I had a nice, informative – I’d like to think, to both sides – back-and-forth with an AFP reader today, on the costs to attend the University of Virginia, and the impact that UVA Athletics does or doesn’t have on that.
The reader was responding to my recent series of articles discussing the approach that the athletics director, Carla Williams, has been taking to keep UVA Athletics competitive in the still-developing era in which college athletics finances are driven by the need to provide significant compensation for student-athletes in high-profile, money-generating sports like football and men’s basketball.
ICYMI
- Carla Williams maps out her strategy for returning UVA Football to prominence
- UVA Football: School does a 180 with ‘support’ from admissions helping recruiting
- Carla Williams: ‘Conference realignment’ putting pressure on UVA Football
- The first task for Carla Williams when she got the job: Investing in UVA Football
“This only confirms why I no longer give a damn about UVA Football and UVA Basketball,” the reader wrote to me this morning. “Carla Williams is proud of raising $30M for the NIL fund to pay semi-pro jocks who I’m sure don’t attend class? Money that could go to true students to defray the now obscene cost of UVA, $85K+ for we out-of-state parents? More than Harvard! The NCAA has turned Division I major college sports into the equivalent of the AAA minor league to the MLB. Despicable.”
I mean, I get it, and I tried to relay as much to the reader.
“The athletics department is a separate entity from the academics side, and always has been,” I wrote, adding:
“If UVA Athletics is going to compete in the overall athletics marketplace, this is how it has to be done. Otherwise, we can revert to D3, and figure out other uses for the $150 million basketball arena, $100 million football stadium, $25 million baseball stadium, $20 million softball stadium, etc.”
And, let’s be clear, that ain’t happening, right?
Colgate Darden – the prez who had us turn down an Orange Bowl invite back in the 1950s, because he didn’t want UVA to be viewed as a football factory – has long since moved out of Carr’s Hill.
Also no longer with us, sadly: John Casteen, Mr. Jocular.
Whether it makes sense for a major national university to spend $150 million a year on athletics, that’s what we’re doing, and we’re not the only ones.
“You’re right, and I realize that,” my reader friend wrote back. “I just don’t care to root for semi-pros for whom a degree is meaningless.”
I replied to the effect: I hear you.
“I hear from quite a few folks who feel that way,” I replied. “I’d love someone to commission a poll so we could get a sense of how many long-time college sports fans are turning away.”
More than a few people have written me to express to me that they’re not necessarily on board with the starting QB, a couple of O linemen, a couple of DBs and guys who can shoot threes getting seven figures.
ICYMI
- Did the UVA Football money people really give Tony Elliott $30M to build a roster?
- Are college athletes mercenaries? UVA’s Williams, Jones address the question of the day
- UVA Football: Is the new QB1, Chandler Morris, just here for the money?
- UVA Athletics now requiring student-athletes to sign ‘binding’ contracts
Flip side: what about the head coaches getting seven figures, which has been the case for a couple of decades now?
I’ve not had anybody complain to me about their money, which is a lot vis-à-vis what our UVA professors make.
Suddenly, the problem is the kids who have to stay on track to graduate while practicing 20 hours a week and traveling all over the country getting a piece of the pie?
“UVA is the most expensive state university in America. AccessUVA is only for in-state students and stops at $100K. So, middle-class out-of-state parents like me are screwed. NIL money for millionaire QBs, zero aid to parents,” my reader wrote.
Issue here is, “the money going to athletics and the money going to academics come from different streams,” I replied.
But the access issue hits home.
“I was one of those kids who would have been an AccessUVA kid before there was an AccessUVA,” I wrote back, explaining how “I was born to teen parents, grew up with a single mother who had a minimum-wage job, my dad didn’t pay child support, and despite that, earned admission to UVA, and it changed my life.”
Maybe University leaders “need to free up more of the $13B endowment to help more kids like me get access to an education that will change their lives, like UVA changed my life,” I continued on.
Meantime, the money for athletics “is a trickle compared to the academic side and UVA Health. And it’s a drop in the bucket to the money that UVA has in its endowment.”
“If we’re going to be mad about something in terms of money, there are a lot of items ahead of athletics on the list,” was how I tried to sum things up.
Not that I’m trying to win the argument, because I don’t think there’s a winner on this one.
It does cost way, way too much to attend the University of Virginia – and every other college and university in America.
We do everything with respect to getting a college education wrong here in the U.S.
By the same token, the way we do college sports makes absolutely no sense.
That said, being mad at Carla Williams, whose job isn’t to solve all that ails higher education in the United States, but rather, is to figure out, specifically, how to best position UVA Athletics to be able to compete, isn’t going to solve anything.
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Chris Graham
