As leaders in the intercollegiate athletics enterprise, no one knows better than athletics directors that the college sports landscape is changing. From increased external pressures to deliver competitive teams to tighter resources from which to do so, athletics departments are struggling to maintain what over time has become an expected self-sufficient bottom line.
The fact is that very few universities break even or show excess revenues in intercollegiate athletics. The vast majority of athletics departments receive subsidies from their institutions to operate at levels to which they are accustomed. And these days, more and more campus constituents are casting their eyes toward athletics as a potential source of reallocation in the fight for funding (Mike, 1997).
Through all of this change, the role of the athletics director also is evolving. But while some see the AD as being responsible simply for steering the competitive ship, I would argue that today's athletics director has a much more elevated role in the well-being of the enterprise.
To be sure, athletics directors must embrace fiscal esponsibility in tough economic times, but fiscal responsibility is not just about cutting costs. Fiscal responsibility is a normative concept that has at least two parts. One part of course is to contain costs; but we expect every part of the university, from the athletics department to the school of business, to be efficient in its use of resources (Mike, 1997). Containing costs, which is only a financial strategy, does not really capture all that is involved in fiscal responsibility.
The normative aspect of fiscal responsibility is the integration -- both in terms of structure and most especially in terms of mission -- of the athletics department into the university. This value-based budgeting requires all athletics expenditures, from facility enhancements to additional personnel or programs, and all revenues.....
