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NCAA chief fearful as sports swallow revenue

By BRIAN LANDMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 1, 2001

MINNEAPOLIS -- Against a backdrop of a $6-billion television contract about to kick in, NCAA president Cedric Dempsey incongruously but ominously invoked a Cold War phrase to describe the financial situation of intercollegiate sports:

It's an "arms race," he warned.

"The concern I have is that growing imbalance between what I would say is commercialization and the educational mission of what we're trying to accomplish," he said.

Dempsey said 48 of 976 schools in the nation are operating their athletic departments in the black. That's roughly 5 percent.

"We spend $4.1-billion a year in institutions of higher education on intercollegiate sports in this country," he said. "Each institution in Division I has asked to be as self-sufficient as possible. When you put that criteria upon programs to be self-sufficient, it begins to affect people's decisions on what you pay coaches, on building facilities, on other kinds of promotional activities that sometimes come in conflict ... with the educational mission we have."

He said he was disturbed last week when he heard a conference commissioner remark that one of his teams advancing another round in the NCAA Tournament meant another $860,000 for the league's kitty. Dempsey himself, as a one-time athletic director, confessed that he once watched a player kick a 55-yard field goal and didn't see the ball going through the uprights, but a $400,000 check sailing through in potential television revenue won, or lost, for the next year.

"I do feel it's important we begin to change that focus," he said. "Otherwise, that 48 teams is going to be less and less. And soon, we will have fewer programs in this country and we will leave out a lot of opportunities for young people to compete in sports, which I think still has great educational value to it."

THE BIG FOUR: Duke's Mike Krzyzewski said that usually, one semifinal matchup is, at least on paper, the true championship game. That's akin to how folks used to view the NFC Championship Game in the heyday of the 49ers, then the Cowboys: That game was for the Super Bowl.

That's no longer true in the NFL and it isn't the case in this Final Four. Since the NCAA began seeding teams in 1979, this quartet of two No. 1 seeds (Duke and Michigan State), a No. 2 (Arizona) and a No. 3 (Maryland) is the third best.

"I think all four teams are big-time teams," Krzyzewski said before Saturday's games. "It's probably as good a Final Four as there's been in a while in that respect."

FACES IN THE CROWD: The leaders of last year's Michigan State team, Mateen Cleaves and Morris Peterson, were in attendance to cheer on their former teammates. Magic Johnson from the 1979 championship team also was in the house.

DID YOU KNOW? Saturday's all-Atlantic Coast Conference game between Duke and Maryland marked the second time teams from that league have met in the Final Four. In 1981, North Carolina beat Virginia 78-65. The Tar Heels then lost to a Big Ten power, Indiana.

THE LAST WORD: "I've seen little pieces and parts and I've heard what people have told me. But he can't show favoritism. I've heard he's been a little hard on some of us, but that's just his job." -- Arizona forward Luke Walton on the TV commentary of his famous father, Bill, a CBS analyst.

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