Professors despise spending

EUGENE, Ore. -- Players, coaches and boosters were thrilled with Oregon's new $3.2 million football locker room, complete with plasma screen TVs, video games and a bronze plaque honoring Nike chairman and rabid fan Phil Knight.\nBut professors were less than enthralled: for them, it was the latest sign college spending on sports was out of control.\nTheir calls for more faculty influence on sports spending have helped spark a nationwide movement already endorsed by faculty senates at schools such as Duke, Michigan, Stanford, Texas, Alabama, Nebraska, Mississippi, Arkansas, Iowa and Oklahoma State.\n"From a professor's point of view, athletics is a sideshow that has taken on a life of its own and become dangerous and counterproductive to education," said James Earl, a professor of medieval literature at Oregon and co-chair of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics.\nThe coalition's roots date to 2000, when Earl and other Oregon professors were infuriated by the university's plans for a multimillion-dollar expansion of its football stadium, even as academic budgets were being cut. Their movement spread and now includes faculty leaders from other universities with big Division I sports programs.\nIts members are now asking faculty senates at other Division I schools to vote on a resolution that calls for more restraint on spending on sports and a brake on "creeping collegiate commercialism." The resolution also asks that professors be given more influence over spending decisions at their universities and with the NCAA.\nThe faculty senate at Oregon votes on it Wednesday.\nIt is unclear how much effect the coalition will have. At Texas, for example, the faculty council approved the intent of the reforms in January, but former council chairman Michael Grunof told the student newspaper, "What we will be doing with this is still very unclear."\nAnd the proposal is sure to encounter skepticism from higher-ups.\n"I am glad that the faculty take a genuine interest in institutional issues," said Dan Williams, vice president of administration at Oregon. "But their primary area of expertise is academic affairs. I have a problem when the faculty take on responsibility for administrative matters."\nAthletes, too, said they were skeptical about a greater role for the faculty.\n"I completely oppose the idea of faculty members being included in the process of deciding where spending should be done," said Jared Siegal, a football player and business major at Oregon. "It is inappropriate. They don't have any sort of authority."\nOthers, though, said the faculty's words about sports spending run amok deserve to be heeded.\n"It kind of sends a mixed message, with tuition and book prices going up, to also be building new arenas," said Adam Petkun, a political science major at Oregon.\nSupporters of college sports counter that college sports are big business, like it or not.\nMoneymaking sports like men's football and basketball often underwrite other college sports teams, from squash to soccer. And universities say fancy stadiums, arenas and locker rooms help them recruit star athletes and attract fans and donors.\nOregon's state-of-the-art locker room, for example, was funded by three longtime boosters who dedicated it to Knight, an Oregon graduate.\nSome reform may still be down the road, even if it isn't exactly what the coalition is calling for.\nNCAA president Myles Brand backs a plan to give college presidents more say in their schools' sports programs. The organization also wants to closely track athletes' academic programs and reward college programs where players are succeeding in class.