NYT: Big (Football) Boosters Calling the Shots on Campus

[DeepModem Mom]

Big Boosters Calling the Shots on Campus
By SELENA ROBERTS

Published: January 2, 2005


THERE is a sticker price for a messiah coach. For $16 million, the University of Florida recently banished Ron Zook with a $1.8 million buyout, paid the Utah Utes what amounted to a savior transfer fee of $250,000 and committed $14 million over seven years for Urban Meyer to compete with Steve Spurrier's visorly ghost....

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This is the era of the über-booster. So it's worth asking any messiah coach: who's your sugar daddy?

The most meddling of the boosters aren't the cheap-suit fans tailgating on the back of a Ford pickup; some are Forbes-list executives buying vicarious ownership of their college teams....

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Why give to a university's general fund if you don't care a lick about how many cadavers the science labs have? Why pay for orchestra flutes when you can help develop the next Doug Flutie? Incorporating the booster clubs as fund-raising arms for athletics provided friends of the program a tax break, as well as ticket priorities, parking passes and foam index fingers that indicate "We're No. 1."...

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Coaches at public universities may seem like state employees, but unofficially they are the kept men of the private donors, particularly of those who give up to seven figures a year to the programs. Some contributors are more than boosters; they are powerful trustees who mistake their gifts for entitlement....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/sports/ncaafootball/02roberts.html