UNC-system leaders want clarity in athletic costs

The UNC men’s basketball team might have just reached the end of its season, but financial debates on college athletics are still going strong.

UNC-system President Tom Ross said the system has been working for the last six months to develop recommendations about athletic financial transparency that will likely be released next month.

“I think it’s incumbent on us as a system to put that information out there,” he said.

Amy Perko, executive director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, said the commission recently updated its Athletic and Academic Spending Database to include data that shows trends from 2005 to 2012.

According to the data, UNC had a 76 percent average increase in athletic spending per athlete , compared to a 5 percent increase in academic spending per full-time student .

Perko said the national trend points to more rapidly increasing athletic spending on a per capita basis than academic spending, and this trend will continue to accelerate.

“When you compare academic spending to athletic spending, the gap is largest among institutions with major college football teams and smallest among those without,” she said.

Perko said in the past, the commission has put forth ideas to provide incentives for programs that achieve desired academic outcomes and to keep athletic spending in check.

“Academic reform hit a tipping point when there was greater transparency of graduation rates,” she said. “The same can be true of financial reform when there is more spending transparency.”

Ross, who was at the commission’s meeting last week, said he discussed possible ways to better help student-athletes balance academics.

Per Ross’s suggestions, student-athletes could not compete their first year in college, or freshman student-athletes could take a lighter course load to better acclimate, he said.

Another concern is the issue of player compensation. A lawsuit was recently filed against the NCAA arguing that college athletes should be paid .

“Basically what is being argued here is should student-athletes, whether they’re basketball players or any other sport, be unionized employees of a university,” said Mark Emmert, president of the NCAA, in an NBC Meet the Press segment on Sunday.

“Or is this fundamentally about students playing the game and receiving the most important thing that’s going to set them up for the rest of their life — a good, sound, education and the opportunity to get that education?”

State & National Editor Madeline Will contributed reporting.

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