Maryland’s Move to the Big Ten

In order to analyze the University of Maryland’s decision to move to the Big Ten conference, it is necessary to analyze the big picture that is the economic trend in college athletics today. It is hard to deny that the school’s participation in conference realignment will affect the culture among fans and supporters of the Terrapins, but there is a reason why Maryland is not alone in the realignment movement. Schools around the country are following specific strategies in order to find perceived success within their athletic programs. In many ways athletic departments are treating their budgets using a theory similar to that of “trickle down” economics, whereas tax break and other economic benefits given to the wealthier would eventually pass those benefits on to those less fortunate.[1] In the case of college athletics, the “wealthier” class would be the football and men’s basketball programs, where the less fortunate are the rest of the non-revenue based teams. To put it simply, as long as the football and men’s basketball programs get what they need to make money, the rest of the programs will fall into place. The problem is, this strategy is not working out. For that reason, Maryland President Wallace Loh and Athletic Director Kevin Anderson made a decision to bail out their program by moving to the Big Ten. College athletics’ reliance and emphasis on revenue sports is a flawed system making business more of a priority than the fans.

When information leaked on the internet that the University of Maryland was switching conference allegiances to the Big Ten it would be an understatement to say that there were mixed emotions among the community. When considering the decision made by University President Wallace Loh and Athletic Director Kevin Anderson, the move to switch conferences was not foreign in the world of NCAA athletics. Realignment is the reality and trend. Maryland was indeed a charter member of the Atlantic Coast Conference back in the 1950s, making fans’ allegiance to the conference almost as important to them as the Terrapins themselves. When Loh suggested the idea of a move to the Big Ten, the Washington Post reported that A.D. Kevin Anderson replied, “Wallace, you are not serious?”[2]

The decision was clearly rooted in financial security and viability from the beginning. The university had just recently cut a number of varsity sports teams it could not afford to fund. There is no getting around it. The University of Maryland had cut seven teams: men’s and women’s swimming and diving, acrobatics and tumbling, men’s tennis, women’s water polo and men’s cross country and indoor track and field. Logically, the Big Ten move could revive the athletic program and was seen as a quick fix. According to the Sports Business Journal, by 2020 Maryland is projected to make $95 million more with the Big Ten than if the school had stayed with the Atlantic Coast Conference. So while it would have been possible for the Terrapins to methodically build the program back up within the ACC, the decision was not to wait and receive an injection of life, to the dismay of diehard fans.

While the University of Maryland’s conference move may be seen as a failure to some, the school was not alone in the problems it faced to become viable in the current college sports landscape. According to Liz Clarke of the Washington Post, “Athletic departments at nine out of 10 public universities that compete in big-time sports spent more money than they generate last year.” With that information in mind, it is difficult to say Maryland was wrong for cutting the number of varsity teams it did, as Clarke mentions “…the current model of college sports, marked by overzealous spending in pursuit of success in football and men’s basketball, is broken.” And that seems to be the crux of the problem. If there are only two teams that command attention and make money, those will be the ones that will command the investment. However, that strategy is not even working. According to USA Today statistics cited by Clarke, only 22 of 227 public universities in NCAA Division I turned a profit in 2011. It seems like failed economics, but regardless of that result a question remains. Should revenue be the ultimate goal of a school’s athletic department?

At the point where Maryland made the decision to cut sports, the school’s athletics department was running at a $4.7 million deficit, said to reach $17.6 by 2017 if nothing was done to remedy the situation. With those numbers in mind it is important to also look at where the university has decided to spend money in recent years. In the last decade the university has built the Comcast Center and added luxury boxes to Byrd Stadium in Tyser Tower. Now, after those investments, fans are not even filling the new facilities on game day. One third of the suites in the newly built Tyser Town at Byrd Stadium have gone unsold while season ticket sales are steadily declining. When top-level performance, by fans’ standards, is not guaranteed, it is difficult to actually see a return on those investments. A private donation made to the program was used to fund the new artificial turf field in Byrd Stadium. The question posed by Clarke and others is whether or not sums of money like that should have been used to maintain the sports that the university had just recently dropped. This is where the trickle down economic model for college sports is hitting a rut, and it does not stop with investments in facilities.

Poor timing led to Maryland falling victim to another ill-fated trend in college sports around the 2010-2011 athletic year. What coincided for Maryland that year was coaching changes in both of its revenue sports. The school let go of head football coach Ralph Friedgen, and to buy out his contract, as well as his assistants’, the athletic department needed to fork out around $3 million. Also at the end of the 2010-2011 basketball season, celebrated head basketball coach Gary Williams made his decision to retire. These coaching vacancies coincided with the trends of college athletics at the time, which is to bring in highly paid coaches to bolster the individual programs in the hope of attracting back the fans and the revenue. For Maryland, this meant bringing in  former University of Connecticut football coach Randy Edsall with a $2 million a year salary and a $400,000 buyout. On the basketball side, Mark Turgeon was hired with a $1.9 million a year contract and a $250,000 buyout paid to Texas A&M. These totals added to the fact that the coaches did not find success on the field and court, respectively, their first seasons, meant that the school did not see dividends from its investments. It does not even stop there. Add new football offensive coordinator Mike Locksley’s $500,000 salary to the picture and it becomes over $5 million in money devoted to coaching in two sports. Again, Maryland’s budgetary choices are being used as the example, but this commitment to paying coaching is prevalent across the country. Steve Berkowitz and Jodi Upton at USA Today have reported that salaries for college coaches are getting even higher. On average salaries will rise on average by 7% according to a conducted survey. Clearly this trend is not ending and the external pressures of schools to attract the best coaches are increasing. For these reasons the market for coaching salaries is inflating while putting a larger burden on athletic departments around the country that are already draining their wallets to stay afloat. When the chances of winning and profiting are already so slim in the current landscape, external pressures to spend money in such a way prove to be too much of a burden.

Maryland’s move to the Big Ten will not have a lasting effect on the culture as sports fans, but it does reflect on how business now runs college sports, not fandom. The move was a blow to fans that looked forward to ACC matchups for years to come, but it could be said that the fans themselves perpetuated the precarious situation. According to the Sports Business Journal report, during the 2010-2011 budget year, the athletic department’s expenses totaled $7.8 million over its revenue. All of that while fickle fandom led to empty seats in the stands of both the football and basketball stadiums. It would be a fallacy to consider Maryland alone in this situation though as none of the ACC’s eight public schools profited during that year. Two major trends in college sports investment have not worked out in Maryland’s favor. The current formula says, make money in football and men’s basketball and it will trickle down to the other sports. In the case of the University of Maryland, clearly more needed to be done to sustain such a pipe dream. In the end the administration’s hand was forced into the Big Ten move.