Yellatooth weighs in:
"For so long, so many Auburn administrators have wrestled with a conundrum. They ā all of them ā want oh so badly to win, to dominate in their state and in the SEC. Yet, they take pride in fiscal conservatism. And in the modern world of college athletics, fiscal conservatism and competing at an elite level seldom go together. That was true before historic decisions involving name, image and likeness and before the Supreme Court decision that the NCAA canāt limit what athletes can receive for education-related expense.
Iāve reflected before on what a now-prominent athletics director once told me: āYou spend for where you want to be, not where you are.ā
What does that mean? It means spending what it takes to win ā on coaches, on support staffs, on facilities, on traveling first-class, on marketing your program and believing that it will all be worth it in the end. Would that be a sound business practice in the corporate world? Of course it wouldnāt. But college athletics is not the corporate world. The mission is to win and provide a first-class experience for student-athletes, not to turn a profit.
An Auburn administrator once told me āWe take pride in doing more with less.ā My belief was then and is now that no one can consistently play for championships that way. They can have those special years, and Auburn has certainly had them. But Auburn has not put those special years back-to-back since the 1993 and 1994 teams combined to go 20-1-1.
In the modern era of college athletics at the highest level, ābrandingā starts with football, but it doesn't end there.
How valuable is the publicity Mississippi State has gotten for showing off a remarkable atmosphere in the baseball regional and super regional and going to the national championship series? How many potential players have watched and said āI want to be part of that?
Auburn basketball took advantage of a similar opportunity and went to the Final Four in 2019. A program that once rarely signed 5-star players now signs them routinely.
Every time Arkansas baseball is on television, its new $27 million development center is on full display. Same goes for facilities in softball, which gets remarkably high TV ratings.
At Auburn, a long-awaited football-only facility is under construction, and it is very badly needed. But most of the upper echelon SEC programs have endeavored to turn their stadiums and arenas into showplaces. Only in basketball has Auburn been part of that trend in this century.
Why has Jordan-Hare Stadium not been upgraded like in other upper echelon SEC programs? Why has Plainsman Park, once at the stop of the SEC, now nothing special compared to others? Why is Auburnās very successful soccer program still playing in a stadium that features bleachers removed from Plainsman Park 25 years ago?
It would be folly to say itās athletics director Allen Greeneās fault. It was an issue long before he arrived. Is it the Board of Trustees? Is it lack of donations? I donāt know, but surveys consistently find Auburnās football program ā which drives the bus for everything else other than basketball ā is among the most valuable in the sport.
Whether on the field or in recruiting, winning on an elite level in any collegiate sport is expensive. In the SEC, it all starts with football."
247sports.com
