In 1982 I circulated a petition on the University of Idaho campus asking that state appropriated funds not be used for athletics. My main argument was that this money should be used solely for academics.
A resolution supporting this petition was passed by the Faculty Senate and sent to the UI administration. For four years (1983-87) the Vandals, presumably without a subsidy, won five Big Sky football championships. I especially enjoyed the times when the Vandals beat the Broncos.
With Don Monson’s superb coaching, UI basketball also excelled during this period. In 1981 and 1982 the team, also without subsidies, won two Big Sky championships.
The Vandals went to the NCAA play-offs, losing in the first round in 1981. In 1982, UI made the Sweet Sixteen, but they lost to Oregon State 60-42. I can still remember the Beavers outmaneuvering the Vandals in a slow defensive game.
In 1987 the State Board of Education authorized $665,500 in appropriated funds for UI athletics, which has now has grown to $949,500. This is still not enough to balance the athletic budget.
UI Vice President of Finance Brian Foisy estimates a deficit between $900,000 and $1,000,000. The athletics department had originally requested $1 million a year for four years to bring the budget out of the red.
After some hard questioning at last Tuesday’s Faculty Senate meeting and a revealing investigative report by a UI student (see below), Foisy has now announced that the request will be $950,000 for this year alone.
UI athletics has received benefits that no other university unit has. In 1995 then President Robert Hoover gained approval for an unprecedented transfer of $500,000 from the UI Foundation to finance the move to the Division I-A Football, where UI has been ranked at the bottom, with few exceptions, ever since.
At the same time, UI athletics was given a reduction to 1 percent from the 6 percent administrative fee that each campus unit was charged. The reason offered was that UI teams promote the University’s “brand.” Don’t our academic departments do this as well? This fee for academic units has now risen to 10 percent, but the fee for athletics has been waived completely because of their current financial crisis.
UI President Chuck Staben has made a wise decision in returning football to the Big Sky Conference. Moving back to this regional conference has two major advantages: travel expenses would be reduced dramatically and attendance would most likely increase.
Many more fans from regional teams would come to home games, and more locals would come to see the Vandals play traditional opponents such as Eastern Washington, Montana, Montana State, Portland State and Idaho State.
President Staben has received criticism from some Vandals fans, but the Spokesman Review reports “that about two-thirds of the unsolicited emails he received before the decision came from people who favored it, and that a small group of new donors have cited the jump to the Big Sky as their reason to start giving.”
In his survey of student perception Zach Lien found that when students learned that athletics was not profitable, only 2.7 percent supported increasing student fees to fund the teams. Read his report at www.NickGier.com/AthleticsZach.pdf.
Foisy has argued that all campus units require a subsidy, but those faculty and staff contribute to the core mission of the university. Land grant universities such as UI were authorized by the Morrill Act 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln. Nowhere in this legislation nor in UI Constitution is athletics described as essential to the function of these institutions.
Over the 45 years that I have been associated with the UI, I have seen my department and many others cut their budgets to the bone — some have no travel money and some have no faculty telephones — so I see no reason that UI athletics cannot live within the limits of its generous annual subsidy of $949,500.
Nick Gier
taught philosophy at the
University of Idaho for 31 years.
Read the full length version
at www.NickGier.com/UIathletics.pdf.