Academics and Athletics

Opinions on matters of interest to the university and higher education.

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Since I’ve arrived at Tennessee, several faculty members and students have written or spoken to me about the place of athletics on the Knoxville campus. In most cases the tenor of the communication has been that athletics, as it exists here at least, is incompatible with academic standards.

There are three main points that I have encountered:

1. The monies dedicated to athletics are excessive. As an institution we spend too much on facilities, on recruiting, on coaches, on staff, and even on academic assistance for student-athletes. The underlying message here is usually that we should instead be dedicating this money to other areas more closely associated with our academic mission.
2. Student-athletes are frequently admitted because they are athletes, not because they are excellent students. They are not qualified to be on the campus, and we compromise our academic values and degrade our academic reputation by admitting them.
3. Following on (1) and (2): The excessive focus on athletics as the identifier of this institution denigrates our academic standing.

Before expressing my views on these points I should explain that athletics occupies an unusual place at the University of Tennessee. On most flagship campuses across the nation intercollegiate athletics reports to the Chancellor and is solely an entity of the campus. At Tennessee the by-laws of the Board of Trustees stipulate that the President is responsible for “the University’s intercollegiate athletics programs at the Knoxville campus” [Article IV, Section 3 (a)(2)(viii)]. Thus although Knoxville admits the student-athletes that participate in intercollegiate athletics, and although these student-athletes attend classes on the campus and graduate from programs administered by the campus, the athletic department, from the athletic director down to the coaches and assistant coaches, reports to the systemwide administration, not to the chief academic officer of the Knoxville campus.

The first point is thus complicated by the odd place of athletics in Tennessee. Most of the monies that people see wasted on athletics could not be rededicated to the academic enterprise. Not only is it often money that has been privately raised and stipulated for a specific purpose in intercollegiate athletics; is it also a responsibility of the systemwide administration and not the campus to allocate this money.

Some faculty members might counter that athletics is in competition with academics for fundraising dollars, and that therefore our focus on athletics hurts academics. That case is difficult to substantiate, and there exist differing expert opinions about how athletic fundraising affects general fundraising at a research university. It is possible that some donors, in the absence of intercollegiate athletics, or on a campus with less prominent intercollegiate athletics, might give money to other parts of the university. But they might not do so. And we know of several cases in which donors to athletics, having become more familiar with the campus, have developed an interest in programs on the campus and given substantial amounts to academic units.

We should also consider that one of the reasons that athletics at Tennessee has been able to raise private dollars is that it has been successful. By and large donors contribute to enterprises that are winners. I believe that if we attain academic achievements that place us in the top echelons of universities, we will soon see support in the form of fundraising money for our research programs and academic initiatives.

The second and third points are far more important since they suggest in a more general and less monetary fashion that academic areas are disadvantaged by our focus on excellence in intercollegiate athletics. My view is that academics are not disadvantaged by intercollegiate athletics; indeed, I would contend that excellence in athletics and excellence in academics are completely independent from one another. Here is my evidence:

• This past fall the University of California at Berkeley was ranked as the No. 1 athletic program in the country in the final fall Sports Academy Director's Cup standings. Cal was followed in the rankings by Stanford, Duke, UCLA, and Wisconsin, four more of the premier academic institutions in the country.
• History tells us that academic quality and achievement in athletics are not irreconcilable even in the higher profile sports. The era in which Cal last participated in the Rose Bowl and had a basketball team win the NCAA tournament during the 1940s and 1950s was the time when it ascended to the top ranks of research universities in the United States. When UCLA was winning basketball titles under John Wooden, they were similarly successful in transitioning from the “southern campus” of the University of California to a top-five public institution.
• Lest you think these examples stem from an era in the distant past, I would remind you that the University of Michigan has always combined excellence in academics with a top program in football; Duke has similarly excelled on the basketball court and in academics; and in the SEC, Florida, which has one of the upper echelon academic profiles in the conference has won the national football and basketball titles this past year.
• Indeed, if we look at the football rankings at the end of this past season, comparing Tennessee with other universities, we find that 16 out of the 24 teams ranked higher than Tennessee also had higher institutional rankings in the US News and World Report survey. Ten of those institutions were public, and most were the flagship schools in their respective states.

It is true, of course, that some individual student-athletes would not be admitted except for their athletic prowess. But we should consider, first of all, that only a small fraction of student-athletes fall into that group. Many student-athletes are excellent students who excel in the classroom, and who would have been admitted without championing from intercollegiate athletics. Second, student-athletes with deficient academic records are carefully monitored and given special assistance so that they can compete in the classroom. It is well worth noting that many of these young men and women did not have the advantages of a supportive family and good high schools; often we provide them with their first opportunity to achieve academically, and at the same time we demonstrate in part our commitment to diversity and inclusion.

In fact I believe that athletics, when properly conceived and monitored, can contribute in three important ways to a modern university: it can give student-athletes who would otherwise be unable to attend a fine university like the University of Tennessee a chance to experience first-class education and perhaps even inspire some to lifelong learning; it can unite the campus around a common purpose and spirit and therefore contribute positively to the college experience of students and alumni; and it can connect to donors to the campus, providing events around which we can raise money, not merely for athletics, but for other aspects of the academic enterprise as well. Intercollegiate athletics, however, must clearly take second place to academics: we have a football team because we have a university, not vice versa. Unmistakably and indubitably academics is the priority at the University of Tennessee.

If athletics is not a factor in academic quality, what is? I contend that the main — and perhaps even the sole — factor in the evaluation of academic quality is the excellence of the faculty. The admission of a few students whose qualifications are below the average of the incoming class, the existence of a great football or basketball team, and enthusiasm for athletics do not have any appreciable impact on where an institution ranks academically. The performance and reputation of the faculty does.

My job is to move the institution forward in the academic arena. To do so I need the cooperation of the systemwide administrators, the Chancellor, the vice chancellors, deans, and department heads. But most of all I need the help and cooperation of the faculty, the most important element in establishing the academic quality of a campus. I therefore ask that we all desist from promulgating the false dichotomy of athletics versus academics and strive in all areas of campus endeavors to be the very best we can be.

22 Feb. 2007