Tapsearch Com EditorA man from La Mancha doing his time at University of Texas
REQUIEM FOR A GADFLY
( Don Quixote at the University of Texas - story continues from Don Quixote at University of Texas part 1
Thomas Palaima tried to take on the University of
Texas's powerful sports program. Guess who won?
By Evelyn Ngugi'
( Tom calls this "An obituary for me"
We call it A man from La Mancha doing his time at the University of Texas - see link above for part 1 of the story.
This is Texas. Football is a sport, a culture,
and a religion. It has its faithful and its
heretics.
***They told him that Longhorn athletics generated
$138,770,031 in income that year. Football alone
earned $87,583,985. But they also told him that
the program was committed to a huge outlay of
building and remodeling projects, a debt totaling
$396 million, incurring annual payments of $15
million. Instead of cutting expenses, the program
was increasing revenue. "That's not a business
plan my financial advisor would recommend,"
Palaima says.
In 2007, University President Bill Powers and the
Board of Regents agreed to turn over management
of trademark licensing to the athletics
department. The royalty revenues are split 90
percent and 10 percent---for every dollar the
Longhorn name and its associated brands brings
in, the sports program gets 90 cents and the
academic institution gets a dime.
***
"Multi-year contracts are much more prevalent
than before, and that's something you have to
deal with the universities - with buyout," Mack
Brown is saying. That was something that we
haven't really dealt with before. And the
salaries are much higher. I didn't even realize
how high they were until I started looking
outside. In a lot of cases some of our staff
members were not paid near as much as some guys
on the outside."
It's late January--two days before National
Signing Day 2011---and Coach Brown is meeting
with the press for a play-by-play look at the
state of Longhorn football.
Right now he's explaining about the huge sums the
program has allocated for hiring assistant
coaches for a team that went 5 and 7 last year.
Brown hired nine assistant coaches. Eight of them
received pay raises. Six of them are brand new to
Longhorn football. The program dished out $3.7
million in total for the new coaches. "In the
end, we thought we hired a great staff for
Texas," says Brown.
Two years earlier, Brown himself signed a revised
contract that made him the highest paid college
football coach in history at $5.1 million per
year. Alabama's Nick Saban has since stolen the
top spot with $5.9 million.
By contrast, university president William Powers
makes $511,491. Soncia Lily, the dean of
students, makes $198,177.
While the football program is offering six-figure
salaries to new assistant coaches, the rest of
the university is cutting as fast as it can. The
university's total 2010-2011 budget is $2.23
billion. The academic core, which pays teaching
salaries, student scholarships and keeps the
lights on, is $1.2 billion. With the state
legislature reducing its contribution by about
$29 million over two years, the university has to
slash five percent for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.
UT enacted a hiring freeze in February 2009. That
saved $7 million. A UT system-wide salary freeze
followed suit.
At the time of Brown's pay raise, Palaima was on
the Executive Faculty Council. "They sent the
email before the Christmas break, you know how
they time things," he recalls. "Just like
releasing bad news on a Friday. By the time they
notified us, we weren't able to muster a quorum.
It was absolutely insane."
The available council members met days later and
although it was unofficial, passed a resolution
calling the pay raise "unseemly and
inappropriate." They voted 23 to 15 in favor.
Four members abstained. Powers was one of them.
***
To find Tom Palaima's counterpart in the sports
world, go to Ernest Cockrell Jr. Hall, the
engineering building. David Fowler, head of the
Men's Athletic Council, is an architectural
engineering professor. The salary freeze applies
to him as well. Still, he's an ardent defender
of the sports program and its expenditures.
As chair of the council, Fowler serves as an
advisor to the president, evaluates the athletic
budget, and takes part in student athlete
initiatives like Major Exploration Night, a
dinner conference for freshman and sophomore
athletes to fine-tune their degree plan and
career goals.
Fowler says his interactions with Palaima are
cordial, although the two professors wildly
disagree. He says Palaima simply doesn't
understand how truly valuable the sports program
is. "When you get a degree from UT, it's huge and
everybody takes notice," Fowler says. "And sports
is a great reason for the desirability of that
brand."
Fowler explains that sports often serve as the
launching pad and introduction to the greater
Longhorn culture. Take Billy Joe "Red" McCombs, a
UT alumnus who co-founded Clear Channel
Communications, the largest owner of full-power
radio stations in the country. He made Forbes
magazine's 400 Richest Americans list in 2005.
McCombs's first big donation to the school was $3
million to Women's Longhorn Softball in 1997.
Three years later, he donated $50 million to the
business school - the largest single gift in the
university's history. "It started with sports,
but that opened him up and he saw a need in the
academic world," says Fowler.
President Powers echoed the same point in his
blog Tower Talk. "Athletics is a key way we
connect donors to the University and our academic
programs," he wrote.
"I travel around the world quite a bit, and if
I'm wearing UT gear, people will come up to me
and say 'Hook 'Em!'" Fowler says. "We're so
well-known and the sports program is a big reason
for that. It's a great brand, UT Longhorns."
Of course, the people who truly power the brand
aren't the coaches or the alumni, but rather the
student athletes.
***
Shon Mitchell graduated from LBJ High School in
Austin in 1993 as an All-American, one of the top
high school running backs in Texas. He remembers
scouts visiting his school. "They come watch you
practice, see if you fit the criteria as far as
your grades," Mitchell says. "Make sure you're
the type of player they want on the team."
Mitchell says he didn't take his grades seriously
in high school and had to go to Blinn Junior
College. John Mackovic, then UT's head coach,
promised Mitchell that if he continued the
football process and did well in junior college,
a scholarship would still be on the table. And it
was. In 1995, Mitchell became a Longhorn. He and
future Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams led
the team to two consecutive conference titles.
And what about grades? The truth of the matter is
that the academic services available to UT
athletes rival those of most of the country.
Longhorn Pride is the name of the academic
initiative. It enlists a team of 88 mentor-tutors
exclusively for athletes. Each freshman athlete
is assigned to one. There's mandatory study hall.
The pressures of academic and athletic
performance is a juggling game, much like
pursuing a journalism degree while freelancing.
It just comes with the territory.
"That's what I try to tell kids - it's hard,"
Mitchell says. "Watch film. Go on flights to away
games yet focus for a test you just studied for.
Sure we had tutors and you got your study hall to
sit in there for an hour and concentrate on your
grades, but still."
The pressures, Mitchell says, have only
increased since his time at UT. "At the time it
wasn't a big 'go pro' talk," he recalls. "Our
coaches didn't like you talking about going pro
at the time. Just stick to the program. They
didn't really push us. Nowadays it's a different
process. They put the NFL into their heads and
it's a different focus on keeping that 2.0."
After two seasons, Mitchell did leave for the
pros. In 1997 he became a 49er and moved between
different indoor and outdoor leagues. "I was a
journeyman," he says. "I saw Europe. I got a
chance to see a lot of places that I wouldn't
have, coming from East Austin."
Mitchell didn't feel exploited as a student
athlete, he says. Football is his passion, and
Longhorn football allowed him to move on to
bigger and better things. Academic tutors and
football coaches were available to help him
achieve any goal he wanted. "They were really
there to hellp me," he says.
After a knee injury cut short his pro football
career, Mitchell decided to return to Austin for
his degree. "I called up academic advisors and
Brian Davis got me back enrolled," he says.
Yes, it's much easier being only a student,
Mitchell says. "I can focus on getting that 3.0,"
he says. "I ain't got to lift weights, watch film
of practice, watch film of opponents. I ain't got
to do none of that."
In May 2009, he earned his degree in Youth and
Community Studies. He was 35. "I always wanted to
be the first one in my family to graduate and I
did that," he said. "I got my degree, and I'm
happy."
Now, Mitchell lives in East Austin and is a
manager at Hit Center Austin, an athletic
training facility. "I'm trying to get these young
athletes to be good student athletes, focus on
both," he said. He even has a top recruit headed
for UT Austin soon.
In 2005, NCAA created the Academic Progress Rate,
to track student movement toward graduation. A
passing grade is 925, the equivalent of a 50
percent graduation rate. The latest available
data from NCAA is for 2008-2009, and football
earned a 947.
The Graduation Success Rate groups athletes in
six-year cohorts for graduation. The 2009-2010
graduating class enrolled in 2003. Their GSR is
79 percent, compared to the general student
body's rate of 80.7 percent. The NCAA created its
own rubric because the federal government's
graduation rate for student-athletes didn't take
into account students who left for the pros,
mid-year enrollees or those who transferred and
graduated at another institution. The federal
rate for that same 2010 class is 64 percent.
Palaima isn't buying the NCAA's numbers. If a
student doesn't make the grade, Palaima points
out, he's dropped from the program and usually
transfers to another school. The fact that the
student failed in the first place is ignored. The
rubric is set up to allow academics to take a
back seat to athletic performance. Under the NCAA
rules, a student can fulfill the requirements yet
still fall a full year short of graduation even
after four years in college. "It's all a
smokescreen," he says.
Most people see Shon Mitchell as a success story,
but to Palaima, his is a cautionary tale, one of
some things done right and some things done wrong.
A Ray Tapajna Chronicles site - story continues at Don Quixote at University of Texas Part 3
( Don Quixote at the University of Texas - story continues from Don Quixote at University of Texas part 1
Thomas Palaima tried to take on the University of
Texas's powerful sports program. Guess who won?
By Evelyn Ngugi'
( Tom calls this "An obituary for me"
We call it A man from La Mancha doing his time at the University of Texas - see link above for part 1 of the story.
This is Texas. Football is a sport, a culture,
and a religion. It has its faithful and its
heretics.
***They told him that Longhorn athletics generated
$138,770,031 in income that year. Football alone
earned $87,583,985. But they also told him that
the program was committed to a huge outlay of
building and remodeling projects, a debt totaling
$396 million, incurring annual payments of $15
million. Instead of cutting expenses, the program
was increasing revenue. "That's not a business
plan my financial advisor would recommend,"
Palaima says.
In 2007, University President Bill Powers and the
Board of Regents agreed to turn over management
of trademark licensing to the athletics
department. The royalty revenues are split 90
percent and 10 percent---for every dollar the
Longhorn name and its associated brands brings
in, the sports program gets 90 cents and the
academic institution gets a dime.
***
"Multi-year contracts are much more prevalent
than before, and that's something you have to
deal with the universities - with buyout," Mack
Brown is saying. That was something that we
haven't really dealt with before. And the
salaries are much higher. I didn't even realize
how high they were until I started looking
outside. In a lot of cases some of our staff
members were not paid near as much as some guys
on the outside."
It's late January--two days before National
Signing Day 2011---and Coach Brown is meeting
with the press for a play-by-play look at the
state of Longhorn football.
Right now he's explaining about the huge sums the
program has allocated for hiring assistant
coaches for a team that went 5 and 7 last year.
Brown hired nine assistant coaches. Eight of them
received pay raises. Six of them are brand new to
Longhorn football. The program dished out $3.7
million in total for the new coaches. "In the
end, we thought we hired a great staff for
Texas," says Brown.
Two years earlier, Brown himself signed a revised
contract that made him the highest paid college
football coach in history at $5.1 million per
year. Alabama's Nick Saban has since stolen the
top spot with $5.9 million.
By contrast, university president William Powers
makes $511,491. Soncia Lily, the dean of
students, makes $198,177.
While the football program is offering six-figure
salaries to new assistant coaches, the rest of
the university is cutting as fast as it can. The
university's total 2010-2011 budget is $2.23
billion. The academic core, which pays teaching
salaries, student scholarships and keeps the
lights on, is $1.2 billion. With the state
legislature reducing its contribution by about
$29 million over two years, the university has to
slash five percent for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.
UT enacted a hiring freeze in February 2009. That
saved $7 million. A UT system-wide salary freeze
followed suit.
At the time of Brown's pay raise, Palaima was on
the Executive Faculty Council. "They sent the
email before the Christmas break, you know how
they time things," he recalls. "Just like
releasing bad news on a Friday. By the time they
notified us, we weren't able to muster a quorum.
It was absolutely insane."
The available council members met days later and
although it was unofficial, passed a resolution
calling the pay raise "unseemly and
inappropriate." They voted 23 to 15 in favor.
Four members abstained. Powers was one of them.
***
To find Tom Palaima's counterpart in the sports
world, go to Ernest Cockrell Jr. Hall, the
engineering building. David Fowler, head of the
Men's Athletic Council, is an architectural
engineering professor. The salary freeze applies
to him as well. Still, he's an ardent defender
of the sports program and its expenditures.
As chair of the council, Fowler serves as an
advisor to the president, evaluates the athletic
budget, and takes part in student athlete
initiatives like Major Exploration Night, a
dinner conference for freshman and sophomore
athletes to fine-tune their degree plan and
career goals.
Fowler says his interactions with Palaima are
cordial, although the two professors wildly
disagree. He says Palaima simply doesn't
understand how truly valuable the sports program
is. "When you get a degree from UT, it's huge and
everybody takes notice," Fowler says. "And sports
is a great reason for the desirability of that
brand."
Fowler explains that sports often serve as the
launching pad and introduction to the greater
Longhorn culture. Take Billy Joe "Red" McCombs, a
UT alumnus who co-founded Clear Channel
Communications, the largest owner of full-power
radio stations in the country. He made Forbes
magazine's 400 Richest Americans list in 2005.
McCombs's first big donation to the school was $3
million to Women's Longhorn Softball in 1997.
Three years later, he donated $50 million to the
business school - the largest single gift in the
university's history. "It started with sports,
but that opened him up and he saw a need in the
academic world," says Fowler.
President Powers echoed the same point in his
blog Tower Talk. "Athletics is a key way we
connect donors to the University and our academic
programs," he wrote.
"I travel around the world quite a bit, and if
I'm wearing UT gear, people will come up to me
and say 'Hook 'Em!'" Fowler says. "We're so
well-known and the sports program is a big reason
for that. It's a great brand, UT Longhorns."
Of course, the people who truly power the brand
aren't the coaches or the alumni, but rather the
student athletes.
***
Shon Mitchell graduated from LBJ High School in
Austin in 1993 as an All-American, one of the top
high school running backs in Texas. He remembers
scouts visiting his school. "They come watch you
practice, see if you fit the criteria as far as
your grades," Mitchell says. "Make sure you're
the type of player they want on the team."
Mitchell says he didn't take his grades seriously
in high school and had to go to Blinn Junior
College. John Mackovic, then UT's head coach,
promised Mitchell that if he continued the
football process and did well in junior college,
a scholarship would still be on the table. And it
was. In 1995, Mitchell became a Longhorn. He and
future Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams led
the team to two consecutive conference titles.
And what about grades? The truth of the matter is
that the academic services available to UT
athletes rival those of most of the country.
Longhorn Pride is the name of the academic
initiative. It enlists a team of 88 mentor-tutors
exclusively for athletes. Each freshman athlete
is assigned to one. There's mandatory study hall.
The pressures of academic and athletic
performance is a juggling game, much like
pursuing a journalism degree while freelancing.
It just comes with the territory.
"That's what I try to tell kids - it's hard,"
Mitchell says. "Watch film. Go on flights to away
games yet focus for a test you just studied for.
Sure we had tutors and you got your study hall to
sit in there for an hour and concentrate on your
grades, but still."
The pressures, Mitchell says, have only
increased since his time at UT. "At the time it
wasn't a big 'go pro' talk," he recalls. "Our
coaches didn't like you talking about going pro
at the time. Just stick to the program. They
didn't really push us. Nowadays it's a different
process. They put the NFL into their heads and
it's a different focus on keeping that 2.0."
After two seasons, Mitchell did leave for the
pros. In 1997 he became a 49er and moved between
different indoor and outdoor leagues. "I was a
journeyman," he says. "I saw Europe. I got a
chance to see a lot of places that I wouldn't
have, coming from East Austin."
Mitchell didn't feel exploited as a student
athlete, he says. Football is his passion, and
Longhorn football allowed him to move on to
bigger and better things. Academic tutors and
football coaches were available to help him
achieve any goal he wanted. "They were really
there to hellp me," he says.
After a knee injury cut short his pro football
career, Mitchell decided to return to Austin for
his degree. "I called up academic advisors and
Brian Davis got me back enrolled," he says.
Yes, it's much easier being only a student,
Mitchell says. "I can focus on getting that 3.0,"
he says. "I ain't got to lift weights, watch film
of practice, watch film of opponents. I ain't got
to do none of that."
In May 2009, he earned his degree in Youth and
Community Studies. He was 35. "I always wanted to
be the first one in my family to graduate and I
did that," he said. "I got my degree, and I'm
happy."
Now, Mitchell lives in East Austin and is a
manager at Hit Center Austin, an athletic
training facility. "I'm trying to get these young
athletes to be good student athletes, focus on
both," he said. He even has a top recruit headed
for UT Austin soon.
In 2005, NCAA created the Academic Progress Rate,
to track student movement toward graduation. A
passing grade is 925, the equivalent of a 50
percent graduation rate. The latest available
data from NCAA is for 2008-2009, and football
earned a 947.
The Graduation Success Rate groups athletes in
six-year cohorts for graduation. The 2009-2010
graduating class enrolled in 2003. Their GSR is
79 percent, compared to the general student
body's rate of 80.7 percent. The NCAA created its
own rubric because the federal government's
graduation rate for student-athletes didn't take
into account students who left for the pros,
mid-year enrollees or those who transferred and
graduated at another institution. The federal
rate for that same 2010 class is 64 percent.
Palaima isn't buying the NCAA's numbers. If a
student doesn't make the grade, Palaima points
out, he's dropped from the program and usually
transfers to another school. The fact that the
student failed in the first place is ignored. The
rubric is set up to allow academics to take a
back seat to athletic performance. Under the NCAA
rules, a student can fulfill the requirements yet
still fall a full year short of graduation even
after four years in college. "It's all a
smokescreen," he says.
Most people see Shon Mitchell as a success story,
but to Palaima, his is a cautionary tale, one of
some things done right and some things done wrong.
A Ray Tapajna Chronicles site - story continues at Don Quixote at University of Texas Part 3
