The expected budget shortfalls in athletic departments is due to the lack of revenue generated by football, due to the inability to play as caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But this is really only a stress test for a system that has spent decades overspending and valuing the personal gains of those in the NCAA bureaucracy more than the labor of those on the field.
College sports was professionalized by career-focused athletic administrators who overleveraged football teams and infrastructure project to boost their personal brand. The C-Suite athletic directors (largely white, largely wealthy) saw riskless career advancement on the backs of a largely unpaid Black labor force. The majority of those in charge could bankrupt an ATM, but it their estimation a recyclable, unpaid labor force, who could be pushed past all modern labor laws by nostalgic friends on America's benches as a means to increase ticket sales, build larger stadiums, pump up their own notoriety and lever it all to the hilt.
The athletic directors at Power 5 conferences could give two cents about anything but the way they are perceived by their peers as they oversee their programs. Academic All-Americans is a pretty column in the recruiting column, but the only paper these athletes want is the cash everyone else is using as currency to buy goods. But for the athletic directors there is only enough money to line their pockets.
Greed and poor fiscal management are why Stanford announced the elimination of 11 sports. But it also accounts for the survival of the bureaucracy. As of today there weren't any additional layoffs among the 200-plus support positions at Stanford. Why? Bureaucracies like those at Stanford don't die because they are inside a self-affirming system that spirals up to the NCAA. It's interwoven and unkillable. "Of course we can't fire the associate director for academic performance!" If Stanford axed the non-contributing fat, they'd have to admit that the metrics and support systems were all a smokescreen for not having to pay individuals for the services they perform.
Boise State AD Curt ApseyCurt Apsey, the much-maligned AD at Boise State, is probably the most abysmal of the bureaucratic dinosaurs who believes that shuffling personnel and setting outlandish goals is positive career juice. After working his way up the ranks at Boise State he took a short stint as an AD of a smaller school, only to be called back by Boise State in 2016. What's that first plan? Cut wrestling and add baseball. A program with little overhead and plenty of success being replaced by one that requires immense overhead and has no players. Now baseball is being cut and Apsey essentially spent the last four years of his life figuring out how to light $4 million on fire.
Apsey is just one of many examples of athletic directors with no economic expertise who've convinced alumni and school officials to expand expensive offerings in order to boos the "brand identity" and reputation of the school through sports. The interesting part missing from Apsey's plan was that Boise State winning the College World Series would, at best, result in the program being self-sufficient for a year or two. However, his resume would be padded and the reputation he sells up the NCAA food chain and to other schools would be improved.
Apsey has failed in spectacular fashion, but nothing will happen. He's entrenched and COVID will take the blame, because his generation is devoid of accepting responsibility for their actions. The AD's in his sphere thought the money tree would never stop delivering. But it did and now there is a baseball team off the field and a broken legacy of Broncos wrestlers. Apsey? Employed and happy. Maybe that will change, but he'll have a golden parachute to ease his return to Applebee's and nights out talking about the time he ruined a state's favorite athletic institution.
It's not just the Apseys of the world that take the blame. We do too. Off campus we elected the officials who've so far created the limpest, most lethargic, self-defeating, and toothless response to the COVID pandemic in the world. Truly, leading the world in incompetence. Make no mistake that we could be back on the mats, on the field, and in restaurants were it not the intent of those in power to watch us die. If the American government had tested, contact traced, and encourage us to wear masks this column wouldn't be live. We'd be talking about the upcoming football season and we'd have wrestling at Stanford.
But that didn't happen, because masks have been bastardized and weaponized by insecure milquetoast racists like Tucker Carlson and promoted by the weakest national leadership in American history. But hey, we elected these racist clowns, so we have to own some responsibility.
As for Stanford wrestling? I get it and we all know the steps to this dance. The community is going to fundraise for Stanford. Their alumni, mid-stickup, will fork over $10 million to save wrestling in the process probably even add women's wrestling. That could be an awesome moment, but we aren't solving any larger issues in college athletics by capitulating to the short-sighted economic hijacking of the wrestling team.
Right now, the model is free labor in support of all activities. While there is a lot of fat in the athletic programs at its core it's a system run by largely white athletic directors using the labor of Black America to generate profits for themselves and their corporate partners. COVID is bringing that much into focus so if you ask me what we should do right now? Save Stanford, sure. But it's time to drop the hose and turn off the alarms.
Let it burn.
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