PORTLAND, Maine — University of Maine Athletic Director Steve Abbott on Thursday talked about the economic impact of college sports and also addressed the sorts of skills that student athletes pick up outside the classrooms.
Abbott, who was Sen. Susan Collins’ chief of staff from 1997 to 2009 before an unsuccessful gubernatorial run in 2010, noted the “unbelievable anger” that he saw in society, from the tea party movement in 2010 to the “Occupy” movement of 2011. But those movements can only achieve so much, Abbott said, speaking at the Portland Regional Chamber’s Eggs and Issues breakfast.
“There’s no action, people can’t work together, can’t work in institutions,” said Abbott. “I think it’s great that people want to be heard, but we need to do something to actually compete. Sleeping under a blue tarp in front of the courthouse in Portland isn’t going to help us compete with China.
“That’s what our athletes learn — how to work together, compete.”
There are 400 student athletes at UMaine, which hosts the state’s only Division I sports program, Abbott said. The students earn a degree while also competing at the collegiate level, said Abbott, acquiring a work ethic while learning what it is to be part of something bigger than themselves.
Abbott noted a recent study looking at the impact of college athletics on the place of women in industry over the past 30 years, since the advent of Title IX. According to the study, 81 percent of women in the work force who make more than $75,000 a year identify themselves as “athletic,” he said.
Abbott also spoke of the place college athletics has on campus life.
“Our athletic events are sort of the social center. It’s what binds us together, our students and our faculty, and it also ties us to our alumni,” said Abbott.
And while the university gets good publicity for its academic and research work in areas such as UM’s “bridge-in-a-backpack” project, the sports program puts UMaine in newspapers and on TV in Maine daily, he said. The hockey team has regional and national contracts for broadcasting the games, and other programs also get good coverage depending on the game and the level of play.
A good season for the UMaine hockey or football team has a “profound” effect on college applications, Abbott added.
And a program such as the one at UMaine has an economic impact on the area, as well, said Abbott. Fifty teams travel to the Orono campus each year for competitions, said Abbott. When they come, they stay at local hotels, eat at restaurants and bring fans with them. He estimated that an average team spends $4,000-$5,000 locally.
The college spends $15 million on sports each year, the operating budget for the athletics department, with a staff of 90 people. Two thirds of that comes from tuition and state taxpayer support. The rest comes from fundraising, corporate support, ticket sales and other areas such as sales of T-shirts, concessions and more.
The department also spends on infrastructure and uses local contractors for the work, said Abbott. UMaine spent $5.5 million last summer to renovate the Alfond Arena, with $3.5 million coming from the Alfond Foundation.
The college plans a $14 million renovation of the Memorial Gym, as well. Of that, $7 million comes from the state for hazardous material remediation and handicap accessibility upgrades, said Abbott. Of the remaining $7 million, $5 million comes from New Balance Co., he said. That’s the largest corporate gift in the history of the school, said Abbott, and a model that makes sense going forward.
“I think it’s a great relationship for us and the university — New Balance is a great partner to start with,” said Abbott.
What Abbott fails to recognize is that there is an uneven playing field. The unemployed, poor, and disabled do not have the political and economic power to compete.
Are you saying the the unemployed and poor and yes even the disabled….(Stephen Hawking turns 70 today)
1 Are not driven by ambition?
2 are not action takers(doers)?
3 have no self discipline?
4 are quitters?
5 sulk instead of learning from their mistakes?
6 can’t accept responsibility?
7 or someone else is preventing them from ad0pting a “can do” attitude?
These are traits of successful people. It has nothing to do anyone else, it is all about your personal attitude motivation and willingness to sacrifice in life.
No, that is what you are saying about the unemployed, poor, and disabled.
That is exactly what you said when you commented that there was “no even playing field”.
Those characteristics I listed are the difference between a person succeeding and not succeeding.
Your quote “The unemployed, poor, and disabled do not have the political and economic power to compete.” is false and those things are not as important as the characteristics I mentioned.
It is not an even playing field right from the start. My point 3rd grade science fair mommy and daddy make project kid gets an A other kids has uneducated parents with problems has no project. Kid gets a f. Cries and is tramatized because of it. Totally destorys the kids self efficacy. Makes him feel stupid . Other kid who did not do the project but mommy did that got an A feels smart, Is popular feels good about himself.
That is kind of a maudlin response. Not sure what your point is though.
If your parents have money, then you start off with a far better school from the beginning, with better teachers, more equipment and more imaginative training.
Even if your parents are not poor, your school is going to teach your theories of how society works that are nothing like real. I think most of us remember the shock when we left school and found out that most of what we were taught about the rules of how society worked had nothing to do with the real rules of society. So most of us had to spend at least five years to learn what the real rules were. Then and only then did we stand any chance of getting anywhere, but we had lost five years in the beginning. Imagine if we had started with the real rules how much quicker we could have gotten somewhere.
If your parents are poor then you get to have a school short of everything where you spend most of your time trying not to be beat up or killed before you graduate. But it would be unlikely that you would have many of the skills needed even for a low paying job.
It is like trying win at a casino where the casinos allowed to use a stacked deck. Rich kids have the deck stacked in their favor, as almost no one else does. Now they can still mess up.
Wish I could have said it as well as you did.
Having wealthy parents can be a great help. For instance Bill Gates comes from a family every bit as rich as the Ford car family. Now that certainly makes a difference when you want to get some investment capital, not only the people you know and your parents know, but how you are treated at the bank when you look for a loan.
Now if Bill Gates had come from a poor family, no matter how bright he was, his chances of forming a computer company and becoming a multibillionaire would have been far less. They don’t call it the good ol boys club for nothing. Who you know often is more important than where you start and may be more important than you level of talent. This has always been the case in modern America. The add the element of luck as well. As they say the hard part is making that first million is the hard part. After than everyone wants to help you make more, so starting out with a few million improves your chances a lot, even if you parents haven’t given it to you yet, just the fact that your parents are rich will make a big difference in the business world and at the bank.
It is the myth of the self made man that keeps a lot of people from getting rich. First you need a friend or investor in the good ol boys cub, or a family member. Very few people get rich off of their own work. You don’t start making real money until you can start making money off of a lot of other people’s work.
We are saying money is needed on more important things than sports.
All he wants to do is win,win,win, or use his political connections to get his job,job,job. He talks a lot, threatens softly a lot, and fires some. Is that what he means by getting the job done?
Lots of chuckles for UMaine and the rest of us citizen squatters!
Abbot’s assertion here:
The college spends $15 million on sports each year, the operating budget for the
athletics department, with a staff of 90 people. A third of that comes
from tuition and state taxpayer support. The rest comes from
fundraising, corporate support, ticket sales and other areas such as
sales of T-shirts, concessions and more.
Is simply untrue and inaccurate- the BDN can check this themselves. The USA Today publishes a list of all the financials of the NCAA athletic departments here:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/ncaa-finances.htm
If you put in 2009-2010 (the latest year) and Maine, you find out that the University of Maine Athletics Department earned the following that year:
$1,300,935.00 in ticket sales.
$864,763.00 in Guarantees (things like playing a D-I Football program)
$1,435,952.00 in Contributions
Yet
$9,760,424.00 in revenue was generated by “Direct Institutional Support” – that’s 59.81% of the entire athletics budget coming from taxpayers like you and me.
[This dwarfs “sales of T-shirts, concessions and more,” which accounted for just $366,186.00, or 2.24% of revenue in 2009-2010].Will the BDN correct or edit this article with this accurate information provided by USA Today?
Wondering about University of Vermont? Or New Hampshire? or UMass? Use the NCAA database at USA Today and compare to how much we subsidize UMaine athletics. You will be surprised, I think.
I say lets do away with college sports get the cost of college under control . Stop spending tax dollars on things that are not needed to get an education. Ya sport are nice but not needed when the cost of college is so expensive.
You obviously see no value in college athletics. Collegiate sports (and high school sports for that matter) teach life-long lessons about how to function in a team environment and how to compete in life with it’s ups and downs. That, in and of itself makes them worthwhile imo. It also provides a much needed form of entertainment for the local people who support the teams and give the area a sense of pride in their teams. Just look at the (unlikely) success of the football team this past season. If this means nothing to you David, and it’s all about every cent you pay in taxes over the general well being athletics provide to the participants and their supporters you’re not seeing the proverbial “forrest through the trees”. I’m glad yours is a minority view.
Well look at all the kids that can’t afford to go to college. I bet it is more than the 400 athletes we have . I look at things differently. The greater good is more important than the small group of athletes we have . I would care to bet that at least3/4th the hockey players we have come from at least middle class families would have still got an education if it were not for hockey. So we might loose 100 college students in the greater good of society but we could send 2000 more kids to college that could not afford to go. Sounds like a good deal to me .
I see value , I just see that the money could be put to better use.
But is it a minority view? When I was in college, nothing infuriated us more than the fact that the majority of our student money was wasted on the sports programs. This was because of rules that the college administration forced on the students, not because the students ever wanted it.
So check out your students and see what percentage actually attend sport events.I think you will find that the majority do no and have no interest in seeing so much money tied up by sports just so the jocks can be show boaters for a while. Cutting out team sports would save colleges and universities a fortune. Not to mention that the cost of coaches is outrageously more than for professors. Now if the jocks want to do something useful, suggest they serve our country as soldiers.
Should the USA Today be held as Gospel over what Steve (the actual AD) says? I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. Why all the “hate” for UMaine athletics on here anyway? Is it sports in general that people hate on here or just UMaine or maybe Abbott himself. In any case, it seems misguided to me.
The USA Today’s data comes directly from the NCAA reporting forms. Those forms are required from every school in the NCAA. Thus, the USA Today’s data comes directly from UMaine’s own report.
And I don’t hate sports at all. I just think UMaine should subsidize its athletics program far less than it currently does. For example:
The University of New Hampshire’s athletic department’s budget expenditures in 2009-2010 was about $25.4 million – or about $9 million more than UMaine. But the direct institutional subsidy was $7.9 million, or almost $2 million LESS than UMaine spent to subsidize its athletic department. In other words, the institution was directly on the hook for only 31.17% of the budget vs. UMaine’s 59.81%.
How did UNH do this? They used student fees (so the student’s themselves – not the taxpayers – subsidize the athletics teams) and sold more than $1,000,000 more worth of tickets to events than UMaine (among other revenue streams not used by UMaine).
The data is all there. Its quite an eye-opener. Here’s an idea: let’s have UMaine subsidize its athletic department at the same level UNH does. That’ll save $2 million next year.
It always surprises me how under attended UMaine sports has been over the last 10 years or so. I know the economy stinks, but how much does it really cost to go to a b-ball, hockey or football game? In my opinion more needs to be done to market these events and make them more attractive alternatives to sitting home night after night with the Allen’s.
Try comparing the population base near Durham, NH to that of Orono. There must be a huge difference. I make many 90 minute trips each way to the Maine hockey games with my kids and it makes for a very memorable and inexpensive evening (even when including our mandatory stop over at Pat’s Pizza). That said, Maine does have to draw from a much further distance to fill the seats than UNH. Well worth the trip!!!!!!!
Sports as an industry is pretty corrupt anyway. With all the money in it why is it the taxpayers that get stuck with building and maintaining the sport palaces whose prices are so high that few of those same taxpayers can afford to go to a game. Take a look a the newer ones being built for professional sports,less seats anyone can afford and more skyboxes for the wealthy. If they want the wealthy as patrons than let the wealthy finance it, not the taxpayers. Often it is the poorer taxpayers who have their homes taken so that the sports palace can be built. I remember back when the Dodgers came to Los Angeles, it was the poorer Latino homeowners who bore the cost of losing their homes for less then market value. Professional sports s just a racket anyway.
I agree that the average fan has been priced out of pro sports. I used to go to about 10 Red Sox, 6 or 7 Bruins games and was a Pats season ticket holder for 6 years. Now it’s less than half of that and I gave up my season tix to spend more time with the kids. Having said that though, it’s hard to equate UMaine sports with any of that. I realize the $ that’s in larger college sports and like you say, it’s really turned into something ugly. Umaine does things on a much smaller scale and when it comes down to it the tax burden is low imo. I’m not one that believes that every cent spent on taxes is bad. As long as there is value for the $ spent. I find that the tax burden is worth it imo and that Steve Abbott will be a fine steward in maintaining that fiscal responsibility. With the Alfond Foundation, The New Balance Co. and others, UMaine is lucky that their tax burden is as low as it is.
Maybe the President can find a way to subsidize the occupiers with nine million. Collegiate sports is overrated, takes scholarships away from academics, and leads to perverse loyalties such as just occurred at Penn State.
Many athletes are recruited from far away, like Africa, because they are good in one particular sport. It’s ridiculous for us taxpayers to pay the scholarship for someone just because they are physically able in some way more than a Maine student.
Our tax money should be spent on Maine students’ education. Athletics are a parasite on the world of education.
Volunteer games could be encouraged, but for us to pay for athletics when Maine people go hungry is just not right.
Eliminate the entire Chancellor of the UMM system staff with its many people getting over $100,000, even over $200,000, paid for by us. Now there’s waste!
I didn’t expect a principled argument when I read the headline and I was not disappointed. To claim that those involved in Occupy don’t work together is telling of how far this guys head is up his … well you get it. Occupy is one of the most profoundly powerful object lessons in how communications through informal networks can produce change. Within a few weeks of the movement, the dialog of the US news media had been transformed to identify wealth inequality as a major and previously undiscussed problem. The corporate news media control the central messaging apparatus for our society. They are really a mouthpiece for the wealthy. After forty years of wage stagnation and growing inequality, the issue came to the fore directly as a result of this movement.
Of course, this argument contains no real evidence in support of the position. It merely makes the not so clever quip that “sleeping under a blue tarp in front of the courthouse…” won’t create change in China. In fact, it has. Much like the uprisings in the middle east and Europe, China has recently erupted with many small protest movements. Of course these have been squelched quickly by the powerful and ruthless Chinese government, but the people there were moved to action by what they saw here. That is significant.
In reality, the human mic and general assemblies are great examples of people communicating and working together even when starved of basic infrastructure to make that easy. Further, Occupy is presently transforming its strategies into massive action in other less visible ways. Foreclosure defense, writing model bills, and protesting K street lobbyists are recent examples of this.
Steve Abbot thought he made a clever connection and wrote this on that basis. The fact is that he demonstrated how oblivious he is to what he is writing about. Sure universities produce significant ideas. They are thoroughly developed institutions. Occupy provides examples of the power of informal networks to be able to respond almost instantly to the demands of our society.
Mr. Abbot, in the next few years you will see the extent to which your audacious lack of perspective impaired your ability to see what was unfolding in front of you. Social and economic justice is what Occupy is about. If you work hard, you should be able to pay for what you need and be able to save a few dollars for your future or your children. That is not the case anymore. Only those already wealthy enough to make money by investing have such options. The land where my grandfather bootstrapped his way to a nice life and comfortable retirement are gone. The parasites on Wall Street, in the health insurance industry and in the energy sector have taken that from us so they might have more than they could ever even spend. You offer no solutions to this, rather you denigrate those who want a better future than the one your generation has foisted upon us. Watch, Mr Abbot, as the world changes from people speaking out against inequality. The oligarchs have gotten us into this sad position, but the people asserting their voices will be the way out. It is the one power that can thwart the corrosive influence of money.
Let me see at last check the lost 7.2 million on sorts last yr . out of a 15 million dollar budget . it sounds like a big lie to me. more of the elite covering for one another.
$37,500 per athlete per year 15 million/400 So Tax payers and students that pay for education pay to support them. No wonder the cost is so high for an education.
All athletic dept are a lot like Penn State and even Maine’s is populated by egos that are a lot bigger than decency would allow. We’ve had more than our share of scandals, even, in recent memory, having to give back 2 national championships in hockey because UMAINE cheated. Is that the competition and learning Abbott is talking about?
Maine has NOT given back two national championships in hockey — you have no idea what you are talking about!
well steve, i guess you know what you’re talking about ….. we see the results of what they have learned in the news every day. if america has a criminal class its a tossup between professional athletes and politicians.
I find it very strange when people act as though the sports program was more important than the educational program at a college or Univeristy. May I remind people that most of the college and university athletes are not going to be able to make a living with their skill, many of them will be injured with injuries that may restrict what work that they can do. Lets put the main purpose of college or university first, education to create a career that the person can make a living at for the rest of their life.
Sports are nice, but hardly necessary to education. If we are going to have sports, why not sports that people can play for the rest of their lives, that actually might help people stay healthy, not disable them. I would suggest sports that require no more than two people, and that can be played solitary. Being a 300 pound lineman in University is not going to help you much in the rest of your life and is likely to lead to serious health problems, with or without steroids. The same goes for most of the rest of the expensive team sports.