February 3, 2002

Robert Lipsyte

New York Times

Sports Department

Dear Mr. Lipsyte

I write to comment on your recent columns regarding intercollegiate athletics. I am a Professor of Biology at the University of Oregon in sometimes sunny Eugene. I am also the current President of the University of Oregon Senate, the major University governance body. The twin purposes of this letter are to inform you about what has been happening here at the University of Oregon regarding intercollegiate athletics and to invite you to our campus for further conversation and investigation. At the outset, it must be noted that the views expressed here are my own and do not represent the official, collective view of our institution, its faculty, or the University Senate. I speak here only as an individual faculty member.

The role of intercollegiate athletics, the subject of your columns, has been a major focus of discussion on our campus for several years. We have been concerned about this issue in large part because our athletic department has increased its expenses by 250% in the past 10 years, from $12 million in 1991 to $30 million in 2001. Sadly but not surprisingly, the academic side of campus has not seen a similar budgetary rise. From my vantage point, the increased athletic budget is the prime reason for the vastly improved University of Oregon athletic squads fielded over the past 10 years. The University has enjoyed success in the three major intercollegiate sports -- football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball – and this success has raised the bar of expectation to an unanticipated level. To finance these higher than ever expectations and because of projected athletic budget increases in the range of 10% per year, the University has this year embarked on a major expansion of our football stadium, adding 12,000 seats at a cost of $90 million.

The rapidly escalating price tag of our athletic program over the past decade compared to the overall instructional budget of the University -- athletics now consumes ~15% of our annual resources -- has raised obvious concerns among our faculty about University priorities. Faculty concerns have been voiced at a number of recent campus forums on athletics, including a well-attended discussion in the University Senate last year led by my predecessor, Professor James Earl. At about the same time, our ex-University President, Myles Brand, now President of Indiana University, spoke to the National Press Club about reforming intercollegiate athletics. His talk prompted Prof. Earl to generate a University Senate resolution encouraging our University President, Dave Frohnmayer, to raise the issue of intercollegiate athletics with his fellow PAC-10 University Presidents. This resolution was passed by our Senate and 7 other PAC-10 Faculty Senates last spring. Since then, various versions of this resolution have been discussed and passed by University/Faculty Senates at other institutions across the country including those in the Big-10 and Western Athletic Conferences.

As a further response to faculty concerns about athletics, University President Frohnmayer last winter set up a series of meetings between members of the administration, the athletic department and faculty leaders. These open and frank discussions lead to an agreement to completely eliminate the $2 million annual subsidy of the Athletic Department by the University over a 4 year period. This agreement was completely supported by our athletic director, Bill Moos. To my knowledge, the University of Oregon is the first, and perhaps the only, Division 1A institution to insist that intercollegiate athletics be completely self-supporting.

Building on that success, President Frohnmayer this winter formed a University task force on intercollegiate athletics. The charge of this task force is to advise the President on national intercollegiate athletics issues, and to identify and elaborate the role of athletics in academic institutions such as ours.

The debate on this issue has not been limited to internal discussions. Professor Earl and myself have been asked to speak about athletics from a faculty perspective to numerous local groups as well as to local, regional and national print and video media outlets, including a major article in your own Times sport section this past fall. For a flavor of our comments (Professor Earl and I do not always agree on these issues), I direct you to the text of a talk I gave recently to a local elderhostel-type group (http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen012/Tublitz25Jan02.htm) and an article by Prof. Earl published this past fall in a University Alumni magazine (http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~oq/html/warning_1.htm).

It is obvious to me that the University of Oregon cannot on its own alter the current path of intercollegiate athletics, a multibillion dollar business enterprise navigating down a course antithetical to the academic mission of our nation’s higher education institutions. Even if possible, such a change will surely not occur overnight. Yet I am very encouraged by the actions of Prof. Earl and President Frohnmayer in raising the conversation level here at the University of Oregon on this complex and highly charged issue. These actions, along with last summer’s Knight Commission report, the passage of faculty initiated athletic resolutions at institutions across the country, the growing support for change in intercollegiate athletics voiced by Myles Brand and other University Presidents, the recent spate of serious books on intercollegiate athletics, and the heightened interest by the national news media, all suggest that our country is finally acknowledging that our intercollegiate sports industry is out of synch with the academic mission of our Universities and Colleges. I and many others here at the University of Oregon believe it is time to reassess our national priorities regarding intercollegiate athletics. Intercollegiate athletics must no longer be at odds with academic priorities. When conflict occurs, the resultant decision must always come down on the side of academics. After all, those young men and women are still called student-athletes, not athlete-students.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this letter, the views expressed here are my own and are not shared by all on this campus. A reasonable sceptic, such as a reporter, might even believe that the information presented here has been shaded to support a specific premise. Because I hold in high regard your ability to think independently based on the quality of your columns, I cordially invite you to visit our campus to talk to our faculty, central administrators, athletic department staff, and of course our students and student-athletes in order to draw your own conclusions regarding current campus attitudes towards intercollegiate athletics. I look forward to hearing from you and continuing this important dialog.

Sincerely,

Nathan Tublitz

Professor of Biology and Member, Institute of Neuroscience

President, University Senate

Institute of Neuroscience

University of Oregon

Eugene, OR 97403

phone: 541-346-4510

fax: 541-346-4548