Student Athletes and Post Season Travel Accommodations

What we found from our discussion in last night’s class is that within college athletics, revenue generating sports teams (i.e. Men’s Football) are given the most resources ($$$) and accommodations over non-revenue generating sports teams (i.e. all women’s sports, other men’s Olympic sports), even revenue generating Men’s Basketball. 

Just yesterday afternoon, a blog article was posted on The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Charter Flights for Athletes Aren’t Always What They Seem.” In this article, Brad Wolverton discusses the travel situation of the Stanford University softball team after the NCAA regional softball tournament in Nebraska and the “accommodations” the NCAA provided. Apparently, the NCAA covers the travel costs for teams during postseason championships. The NCAA told the Cardinals that they had arranged for a charter flight to get the team back to Palo Alto in time for classes on Monday. 

A “charter” flight is along the lines of first-class right? That’s what I would think and that’s what the team thought too, but that is not quite what the NCAA meant. Kevin Blue, the Associate Athletics Director of Business Strategy at Stanford tweeted his surprise and described the plane as a “rickety old prop plane,” which was too small to even carry their equipment which had to stay in Nebraska. Blue did say however, that he appreciated that the NCAA made accommodations so that the team could get back to class.  

Is this situation an outlier experience due to the location of the team in Nebraska and their destination?

The current senior Associate Athletic Director at the University of Portland, Karen Peters tweeted in response to Blue that her “Men’s Soccer team was on a prop plane from ABQ [Albuquerque] to Virginia 2 years ago” and that “travel [is] driven by cost, not stu-athl [student-athlete] experience.” 

Ok, maybe this situation was not a random outlier experience, but, was this charter/prop plane the only available at the time because of the storms in the area? Are we certain that all of the travel accommodations are driven by cost?  

Whatever the answers are…I don’t think this would have happened if it was a Men’s Football team, even if the team is larger by 50 student-athletes, do you think they would have sent them out on a prop plane?   

Does the NCAA do the same thing that some college athletic directors do with the budget and prioritize based on sport?  

I’d be curious to know the answer.   

Lisa Chow

KIN 577