Beware the allure of big-time college sports money

Courtesy Holy Cross will receive over $1 million for its NCAA tournament appearance.

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The improbable postseason run by the College of The Holy Cross men's basketball team into the first round of the NCAA March Madness tournament ignited a spark in Worcester that has not been felt for some time. While much of the talk in the city as of late has been about professional minor league sports franchises, here was a Worcester team on the national stage participating – and succeeding – in the most talked about American sports event of the spring. For a Crusaders team that posted a losing record in the regular season, its four consecutive wins in the Patriot League post-season tournament and victory in a hotly contested NCAA First Four game over Southern University seemed almost magical. The fact that No. 1 seed Oregon snuffed out the would-be Cinderella run with authority hardly took away from the buzz. Holy Cross' two games in the big time tournament yielded both tangible and intangible results.

First are the immeasurable benefits of having the school's name announced over and over again on national television and in media throughout the country, especially during its First Four game against Southern, when it was the only NCAA tourney game underway at the time. This free marketing and promotion can be invaluable for any school, and especially for a small, liberal-arts school playing in the Patriot League. Hoping to capitalize on the basketball program's momentum, Holy Cross is already pushing ticket packages for next year's squad. As Holy Cross Athletic Director Nathan Pine said in Sam Bonacci's article, “Holy Cross' NCAA appearance raises $3.2M, school awareness,” on page 4, athletics are a gateway for outsiders to see the college in a new light.

Then, of course, come the tangible benefits. Because of the NCAA's lucrative television contracts and other tournament revenue, like ticket sales, teams participating in the post-season are rewarded handsomely. For every game they appear in during this year's tournament, teams are expected to receive at least $1.6 million, with payments spread out over six years. For appearing in two tournament games, Holy Cross earned a total of $3.2 million.

Based on conference rules, Holy Cross has to share $2.1 million of the total with the other teams in the Patriot League but will get to keep $1.1 million of its NCAA tournament money. While it may not pay for a new athletic center, an unexpected $1.1 million is an especially nice bump when your basketball team lost more games than it won in the regular season.

Part of the beauty of the NCAA basketball tournament is that many small schools, with a hot team, can compete with some of the larger, nationally significant athletic programs and can share in the rewards of billion-dollar television contracts and major merchandise sales. It can lead to a coming-out party, like it did for Gonzaga University in 1999, or – more likely for Holy Cross – a slow snowballing effect that more consistently puts its teams in the national spotlight.

But the seduction of the national stage can also have its downside. In 1984, a young Boston College quarterback by the name of Doug Flutie completed a Hail Mary pass in a nationally televised football game to beat the defending national champion Miami Hurricanes. That moment, followed by a string of several other successes, eventually led to Boston College joining the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2005. Thanks to the broad appeal of schools like Duke, North Carolina, Florida State and Clemson, the ACC routinely pays Boston College and its other members $20 million per year from television contracts and other revenue. But does traveling for conference road games to North Carolina and Florida make any sense to a school in Boston?

Boston College's foray into big-time college athletics has been a double-edged sword. The Boston Globe recently ran a lengthy article detailing the many failures of Boston College since joining the ACC – especially since BC was the first school in conference history to not win a single league game in football or men's basketball this season. The article called into question the school's power structure and its priorities as related to its athletics. Sure, Boston College has reaped more than $140 million since joining the ACC, and annual conference payouts of $20 million per year can buy a lot, including funding less-popular sports like fencing and sailing and providing more scholarships to athletes who otherwise couldn't afford the price tag. But the accumulation of losses has to be disheartening as half-full stadiums can only diminish the BC brand. Up against so many perennial powerhouse schools, BC appears to be in over its head in the ACC when it comes to building a competitive program.

The ceiling for Holy Cross is lower, but the lesson for the school is to stay true to itself. No matter how much success its athletic may hasve, it must remain committed to being the best small, Roman Catholic, liberal arts school it can be. Close rivals for a century, BC and Holy Cross went down different roads with their athletic programs long ago. While it would be great to see the basketball revival of the alma matter of Bob Cousy and Tommy Heinsohn, Holy Cross should operate like the small school it is, even with its sports. n