the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man who trampled the city in Ghostbusters.
In "the annual war of extravagance among Heisman promotional
campaigns, Oregon has pretty much destroyed all comers for this year," writes
Sports Illustrated columnist Stewart Mandel.
The UO Athletic Department and its boosters see the monster-sized
Harrington as a fitting emblem of football prowess and an appropriate way to pursue
a prestigious Heisman Trophy. But many UO professors see the 100 ft. by 80 ft. billboard
as an emblem of a runaway athletic department bloated beyond all reasonable proportion.
Heisman insiders warn the trophy can't be bought and say the UO's hype could backfire.
"When I see this astronomical spending and grossly tasteless
commercialism, it makes my blood curdle," says UO English Professor Jim Earl.
Earl is past president of the UO Faculty Senate which voted unanimously in May for
a resolution calling for university presidents to put "academics first"
and de-escalate the spending in the athletics "arms race." The faculty
senates at seven other PAC 10 conference schools followed the UO's lead and passed
similar resolutions.
UO Athletic Department officials and President Dave Frohnmayer
agreed that de-escalation is necessary, and Frohnmayer said he would pursue a spending
agreement with other school presidents.
But UO Art History Professor Richard Sundt says the huge poster
demonstrates Frohnmayer and the department's insincerity. "We say we want to
control the arms race here in Oregon and elsewhere, and we do everything possible
to increase it," he says. "It's bad faith."
Frohnmayer did not return a call requesting comment.
"This is what we call the arms race," says Earl of the
poster. "An even more gross form of commercialism infects the university."
Sundt says in addition to the poster, the UO announced plans recently
to boost football Coach Mike Bellotti's salary package to $1 million. "For that
amount of money at my salary, we can get 22 professors," Sundt says.
The Athletic Department budget has nearly tripled from $12 million
in 1990 to $32 million today, Earl says. At the same time UO faculty salaries are
the lowest in the nation for state universities, he says.
Responding to widespread criticism from faculty, the university
this year agreed to a partial phase-out of its $2 million subsidy of athletics. Over
the next four years, the subsidy will be reduced to about $700,000. The rest of the
athletic budget will come from donors, ticket sales, TV payments and other revenues.
Sundt says the UO should phase out the subsidy faster rather than
spending $250,000 on a poster. "If they can get money so easily, then they don't
need this subsidy."
 Sparing No Expense
While the UO faculty have lead the way in calling for controlling
the athletics arms race, the UO athletic department has been a leader in escalating
the expensive war, with other schools struggling to keep pace. In addition to Bellotti's
six-figure pay, the UO spent $12 million on the posh Casanova Center in 1991. In
1998, it was the first PAC 10 school to build an indoor practice facility, at a cost
of $15 million. When it comes to football, the UO spares no expense. The university
regularly spends over $1 million per bowl game on parties, air fare, bonuses and
luxury hotels for a huge travelling entourage. At the 1995 Rose Bowl, the athletic
director slept in a $450-a-night suite.
But all this extravagance and the huge poster is dwarfed by the
$80 million that the UO plans to spend on expanding Autzen Stadium by 12,000 seats
and 32 sky boxes.
"This is lunacy," says Earl. The athletic department
says donations and revenues will pay the full cost of the stadium, but Earl says
the university's academic budget is taking a huge risk. The university is liable
for paying the construction bonds if the Ducks start to have losing seasons again
and fund-raising and revenues fall short. "Suddenly there's an $80 million stadium
that's half full and we're stuck holding the bag."
College athletic teams typically cycle between winning and losing
streaks, Earl says. It's just a matter of time before UO academics get cut to pay
off the stadium, he says. "It's inevitable."
The $80 million for Autzen Stadium is a huge sum, says Earl. It's
enough money to run the Honors College, the UO's educational "crown jewel,"
for 140 years, he says. If invested in an endowment, the money could run the $600,000
program forever, he says.
Winning and Giving
|
Stopping
the Bucks
Myles Brand, former UO President and current president of Indiana University,
says to stop the athletics arms race, university presidents need to step up to the
plate.
"University presidents must be the driving force for change.
Harry Truman had it right. The buck stops here," Brand writes.
But at the UO, President Dave Frohnmayer has appeared more interested
in pumping athletic bucks. This year, Frohnmayer pulled the UO out of the Worker
Rights Consortium (WRC) after intense pressure from Nike billionaire Phil Knight.
The athletic department hopes that Knight will pay for its new football stadium while
the WRC hopes Knight will start treating its third-world factory workers humanely.
Frohnmayer didn't return a call for this article.
In contrast to Frohnmayer, Brand, who recently stood up to big
donors and fired infamous basketball coach Bobby Knight for abusive conduct, has
been a leading voice for reform. "Despite increased revenue, athletics departments
tend to overreach. In pursuit of more entertainment dollars, many universities have
launched an 'arms race' in the building of new facilities," he warns in an opinion
article in the NCAA News and a speech to the National Press Club earlier this
year.
Brand notes that a recent survey conducted by the American Council
on Education shows that the majority of Americans believe sports are overemphasized
on college campuses.
UO English Professor Jim Earl and art history Professor Richard
Sundt are part of that majority. Earl says there is a "big clash of values"
between the megabucks athletics at the UO and the core academic mission of the university.
"We might as well be running a gambling casino."
Sundt warns of a "vast divide" between the university's
academic ethic and the growing "sports industrial complex" at the UO. "I
don't think we're here to train professional athletes."
Earl and Sundt are far from alone in their concerns. The UO Faculty
Senate voted unanimously last month to call for an effort to reign in athletic spending.
Faculty senates at seven other PAC 10 universities followed the UO professors' lead
and passed similar resolutions. The PAC 10 presidents have begun discussions.
"Its had an impact," says OSU art history Professor Henry
Sayre of the growing reform movement. "You can't expect miracles, but any drop
of sense in the bucket is going to help."
Sundt says the professors are the underdogs in this game.
"There are a vast number of people that are willing to pay
for this entertainment that think this is what we are here for," he says. "It's
very difficult," Sundt says. "But more is happening now than in the past."
AP
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The Athletic Department and its boosters have long argued that big
spending on bigtime sports helps promote donations to university academic programs.
But former UO President Myles Brand says that's just not true. Brand, now president
of Indiana University, recently spoke to the National Press Club and wrote an opinion
in the NCAA News calling for controls on athletic spending. "The idea
that intercollegiate athletics, as it now operates, financially supports academic
programs is a myth," says Brand, pointing to published research. "There
is no positive correlation between winning and private gifts."
Earl says the UO's sports program competes for donations with UO
academic programs. Donors who might otherwise contribute to academics are lured away
by sports, he says, "They end up donating to athletics."
The Athletic Department has an endless appetite for more and more
money, Sundt says. The department is already talking about a new $100 million basketball
arena "in the pipeline," he says. "It's just going to be crazy. We're
in a black hole."
Backfire
Athletic Department PR manager Dave Williford says private
donations funded the Harrington poster and other athletic spending. The donations
would not have been made for academic purposes, he argues. "This is not state
money, this is not university money."
If Harrington wins the Heisman, the Athletic Department will get
a tremendous boost in TV revenue and prestige to recruit top players, Williford says.
Beyond the $250,000 poster, Williford declined to say exactly how
much the UO's PR squad plans to spend promoting Harrington for the Heisman. In terms
of the media coverage the 10-story billboard has generated, "from an advertising
standpoint, we feel it's already paid for itself and then some."
But a lot of the media coverage has been negative.
"It cost a lot of money, but it still looks cheap," writes
ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski. "It looks like someone trying to buy Heisman
publicity."
Wojciechowski points out that the UO "needed about $1.8 million
from the university's general fund to pay its bills this year" and that the
"$250,000 would have paid for 20 full in-state scholarships."
"I'm very skeptical," writes ESPN columnist Bruce Feldman,
noting that few of the New Yorkers who see the poster are interested in college football.
While Sports Illustrated focused on the poster's "extravagance,"
LA Times columnist Chris Dufresne joked the King Kong-sized ad was "an
unfortunate misunderstanding, really. New York advertisers agreed to the deal believing
the poster was of Joey Heatherton, the 1960s sex kitten."
"I think there's a real potential for backfire here,"
says Bob Hammel, the Heisman organization's Midwest chairman. Hammel, a manager and
former sportswriter with the Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind., helps select
the sports writers and broadcasters who vote every December to select the Heisman
winner.
Hammel served as a Heisman elector for 25 years and says most sportswriters
will be turned off by the huge poster. "I think there's a repugnance to spending
that much money on an individual in a team game."
Hammel says many sports journalists are good at spotting "phoniness"
and will think the UO is trying to buy the trophy. "It degrades the whole process,"
he says.
Backlash to Heisman hype among electors has been on the rise, even
before the UO's huge ad. Tony Barnhart, a football columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
and ESPN correspondent, warned against hype in a recent Corvallis Gazette-Times
story. "We sportswriters aren't Ph.D.s, but we're not dumb. You're not going
to flash-and-dash your way to the Heisman Trophy."
"There's a fine line between doing too little or too much,"
Purdue sports spokesman Jim Vruggink told Sports Illustrated last year. "You
can't buy the Heisman Trophy, there's still a level of amateurism that goes with
it."
Heisman Trophy spokesman Joe Carnicelli says the huge Harrington
"is a first" when it comes to Heisman hype. Carnicelli says he first saw
it when he walked out of Penn Station. "I was like, oh my God! What is this
thing? This big green thing."
But Carnicelli says the UO was mistaken if it thought it would
influence voters by placing the poster in New York City, where the Downtown Athletic
Club hands out the award. The roughly 900 Heisman electors are equally distributed
throughout the nation, he says. "We don't have any more voters here than anywhere
else."
Hammel says the $250,000 Heisman campaign by the UO could trigger
an advertising arms race for the trophy with more and more expensive campaigns by
other schools.
"You'd hate for it to come down to that," says Carnicelli.
"If people feel it shouldn't be bought, perhaps there will be a backlash."
Previously, spending on campaigns focused on mass mailings of videos,
information packets and promotional trinkets and was about $25,000 or less, according
to sports coverage. Texas Christian University's failed $90,000 campaign last year
for running back LaDainian Tomlinson set a controversial record. In 1999, Wisconsin's
Ron Dayne won with only a $2,000 campaign.
Oregon State athletic spokesman Travis Lahman says OSU plans to
spend only a fraction of what the UO did on its Heisman campaign for running back
Ken Simonton. Layham says he doubts the UO's poster will have "much of a sway"
on Heisman voters and agrees the hype might backfire.
If it comes down to a race between Simonton and Harrington for
the big bronze trophy, Lahman says the deciding factor will likely be who wins the
Dec. 1 Civil War game, just before ballots are due.
The UO sports PR machine appears sensitive to the backlash risk.
Despite blowing Harrington's head up to 12 feet high, they emphasize that the QB
is "a very humble human being."
Carnicelli says good candidates haven't needed expensive media
campaigns to win in the past. Even players at smaller schools like the UO in Western
time zones with less TV coverage have frequently won the trophy.
Even without the big billboard, sports journalists already considered
Harrington among the top Heisman candidates, writes Wojciechowski. "Oregon didn't
need to do this."
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