How much are sports worth to USU?

Until Saturday, the USU football team had a losing season. However, the cross country teams have placed at several meets. To support these teams, USU students with seven or more credits are paying $53.25 in student fees, a $4 increase from last year, according to the USU fees breakdown.

With a possible move from Division 1A status to Division 1AA, some people have questioned the value of USU sports to the university and the students.

But how much money does the state, university and student body give to sports and how much money does athletics make in return?

Executive Director of USU’s Budget and Planning Department Whitney Pugh said in the budget for the Fiscal Year 2006-2007, the total budget for USU’s main campus is $160,618,200.

Ken Peterson, senior associate athletics director who has managed the budget for the past 30 years, said the total athletics budget for Fiscal Year 2006-2007 is $10,118,799.

“Athletics is the tie that binds people together. It’s so visible that you can see and follow USU and it ties you to that school,” Peterson said. “Athletics tends to be how a whole student body is connected. You have one student in this major and one student in another major, but they can all relate through athletics.”

The amount that students are directly paying for that tie is $1.7 million through student fees, Peterson said, with the portion of fees going toward athletics being higher than any other fee except for computer services and building fees. Indirectly, last year more than $98,000 became part of the sports’ budget through concessions and sales tax.

Does the athletics program pay for itself? According to Peterson, last year the athletics program had a half-million dollar deficit last year, but balanced the budget for the previous 13 years.

Peterson said students should continue to support sports despite football’s current slump, because sports are “the window to see the university.”

But athletics aren’t completely exempt from budget cuts, Peterson said, and money has to be made from somewhere other than just students fees and $3 million worth of state funding.

This is partially from being a member of the NCAA and the WAC, because the organizations give schools money for participating in tournaments and sponsoring a certain number of programs and students, Peterson said. USU received more than $1 million during 2005-2006 from the NCAA and WAC.

“We must sponsor so many sports and so many competitions and meet minimum numbers of qualifications to be in the NCAA Division 1A program,” Peterson said. “If we moved down a level, these costs wouldn’t go down very much, so why spend the same amount of money and not be considered in the top?”

Compared to Brigham Young University and University of Utah, USU’s sports budget is lower but so are the profits.

While a BYU representative said she was unable to release current sports information and the U of U representative did not return calls, the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, from the Department of Education Web site, lists all information from every collegiate sports program in the nation for the years 2004-2005.

The athletics program at BYU had an expense total of $28,410,727, but a revenue total of $29,326,287. The Provo program made a grand total of more than $900,000.

In Salt Lake, the U’s program made $25,180,145 in 2004-2005, with part of that money coming from the $54.26 student fee U of U students pay, according to their Income and Accounting Department. Their expenses total $20,985,639, making a profit margin of nearly $4.2 million.

In the same year, USU’s budget was only one-third the size of BYU’s and half the size of U of U’s. They made $10,390,546 and had expenses of $10,390,044; a profit of $502.

Last year, the number was $500,000 less, but some people feel the money put into sports is a good investment.

Peterson said “a good chunk of the money” that athletics spends stays at USU, in things like buying books for athletes and paying facilities maintenance employees.

He also said the university needs to have higher publicity and income sports like basketball and football, because without those sports, the university loses money on athletics.

“Why are we spending $10 million on the north end zone? So we can recruit better players and compete better,” Peterson said.

The athletics department sponsors nine women’s sports and seven men’s sports, but it’s men’s basketball and football that make the majority of money in sports.

The actual projected cost for basketball this year is about $1.2 million and expected revenues are $1,080,000. The football costs are expected to be just more than $2.6 million with projected revenue at about $1.6 million. This million-dollar net loss on football is slightly less that in 2004-2005, when out of all 119 Division 1A schools, USU was 94th on the football profit/loss list, being one of only 40 schools posting a loss.

Peterson said while some people question whether football is worth the money, it “gets way too much publicity; we’ve got some great kids on this team.”

“Students think of athletes as elitist, but they’re just the same as everyone else,” Peterson said. “The program is an opportunity for people to get into education and get it paid for. Because of that education, they’re able to go out into the world and be a better person for themselves and society.”

It’s unlikely that everyone will agree on the value of sports for a university, but liberal arts senior Ty Fenn thinks long as the budget is balanced, athletics are good for the university.

“Sports do give us a certain status within the university community. Obviously there are many schools that have sports programs that are losing money, but when they go into the red, I think you have to start questioning if that $10 million isn’t spent better somewhere else.”