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The Magoo Economics of the Rutgers Football Program

by: Steven Hart

Mon Nov 06, 2006 at 02:03:25 PM EST

It’s a little-known fact that Mister Magoo, the nearsighted old coot who led the UPA cartoon stable for three decades, was a passionate alumnus of Rutgers University who kept his old pennants and raccoon coats mothballed in the closet and never missed a homecoming game. His love of all things Rutgers kept his spirits high even as he entered the elephant wing of the city zoo thinking it was his old dorm (”Same inspiring view,” he murmured happily, staring at an elephant’s backside).

Little did I know that Mister Magoo has been in charge of the football program budget all these decades! How else to explain the expenditures tabulated in this outstanding expose in the Record, which ought to become the number-one topic in the state once the elections are finally out of the way:

Steven Hart :: The Magoo Economics of the Rutgers Football Program

While football spending has been climbing, and hit a new high of more than $13 million last season, Rutgers is coping with an $80 million shortfall in state aid. More than 600 jobs and 800 course sections have been lost. Six high-performing Olympic sports are being axed.
From bus schedules to library hours, students are feeling the pinch. Tuition is up 8 percent this year. At just under $20,000 for a full-time student who lives on campus, Rutgers is among the most expensive state universities in the nation.
“It’s a straight upward line for the football team and a straight downward line for the academic and physical conditions here,” said Richard Gundy, a statistics professor. “This is a political issue, not only within the university, but it should be a political issue in the state."

As a Rutgers alumnus, a New Jersey taxpayer and a rational human being, I am aghast at these numbers. Nearly $90,000 for rings, pendants and other schwag at last year’s Insight Bowl in Arizona, which generated a total cost to the university of well over a million dollars. Another ten grand to join a black-tie dinner for collegiate athletic departments at the Waldorf-Astoria. A coach paid over a million bucks a year in salary, plus $998 a month for his Cadillac Escalade, and up to $158,000 spent preparing a lot in the Rutgers Ecological Preserve where the pope of pigskin will have a house built for him on the university dime.

Football revenue is up — most recently due to increased ticket sales and more television exposure. But so is spending.
Although Rutgers officials balked at releasing budget figures, it is clear that each year the university subsidizes football. Last year, the figure was $2.65 million in direct support and student fees, according to an unaudited statement. Each undergraduate in New Brunswick pays $270 a season in intercollegiate athletic fees. In return, students get free seats at all Rutgers sporting events.
Since [athletic director Russ] Mulcahy took the reins in 1998, athletic spending has nearly doubled, hitting a high of more than $41 million last year — about a third going for football.
“When I was brought in, the mandate I was given was to restructure the department, make it competitive and fix football,” Mulcahy said. “I have the backing of the board of governors and I have the backing of the president.”
But at Rutgers some are asking “what price glory?”
"Real students are being marginalized and cheated in 100 different ways," said William Dowling, an English professor and longtime critic of Rutgers’ Division I-A buildup. "Now the financial situation makes more dramatic what big-time athletics does to an institution."

There’s plenty more to read, and you should read all of it. The cost of nurturing this program over the decades has grown to the point that Olympic-caliber sports like fencing and crew are being cut to feed the Magoo dreams of alumni and administrators.

I used to think the team should be renamed the Golden Calves, but this Record story proves that Scarlet Knights is the perfect name for this outfit — out of date, impenetrable to attack and always in the red.

Cross posted at The Opinion Mill.

Tags: Rutgers University, college sports, SCarlet Knights, Mister Magoo, (All Tags)

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The Magoo Economics of the Rutgers Football Program | 4 comments

I've said it before.... (0.00 / 0)

and I'll say it again. The guy who is leading the research to cure AIDS is at Rutgers making 1/3rd of the football coaches salary.
I'm thinking you would attract more students to the 'University that cured AIDS' than you would to the 'University that went to the Insight Bowl', but that's just me.

I know there are those that will point out that football makes money at other universities, but cleary historically that hasn't been the case at Rutgers, if they don't clear a profit this year with an unbelievable record and Heisman candidate, they should throw in the towel.

One more annoying thing, Mulcahy wrote an op-ed last week saying the university hasn't sacrificed academia for football. He touted the fact that all the football players are passing. I didn't realize passing was the gold standard for acadmeia.

"Where ever you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Bonzai

by: William Weber (WjcW) @ Mon Nov 06, 2006 at 19:47:09 PM UTC

by: you @ soon

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The S-L thing pissed me off... (4.00 / 1)

...so I figured I'd write a letter. They called to confirm my identity, which made me think it was going to run. But alas, it hasn't yet. Here it is:

To the editor,

Robert E. Mulcahy, in defending the Rutgers' football program, ["Football helps Rutgers reach its goal," 11.1.06] points to "a small but vocal group of people who say they are troubled by the team's success." I consider myself a part of this minority, as someone who has repeatedly called into question the focus on football. Mulcahy argues that "the program" -- not the University as a whole, mind you -- "is successfully balancing athletic and academic success." He then goes on to site the academic success of student-athletes at Rutgers.

All this is fine and well, but what Mulcahy doesn't mention in his op-ed are the drastic cuts -- $50 million worth -- in academic programs, staff and student services (not to mention other sports), that are being felt all across the University. For Rutgers to cut so much academic funding while not cutting funding for football is bad enough. But for Rutgers officials to make the argument that the football team's success is somehow going to "help Rutgers reach its goal" of being a world-class public institution and not even address the cuts is disgusting.

Truly,
Jon Whiten
Jon Whiten is publisher of City Belt magazine.

by: City Belt @ Mon Nov 06, 2006 at 20:58:30 PM UTC

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Blame the Legislature (0.00 / 0)

If Rutgers is "coping with an $80 million shortfall in state aid," it's a bit of a stretch to blame the football program. Even if there is a better way to spend the $2.65 million annually the Record reports RU's quest for BCS glory is costing, it won't put a dent in that shortfall.

But, another bowl appearance this year - maybe even a BCS bowl - can turn a huge profit. That's when the real screaming should start to demand that money go back into academics, as well as restoring funding to the Olympic sports on the chopping block.

by: Jeff Gardner @ Mon Nov 06, 2006 at 21:23:15 PM UTC

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a woman's (former faculty) take on the program (0.00 / 0)

I'm very happy to see someone taking on the numbers and trying to get the word out, but I don't think the figures in the article are taking the long view. I've been hearing various numbers in the millions tossed around for the cost of the football program for the last few years. I'd trust the remarks:

"If they have a $3 million deficit in football it's a chase for the Holy Grail," said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College who has studied college sports. "It's not absolutely inconceivable that they'd ever become a surplus department, but it's quite unlikely, and a hundred other schools are out there trying to do the same thing."

And they aren't taking into account the expenses since the program was started, as far as I know (I'm thinking Bush budgets - don't include the costs of the war in the annual budget).

Despite of my hating football based on my high school experience all those many years ago, I had to deal with the hooting and yelling on Thursday, and the budgets cuts day in day out. I know there are women who support this. I don't

I have a place in my heart for crew teams, even though I never crewed (I was born in Boston, hence the affinity), and I'm sorry they were cut. Sorrier to see academics who were in precarious positions lose their jobs.

You know, I'd really rather have one more staffer at the Eagleton institute putting the numbers together on what's happening county by county in terms of politics.

Imagine a world where the honking and screaming in the streets of New Brunswick were because we had a better government. Alas we don't - Tuesday resulted in more of the same in NB and most of NJ.

Too sad.

The stadium is a financial sinkhole, the inflated salaries are unjustified, McCormick's salary is unjustified, and who the hell knows who is going to profit off the merger, but watch who gets the construction contracts.

Wake up!!!

by: kwilkinson @ Sat Nov 11, 2006 at 06:59:22 AM UTC

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