But Why? The College Sports Edition
Disclaimer: These “But Why?” posts are observations on things in American society that I find peculiar as an immigrant. I love living here and have no desire of living anywhere else. I also acknowledge that every culture has its own wonderful and - at times - confounding peculiarities, and can only imagine how strange it would be for an immigrant to live in South Africa (where I am from.) So these musings are largely light-hearted observations written with a smile and heart of fondness for my adopted land.
You can see another silly example in my thoughts on American public restrooms here.
College football is back (#hookem), and for many of my friends in the US, it is their favorite season of the year. It is difficult to describe to my international friends how big College sports (of which football is the most prominent) is in the US, because it is a uniquely American phenomenon. One of the surest way you know you have arrived in the US is the college sports fan clothing that almost everyone seems to wear. I don’t own one piece of clothing that represents where I went to University. I have no idea where one would buy such a thing. I always observed on movies and TV shows how people would respond when someone said that they played college sport. In the rest of the world that was a sign that you were maybe more than just average good. It means you were a rockstar here. I played cricket very briefly for my university, and I really wasn’t very good, and so the scale and significance of what it means to play collegiate sport doesn’t translate into other societies. Well, it certainly didn’t for me, and it is always hard for my American friends to get their head around the fact that almost no one in the rest of the world knows anything about where they went to “school.” I had never heard of Texas A&M until I moved to Austin and discovered that its alumni are some of the most fiercely loyal cult members you could ever meet. College identity is a massive part of the formative experience of many Americans, and right at the center of that experience is the behemoth that is college sports.
I was truly ignorant of what a big deal it is, but international friends … let’s just say that it is big.
Think multi-billion (yes billion with a “b”) dollar revenue big.
Think 92,000 people (again not a typo) at a women’s volleyball game big.
Think consistent crowds of 100,000 people at regular season live games big.
Think TV viewership numbers that most international sporting events would die for big.
Think fundamentally changing the economies of regions big. I saw this particular aspect first hand when I found myself in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (#rolltide) where I was preaching at a wonderful little church. My hosts drove me around the “city” and showed me block after block of game-day homes. Homes that people owned just so that they had somewhere to stay on the 6 weekends a year when Alabama had home games! Trust me, that changes Tuscaloosa. No one is lining up to own vacation homes there without the allure of college sports. There really is no other allure.
College sports is huge in the US.
And yet, it is played by amateur kids, who really ought to be focusing more on their algebra grades than on their celebrity amateur athlete status as less than 2% of them will go on to make any sort of professional sport appearance. While it is true that the new “NIL” regulations and allowances will mean that some collegiate athletes will make a good living off of their college sporting representation, it does seem (to an ignorant outsider like me) that it is a billions of dollars system built on the backs of college students that is designed and maintained to benefit someone other than college students.
It is a genuine mystery to me, and yet, after living in a large scale college town for 6 years, I kinda love it, even if I don’t understand it.
It is undeniably entertaining even as it continues to be completely confounding as a construct. Here are some things I find particularly peculiar about it all, and I am well aware - and more than a little hopeful - that some of you are going to want to educate me on this, because I clearly lack understanding.
The Economics Of It All
I had assumed that the massive revenue that was generated from collegiate sports would be used for the direct academic and financial benefits of those who attended those colleges. The truth is just way more complicated than that. Even large schools, with massive revenue coming as a direct result of their athletics programs still often manage to run those programs at (sometimes significant) losses. According to NCAA statistics, in 2018, the median FBS (football bowl subdivision) ran at a $16.3 million deficit. In 2019 the median deficit was 18.8 million. That is an operating deficit which doesn’t include capital expenditure projects! I am no accountant but that doesn’t seem like a sustainable operating philosophy. This is widespread, with only 25 of the top 130 FBS schools managing to operate their athletics departments with a positive net revenue, and most of those 25 were public universities with access to lots of state funding.
This suggests that collegiate sports is a major financial loser in spite of its eye-watering revenue numbers. It certainly rules out the possibility that college athletic progams exist for the financial benefit of the broader student bodies or serves to subsidize tuition and vital academic research programs. In fact, the American college experience continues to be one of the most expensive in the world and more and more institutions are charging more than $1000 per year per student in added tuition for “student athletic fees.” All this while student debt in the US reached $1.6 trillion. That’s trillion, with a “t” and an “r.”
And just in case you were wondering, it isn’t that football funds the other sports either, as the most significant losses are experienced in very “football forward” programs.
This is part of what makes college sports in the US confusing to me. In a society built on capitalistic profit maximization, it is strange to see these highly successful programs continue as such financial train-wrecks. But, maybe that is actually the answer to the mystery. Someone is making money, and lots of it, it just isn’t the athletes, students, or academics of the institutions themselves.
While the economics are undeniably complex, it might be worth starting the examination with the fact that the median salary of D1 head football coaches is $3.5 million a year! On top of that, each program has multiple assistant coaches, many of whom earn between $1million and $2million a year.
I am in the wrong career, clearly.
PS I don’t for a second think that these aren’t highly skilled and highly pressured jobs. Those numbers so seem whack in amateur sports programs though.
The Conferences
Where I am from, elite sport is played in leagues which are formed and kept by performance. All the top teams play all of the other top teams, and at the end of the season, one of them is a champion and some of them need to go and play against weaker teams as a result of their lack of performance.
Cue, the conference system, where teams have self-established leagues meaning that most of the good teams will never play each other outside of a play off or championship game (more on that in a minute). It would make sense if these conferences are geographical (and I believe they started that way) but they aren’t. Teams will fly across the country to play someone in their conference and yet not play against another D1 team that is just down the road. It is all very convoluted and very confusing, and as far as I can tell (again I am an ignorant outsider) it has more to do with TV licensing than any sort of desire for a watch-worthy playing schedule where strong teams play strong teams week in and week out.
The “big 10” isn’t all that big and isn’t made up of ten teams.
The “big 12” has 14 teams. And again, they’re not all that big.
The “pac 12” has 12! But it has teams that are nowhere near the pacific.
No wonder I have no idea where anyone stands on any given week. Which brings me nicely to my next confuddling aspect of this beautiful cultural oddity.
The Rankings and Bowl Games
What the heck? America is supposed to be a meritocracy. It runs in the blood of every element of society, and so you would think that their most popular sports would have very clear lines between winners and losers. And yet, it really doesn’t. How does it work? Well, if you aren’t from the US, you might want to sit down for this part.
Every weekend in the season, 62 journalists, who pinky promise that they aren’t unduly influenced by college representatives with big cheque (check) books and lovely vacation homes, submit a vote on who they think are the best 25 teams in the nation. Like for reals. Just what they think as a bit of a gut feel. And it’s complex, because of the above overly convoluted conference system. How do you compare a team who blew some minnows away with a team that narrowly lost to some giants? You make it up, as a best guess, and then avoid (or take) the calls of the college rep with the big cheque (check) book.
And then, at the end of the season, you add up all of those made up suppositions and choose four teams to play off for the title. What happens to the rest of teams? Well, they get allocated bowl games, which are also determined off of made up rankings, and are sponsored by corn chip companies, or tire companies, or undertakers, depending on how well you finished in the totally made up rankings.
It’s wild guys. Wild.
And yet, as I said above, I am totally hooked into this really broken system.
And so, I will still don my burned orange and will raise my horns high, but as I add to the pressure that is felt by young amateurs, you can be sure that in the back of my mind I will be asking … “but why?”
With all that said, here then are some recommended ways to add a redemptive lens to our college sports obsessive fandom.
Adjust your expectations. Remember that these are kids who are (very good) amateur athletes. Don’t hate them when they fail and don’t worship them when they succeed, and ask yourself if you really want to let the performance of an unpaid teenager impact your mood for days on end.
Take time to pray. Every time I watch a UT game I am making the conscious decision to pray for the players, coaches, staff, cheerleaders and fans. When I see a stadium of 100,000 fans, I ask God to do something amazing on that campus.
Support a local college ministry. Don’t just be a fan of your college’s team, be a patron and supporter of the church and para-church teams who are serving Christ on their campuses. Look up who is doing good work, pray for them, send them some support.
It’s a Friday night in fall as I write this. Tomorrow millions of people will watch college football. It is a spectacalur oddity of American culture, and as a Resident Alien in this land I know that I will never understand it, but I will enjoy it.
#hookem
