The Citadel’s “crossroads” moment — a review with commentary

Posted on October 13, 2024 by Sandlapper Spike

This post basically serves to review and comment on an article published in The Post and Courier on Saturday, October 12. The writer of the story is Andrew Miller, regular P+C beat writer for The Citadel’s football program.

I appreciated this article. I don’t necessarily agree with everything stated in the piece, though most of those points of contention emanate from people quoted in the story, not Miller himself. I do quibble with certain aspects of the article that I think needed to include alternative, on-record opinions. There was also one “factoid” in the piece which was monumentally misleading. I’ll address that later.

Having said that, I was glad to see the feature published. It brings up multiple issues facing The Citadel and its department of athletics, all of which richly deserve public scrutiny.

I would encourage anyone at all interested in The Citadel to read the article.

I’ll break down my commentary by each portion of the story (excluding the introductory section).

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The bottom line

The athletic department is projected to lose nearly $2 million this year…[Operating expenses] in the 2021-22 academic year amounted to $3.2 million. The projected operational budget for this year is expected to be $5.5 million, or an increase of 71 percent.

To make ends meet, the budget was cut by 10 percent with reductions in scholarships for the current season, according to an athletic department source.

“We’re having to cut expenses and scholarships,” the source said.

The football team’s operating budget, which does not include scholarships, was cut $200,000 to $1 million. It also lost the equivalent of 2½ scholarships.

The basketball team experienced a similar fate, another source said.

But according to Walters, there have been no budget or scholarship cuts.

The school is projected to spend $4.7 million on scholarships this year, having spent $4.1 million in 2022 and 2023, Walters said.

“The coaches have a budget, and they have to manage that budget, but we need to give them more tools to help them out,” Walters said.

Two different sources told Andrew Miller that the department of athletics is undergoing budget and scholarship cuts — but this was denied by Gen. Walters. That is more than a little curious.

—

Along those lines, there is something else worth noting that is not in the article.

If you go to the webpage for The Citadel’s Procurement Services Department, you will find a link to the school’s “Awards” site for procurement. This includes solicitations, sole sources, and the occasional emergency purchase.

It can be an interesting site to follow. Those perusing the page will see that The Citadel has a sole source justification for SoCon-mandated baseballs, for example, and will notice that the league also requires a specific vendor for video database and data analysis software.

The site also has a link to a sole source for a “Financial Consultant”. The advertisement for this sole source was posted on June 13 (expiring two weeks later). The school listed a potential contract amount of $250,000 (over the course of one year) for “a financial consultant to advise and assist in financial planning.”

That is a very generic description, but the person named as the sole source, Rick Kelly, is not generic at all. He is a former executive director of the S.C. Budget and Control Board, and later served as the Chief Financial Officer at the University of South Carolina. Kelly is an auditor by trade and has actually been hired as a consultant by The Citadel before (in July of 2020).

It is my understanding that Kelly recently completed an audit of The Citadel’s department of athletics, and that his findings are to be presented to the Board of Visitors in the near future — perhaps as soon as the BOV’s next scheduled meeting.

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Revenue sources

Walters hopes to renew a series of outdoor concerts at Johnson Hagood Stadium, which had been put on hold after complaints by local residents who feared the added traffic and noise.

Then there’s naming rights to the playing field and stadium that could bring in money.

Remember, The Citadel was not successful in its June appeal to the City of Charleston’s Board of Zoning Appeals for approval for the outdoor series. The school was defeated by a combination of NIMBY-ism and an unfriendly zoning board (the vote was 7-0 against The Citadel).

Of course, the board couldn’t outright tell the military college that any concerts at Johnson Hagood Stadium are off the table. Otherwise, other neighborhoods could presumably block similar events at venues all over the city (as The Citadel’s VP for communications noted in the linked article). However, it is reasonable to expect that the same people who opposed the concert series will continue to fight against any major events held at the stadium, so relying on that as a regular source of income might be a dicey proposition.

It seems to me that profiting off naming rights to the stadium would also be hard to accomplish. You can’t rename Johnson Hagood Stadium right now without violating the state’s Heritage Act (unless two-thirds of state lawmakers could be convinced to approve a name change; good luck with that).

Until or unless the Heritage Act is successfully challenged in court, I’m not sure what The Citadel can do. And even if that were to happen, it is possible potential candidates for naming rights (banks, grocery stores, etc.) would be hesitant to be the “replacement” name under those circumstances.

The NCAA settlement [the “House” case] and what it will mean for The Citadel has been one of the many reasons for the delay in finishing the east side stands at Johnson Hagood Stadium...But the pandemic and other delays, including funding for the $5 million project, have postponed construction.

Capaccio said he hopes to have the east side stands ready for the 2025 football season.

“We have more than $3 million on hand and more than enough pledges to cover the rest,” Walters said.

I would be very pleasantly surprised if the rebuilt East stands are ready by the time the 2025 football campaign rolls around. The first game of the season next year is a home game on August 30 against North Dakota State.

It would be nice if the stadium were ready when the Bison’s travelling supporters arrive in Charleston. I just find that timeline hard to believe, particularly given the history of the project. I will be happy if my skepticism is unfounded.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the phrase “many reasons for the delay” is doing a lot of work in that paragraph. There seems to be a lag of about a year in the overall approval process which cannot be easily explained by COVID-19, related construction issues, or general fundraising.

—

Moving on down

One of the biggest fears from alumni is that the administration and athletic department will grow weary of the constant losing and financial struggles and decide to drop down to Division II or even Division III, where no athletic scholarships are awarded, to save money and be more competitive…

Walters said there’s no plan to move down in classifications.

“Not on my watch,” he said. “We’re not going Division II.”

Here, at least, there appears to be near-unanimity on a topic, and I was glad to see it. Dropping down a division (or two) would be a terrible idea on a lot of levels, and also completely unnecessary.

Besides the likely exodus of donors mentioned in the story, Division III makes no sense from a geographic perspective. What schools would The Citadel even play? There are no D3 football schools in South Carolina. There are two in Georgia — Berry and LaGrange. The North Carolina institutions with D3 football programs are Brevard, Greensboro College, Guilford, Methodist, and North Carolina Wesleyan.

That obviously wouldn’t work for The Citadel.

As for Division II, I get the impression that more schools are trying to leave that tier than move to it. And here again, the list of local institutions in the division do not as a group “match up” with The Citadel from a historical or practical standpoint. (D2 football schools in South Carolina: Allen, Benedict, Erskine, Limestone, Newberry, North Greenville.)

In terms of dropping down, VMI actually did something similar (at least philosophically) at the beginning of the century when it left the SoCon to join the Big South. That move did not work out for the folks in Lexington, VA, and they were thrilled to be able to re-join the Southern Conference after a decade out in the cold.

Now, there is a facet to this worth discussing. It is possible that in the future The Citadel’s athletics programs could be in a tier called “Division II” that would actually mostly resemble the current Division I. If there is a breakaway from the NCAA of 20-40 schools (the inevitable “Superleague”) for football and a slightly larger number of institutions for basketball (50-70, perhaps), then the eventual NCAA setup could look like this (at least for football):

  • Division I — P4 schools left out of the Superleague, the majority of G5 schools, maybe a few FCS institutions with historic success and decent revenue potential (the Montana and Dakota schools, for example)
  • Division II — The vast majority of FCS, plus a few G5 schools that still want to play football but would not be in an ideal financial position in the new order of college athletics

There wouldn’t be any problem with The Citadel being in that type of Division II. It would still likely play the same schools as before. It is just a question of nomenclature. There would also be an opportunity to play the “Division I” schools, as is the case now.

In that system, schools could compete in a revised D1 in basketball, baseball, and any other sport in which they wished to do so, and the remainder of their varsity teams would play in a D2 with fewer financial and infrastructure commitments.

That could wind up being just fine for a school like The Citadel.

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Transfer portal, NIL, and non-cadet athletes

I’m going to split this section, separating NIL from the other two listed issues.

—

As for NIL:

Some Citadel alumni are against NIL, but barring athletes from making deals with local businesses would be against the law.

“Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy,” [former Bulldogs quarterback and past BOV member Jack Douglas] said. “We can’t get out of our own way. We need to be more welcoming to people and businesses. The gates around the campus aren’t there to keep people out, it’s to keep the cadets in. We’re not taking advantage of some of the resources in Charleston, people and businesses that don’t really have a connection to the school but could be friendly to us and help us out.”

One of those alumni who might have a problem with NIL, however, is the school president. From the minutes of the Board of Visitors meeting on April 24, 2024:

[Walters] then discussed the impact of the current rules/laws on the Southern Conference (SoCon) and The Citadel. He stated there has been little impact to date for The Citadel with only a few athletes participating. Of those, only one currently receives monetary compensation. The others receive products for their endorsements.

He stated that although The Citadel, the SoCon, or the NCAA cannot prohibit an athlete from entering NIL contracts, The Citadel can and will develop a policy that will impose limitations on its student athletes. Among the limitations discussed:

  • Specific prohibitions on when and where student athletes can appear in advertisements for third parties.
  • Prohibit student athletes from appearing in NIL opportunities while wearing team jerseys.
  • Prohibit student athletes from endorsing tobacco, alcohol, illegal substances or activities, banned athletic substances, and gambling, including but not limited to sports betting.
  • Prohibit endorsement of products which compete with school sponsorship agreements or contracts.

It was also discussed prohibiting endorsement of products which conflict with The Citadel’s institutional values, but it was noted that such a rule would likely raise First Amendment concerns.

—

Personally, I think there is a distinction to be made between general NIL rights and a school-sponsored “collective”, which should be a non-starter at The Citadel.

It is one thing for cadets to work with local businesses, learning the value of networking, etc., or engaging in activities such as sports camps or individual instruction. I have no problem with that; nobody should. It would be like someone in the regimental band teaching local students how to play the bagpipes or the trumpet (and being compensated for it).

A school-sponsored collective implies pay-for-play, however, and that is not the route The Citadel needs to take going forward. Doing so would fly in the face of the school’s overall mission.

It won’t be the route most of The Citadel’s peers will take, either, and that matters in the long run when schools form alliances (or new conferences) as a reaction to the “modernization” of college athletics.

I know there are currently schools in the SoCon that are banking on collectives, and pay-for-play. In the short term, they’re going to have an advantage over The Citadel in certain sports (particularly basketball). That isn’t really something which is controllable.

In ten years, there is a decent chance that The Citadel is not in the same conference with a school like, say, East Tennessee State. That won’t matter, though, if The Citadel is still aligned with VMI and Furman and other schools which could be construed as having a similar reputation (a hard-to-define combination of history, prestige, and cachet).

And yes, I realize that some of those “similar reputation” institutions are currently putting a lot of money into certain sports (like hoops). I’m thinking about what the outlook will be in 10-to-20 years, not 3-to-5.

—

Now about the transfer portal and non-cadet athletes:

Many of the old guard don’t want the Bulldogs to recruit and sign transfers. The vast majority of transfers signing with The Citadel recently have been graduate students. A handful of undergraduate day students have also transferred into the school.

The balance between cadet-athletes and non-cadet athletes has been a point of contention with some alumni…

…Walters said there are no caps or limits to the number of transfers each team can have.

“We have to give our coaches every opportunity to be competitive,” Walters said. “I’m sure most of the alumni would prefer to have all cadets on our teams, but they also want to win. We had 10 knobs on the basketball team last year and only a couple came back. I can’t hamstring Coach Conroy and have him sign 10 new freshmen every year. He wouldn’t be able to build a program.”

The current basketball roster includes a half-dozen transfers.

Attracting graduate students has been an issue as well. While many graduates want to take advantage of the school’s business program, The Citadel provides just $950 a month to graduate transfers for expenses.

“No one can live in Charleston on $900 a month,” [Citadel Football Association president Robbie Briggs] said. “You can’t pay rent and eat on that. Charleston is expensive. It would take a minimum of $2,000 in my opinion to live in Charleston.”

Ironically, it costs less for the school to sign a non-cadet transfer than to bring a freshman on campus. Freshmen student-athletes cost the school about $10,000 more a year than other undergraduates or graduate transfers due to providing uniforms and equipment.

—

First, I sincerely hope that coaches are not under any pressure to bring in non-cadets rather than freshmen in order to save money. I would consider any attempt to implement such a policy to be worthy of dismissal.

As to expenses for living in Charleston, I think the problem there is partly with the SoCon. In an appearance on an ETSU-affiliated podcast last December, East Tennessee State AD Richard Sander said this:

“The SoCon is the only conference in the country that limits cost of attendance. So we can only provide 28 student-athletes cost of attendance…we’re limited as to the [league’s] cap…that’s $2000.00. Well, our [actual] cost of attendance at ETSU is $6900.00.

We [ETSU], Chattanooga, a couple of other places [want to change that], but I’ll be honest, the private schools don’t want to change that. They think it’s a competitive advantage for us because our cost of attendance is high compared to theirs.

When we’re recruiting against, pick somebody in basketball…Western Kentucky or College of Charleston, they’re giving [players] total cost of attendance and we think in that kind of situation we think [the league rules] are creating a real difficult situation for us.”

It is possible the SoCon’s CoA rule might be working against The Citadel. I could be wrong about this interpretation, to be sure, but I don’t think the military college is one of the schools blocking a potential increase in the limit.

Briggs is absolutely correct about trying to live in Charleston on $950 per month, and that certainly has had a deleterious effect on the recruitment of certain athletes. We’ve all heard the stories.

—

Having said that, I am one of the alums who would greatly prefer that almost all (if not all) of our athletes are in the corps of cadets, or are recent graduates from the corps. There are arguments on both sides about this, of course, but I come back to a couple of things.

– “I’m sure most of the alumni would prefer to have all cadets on our teams, but they also want to win.” — Gen. Walters

Well, yes, but when is the last time a transfer-heavy squad at The Citadel was legitimately successful? I’ll wait on your answer. It will be a long wait.

The fact is that we have allowed our coaches to supplement their rosters with large numbers of transfers in recent years, and in no situation has it resulted in a significant increase in winning. Sometimes, it seems to have boomeranged in the opposite direction.

Also, while I understand the point about the problem of cycling through rosters due to freshman attrition, that has always been an issue at The Citadel, long before the transfer portal existed. I might add that the constant one-year “rental” of graduate students hasn’t done anything for continuity (or general competitiveness) either.

– There is another rationale involved here. For whom do the varsity teams at The Citadel primarily exist as a benefit? Well, the players themselves, obviously.

They also exist for the alumni and other supporters, including those in the local community. And they exist, most importantly, for the corps of cadets. I think it is natural and right for the corps to be able to cheer for a team that consists mostly (if not entirely) of fellow cadets.

This isn’t just about a pie-in-the-sky notion of utopia, either. There is also a financial consideration, after all. As Miller pointed out in his article:

Each cadet pays around $3,000 a year in student athletic fees, among the highest in the country. That comes out to approximately $6.4 million, the largest source of revenue for the athletic department.

If cadets are going to front the plurality of the funds which support varsity athletics, it seems to me that those teams should represent them in something close to totality. That means the players should mostly be cadets, too.

—

Some alumni have also bristled at the sight of long hair and facial hair among some graduate transfers.

“There are a lot of older alumni that believe this place was some kind of nirvana back in the day, and it’s just not true,” Walters said. “We had graduate students playing sports back when I was here in the 1970s, and we had guys with hair flowing out of the backs of their helmets when I was here. People don’t remember that, but I do.”

I wish Andrew Miller had quoted an alumnus with a strong opinion about the issue at hand. I would have liked him to interview one of those who had “bristled”. I think that would have been appropriate, and would have also avoided Walters’ comment coming off as a bit of a ‘strawman’ construct (which clearly wasn’t the intent).

Walters’ quote interested me, though, because I could not recall graduate students playing football in the 1975-78 time frame when he was at The Citadel (he’s a 1979 grad). I’m not old enough to know for sure, though, so I will defer to Walters on this.

To be fair, Walters didn’t specifically refer to grad students in football, but rather he just made a comment about “guys with hair flowing out of the backs of their helmets”.

From perusing the 1978 football media guide, which featured the team that played during Walters’ senior year, I can see how that might have occasionally been the case. Kenny Caldwell is on the cover with Art Baker, and Caldwell’s hair is a little longer than what you would see today at The Citadel.

It was a 1970s thing, I guess. The photos of the coaching staff are instructive as well; offensive coordinator Rick Gilstrap had a lot of lettuce, and running backs coach Mike O’Cain sported a world-class moustache.

However, I don’t think the hairstyles of the 1970s, groovy as they might have been, are really applicable to today. I expect varsity athletes to conform to the current standards of the corps, regardless of status.

That means relatively short hair and no beards or moustaches. The Citadel is a military college. The players that represent it (and the corps of cadets) need to look like they belong, whether on the field, court, track, road, mat, course, range, or diamond.

Also, while a lot of the issues mentioned in the article are hard problems to solve, this isn’t one of them. Just tell the guys to get a shave and a haircut. The world won’t end, and it won’t cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

—

Texas A&M model

Oh, boy…

It was during the annual summer talking season in the early 2000s when [Ellis Johnson], the former football coach, brought up the idea of The Citadel adopting a Texas A&M model where the school would open its campus to more non-cadets.

The idea was met with a resounding silence.

As well it should have. However, there is (unfortunately) more:

Up until 1964, Texas A&M required all students to be members in the Corps of Cadets. That year, school president James Earl Rudder opened up the school to women and Blacks for the first time. A year later, membership in the corps became voluntary.

Today, Texas A&M is the second-largest university in the nation with more than 72,000 students. Of those, 2,500 —including 300 women — are cadets.

The idea of allowing non-cadets into The Citadel isn’t even that new. Red Parker, the Bulldogs head coach from 1966-72, was a proponent of letting in non-cadets.

“You have to remember this was in the middle of the Vietnam war and the military wasn’t that popular back then,” said [Charlie Baker], who played linebacker for Parker in the early 1970s. “People think we’d lose our identity as a military school, but we wouldn’t. Look at what Texas A&M has done. They still have a Corps of Cadets, and the school is doing great.”

Texas A&M last year had a $17.2 billion endowment.

I’ll get to the most disingenuous sentence in that quote in a few paragraphs.

However, first let me say this. I have great respect for both Ellis Johnson (who played at The Citadel and also served as its head football coach) and Charlie Baker (another former player who has done great things for The Citadel, and who bleeds light blue).

And they’re both incredibly wrong about this.

—

Why do people think The Citadel would lose its identity as a military college? Well, because it would.

Do most people today think of Texas A&M as a military school? Of course not. The only time that even comes up in general discourse is when sports fans at other schools make fun of the Yell Leaders.

The Citadel, on the other hand, is chiefly identified as a military college. If you marginalize that essential component, it ceases to be The Citadel, both in the minds of the overwhelming majority of its alumni and among the public at large. It becomes Palmetto A&M, an entity with no history and no justification for having one.

It could be argued the best thing the State of South Carolina has going for it from a higher education standpoint is that (despite the best efforts of some of its leaders over the years) it has produced among its colleges and universities a unique, undeniably successful institution on the banks of the Ashley.

The Citadel has incredible value in its current form. It might be better positioned for the new era of university education than 95% of its fellow schools in this country — and that might be an underestimation.

Colleges and universities are desperately trying to differentiate themselves in order to attract a limited number of future students. It is not an easy thing to do.

However, that isn’t a problem for The Citadel. You can’t get the experience of being a cadet in an online format. You have to be there. You have to feel the no-see-ums. You have to accept a difficult challenge and ultimately pass a test of will, and you have to pass that test in the presence (and with the assistance) of others.

Not only am I diametrically opposed to reducing The Citadel’s value as an alumnus, but I also resent the suggestion as a citizen of the state. Why diminish something so beneficial for no real advantage (and a lot of obvious pitfalls)?

—

Ellis Johnson also said this:

“Seventy percent of Citadel graduates don’t go into the military,” Johnson said. “They go start businesses, they become entrepreneurs, they go into politics, and they are good, productive citizens. What’s wrong with producing good people and good citizens? Sometimes I think the school caters to that 30 percent of the alumni base a little too much.”

I didn’t understand this comment, on two levels. First, I don’t really think the school caters to its veteran alums more than its other graduates. I’ve never noticed that myself.

More to the point, though, is the idea that the veteran alums are those most against the gradual dissipation of the corps of cadets as the school’s focus. I don’t think that is true at all.

I haven’t done a survey or anything, but I know plenty of non-veterans who are dead-set against turning the school into Palmetto A&M. I’m one of them.

I’m not even sure that a higher percentage of veterans than non-vets are against that concept. I would suspect that there is uniformity in the opposition, regardless of background.

—

This might be a digression, but I think it is a necessary one. The line in the article that I found particularly misleading was this one:

Texas A&M last year had a $17.2 billion endowment.

In the context of the story, that brief statement tends to imply that Texas A&M began admitting non-cadets and things have gone fantastically well ever since, including an amazing endowment which surely is directly related to the school’s change of mission.

The truth is that there cannot possibly be anything more unrelated than Texas A&M’s endowment and the status of its Corps of Cadets. It might be the most unrelated thing in the history of unrelatedness.

The actual reason Texas A&M has a large endowment is a 19th-century provision established in the Texas Constitution that created something known as the Permanent University Fund (PUF):

In 1876, the Texas Constitution set aside land in West Texas to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M systems of higher education. Today, that land – encompassing 2.1 million acres – is leased to oil and gas companies whose wells generate revenue that flows into the PUF. Land also is leased for grazing, wind farms and other revenue-generating activities.

The Texas A&M system receives one-third of the annual proceeds of the PUF, while the University of Texas system gets the other two-thirds (and thus UT’s endowment is even more monstrous than TAMU’s).

Texas A&M’s share of the PUF return in 2023 totaled slightly over $410 million. That’s for one year. It will get more money this year, and even more cash next year, and presumably every year after that as long as the wells don’t completely run dry.

The provision that set up TAMU (and UT) for all that moolah was enacted 88 years before the school began admitting non-cadets.

The reference to Texas A&M’s endowment should not have been in the article.

The Citadel doesn’t need to be like Texas A&M, and it couldn’t be like Texas A&M even if everyone wanted that outcome. And most people don’t anyway.

—

Earlier this week, there was another piece in The Post and Courier about The Citadel’s future in athletics, this one in the form of a column by Scott Hamilton that was centered around the upcoming search for a new director of athletics. I wanted to highlight one part of it:

Some initial thoughts are if The Citadel might consider moving down a level. Should dropping to Division II – or perhaps even Division III – be on the table?

“No, they just need to know exactly who they are and what their mission is,” said Rob Yowell, president of Arizona-based Gemini Sports. “And that’s (to be) more like West Point, Annapolis and Air Force. Not Coastal Carolina, Liberty and Louisiana-Monroe.”

Yowell, whose firm runs major events such as the PGA Tour’s Waste Management Phoenix Open and the Fiesta Bowl, is spot-on. Having an identity would simplify things so much. The service academies embrace who they are, just as traditional Group of 5 schools realize they’re not competing on and off the field with the likes of Alabama and Ohio State.

It is nice to read something as perceptive as that from an outsider — in this case, a Duke graduate who lives in Phoenix. Wonders will never cease.

I will say that The Citadel does share some things in common with Coastal Carolina and ULM, so it isn’t an “exact opposite” comparison when it comes to those two schools (and coincidentally, the AD at Louisiana-Monroe is John Hartwell, a graduate of The Citadel).

—

“There are a lot of older alumni that believe this place was some kind of nirvana back in the day, and it’s just not true,” Walters said.

Walters is 100% correct about that. I can sympathize with him as he tries to navigate the school through a lot of choppy water, trying to justify various decisions to alumni, a few of whom think it is still 1950, or who wish it were still 1950.

In terms of sports, this is a very trying time for the military college. I believe that the current climate in college athletics is the worst it could be from The Citadel’s perspective since the Sanity Code was enacted in 1948.

Of course, we all know what happened then. The Citadel became one of the famed “Sinful Seven”, and the Sanity Code was eventually revoked.

It didn’t come without controversy, however. For one thing, an attempt was made to expel those seven schools from the NCAA in 1950 — not put them in probation, mind you (probation as we know it today didn’t exist) — but throw them out of the association entirely.

And more than half of the schools in the NCAA voted to expel The Citadel, and the other six schools.

That’s right. Of the 203 delegates, 111 of them cast a ballot to toss out The Citadel and company. The president of the NCAA actually announced that the motion had passed — and then he was reminded that a two-thirds super-majority was needed, and that the motion had thus failed by 25 votes.

That failure essentially ended the long-term viability of the Sanity Code (though it wasn’t formally repealed until the following year).

I think about that occasionally. It is a reminder that things are always going to be a bit testy for The Citadel when it comes to its place in college sports. More than half of its fellow NCAA members once voted to throw the school out of the club.

It is also not strictly coincidental that The Citadel struggled mightily in varsity athletics in the years following the original enactment of the Sanity Code (there were admittedly other reasons too).

From 1948 through 1954, the Bulldogs’ football program had a record of 21-44-1, with no winning seasons in those seven years. In basketball it was even worse. From 1949 through 1956, the hoopsters were 28-135.

Does that sound vaguely familiar?

Things changed, though. The climate around college athletics eventually turned a bit (not too much) in The Citadel’s favor. By the late 1950s, backed by a new school president who didn’t like to lose, and playing in a conference with schools much more on its level than in the previous 20 years, The Citadel started winning consistently in almost all sports.

That can happen again. It will require patience, though. I just hope the folks running the institution (and the alumni and other supporters) maintain that patience.

I want to win, too. I just don’t want to throw away what makes The Citadel great in the process.

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If FBS schools no longer play FCS schools in football, what are the ramifications?

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Sandlapper Spike

If you follow college football at all, you probably are familiar with last week’s story out of Wisconsin, where Barry Alvarez was quoted as saying that Big 10 schools would not schedule FCS opponents going forward:

“The nonconference schedule in our league is ridiculous,” Alvarez said on WIBA-AM. “It’s not very appealing…

“So we’ve made an agreement that our future games will all be Division I schools. It will not be FCS schools.”

A couple of quick points:

– Obviously, FCS schools are members of Division I. You would think the director of athletics at a D-1 institution would know that.

– Alvarez claimed that the Big 10’s non-conference schedule “is ridiculous”, yet he is the same AD who in recent years scheduled multiple FCS schools from all over the country, including The Citadel, Wofford, Northern Iowa, South Dakota, Austin Peay, and Cal Poly. The Badgers will play Tennessee Tech in 2013.

Alvarez’s comment drew a lot of attention, understandably so, although it is not a lock that the Big 10 will enforce such an edict. Northern Iowa’s AD was blunt:

I would tell you the loss of the Big Ten schools will be devastating, to UNI and to a lot of our peers. Not just because we wouldn’t play Iowa and have the guarantee, if you think this will stop at the Big Ten…I look at things happening in the equity leagues in fives, and so I have to believe this might lead to additional dominoes…It impacts our ability to generate money in football. It closes the ranks, it closes us out a little bit more.

Samford’s AD had a similar reaction:

If the SEC and ACC make the same decision, we’ve all got to sit back and reevaluate how we’re going to replace our money. If you eliminate those guarantee teams, it puts us in a tough situation at a private school where we don’t get any state funding.

Of course, not everyone is upset. Some in the media welcome the move, eager for what they perceive as “better” scheduling (though suggesting New Mexico State would be a significant improvement over a decent FCS squad strikes me as a bit puzzling). Most members of the college football press/blogosphere, however, understand the potential issues associated with such a decision and the nuances at play. Not all of them do, though — or if they do, they simply don’t care.

The best (worst?) example of this attitude is probably Yahoo! Sports columnist Frank Schwab, who couldn’t be more thrilled with the no-FCS proposal. After writing (in a headline) that “hopefully everyone follows [the Big 10’s] suit”, he added:

…hopefully other conferences (and by “other conferences” we mostly mean you, SEC) stop the practice of wasting a precious Saturday afternoon in the fall on FCS opponents. The FCS teams benefit with a large payday, and that’s great for the bean counters at those schools. It’s not good for anyone else.

It stinks for the season-ticket holders that have to pay for a sham of a game. It’s nothing worth watching on television. The FBS team has nothing to gain, because a win is expected but a loss goes down in infamy. And while the FCS team will get enough money to build a new weight room, the most common result is getting pounded by 40 or 50 points, which can’t be that enjoyable for those players.

Some Big Ten-Sun Belt game in September might not be a ratings bonanza either, but at least it’s better than a parade of FCS opponents.

I thought Schwab’s overall tone was a bit much, to be honest. I sent him a tweet, trying to be as polite as possible:

You seem to have a very flippant attitude about the FCS.

His reply:

Oh, make no mistake, no “seem” about it

Okay, then…

My first thought when I read Schwab’s piece was that it was clearly the work of someone who does not understand FCS football, or who has no connection to it at all (Schwab is a Wisconsin alum). Saying that FCS players can’t enjoy the experience suggests he has never spoken to any of them about it. Most small-school players relish the challenge of “playing up”. In fact, such games are often a recruiting tool for FCS coaches. It’s not all about the money.

Earlier in this post I listed six FCS schools Wisconsin has played in recent years. Of those matchups, the Badgers had to hang on to beat Northern Iowa by five points, were tied at halftime with The Citadel, and frankly should have lost to Cal Poly (winning in OT after the Mustangs missed three extra points). I’m not really getting the “sham of a game” vibe with those contests. Now if you want to talk about the 2012 Big 10 championship game against Nebraska in those terms, go right ahead.

Schwab singles out the SEC as the worst “offender” when it comes to playing FCS schools. I think it is only fair to point out that Big 10 schools currently have a total of 37 FCS teams on their future schedules, while SEC schools have 32. (I’m sure the SEC will eventually add a few more.)

Oh, and to quickly dispose of one canard (which in fairness to Schwab, he does not suggest): some people occasionally claim that allegedly easy FCS matchups have given the SEC a leg up on winning BCS titles, because they play fewer quality non-conference opponents. You only have to look at the Big 10 to see that isn’t the case.

The SEC has played more FCS schools in the past than has the Big 10. However, despite that, Big 10 schools have actually lost more games to FCS opposition since 2005 than has the SEC. In fact, no BCS league has lost as many such games (six) or had as many different schools lose them (four) in that time period.

Not playing FCS schools won’t hide the Big 10’s real problem, which is illustrated to a degree by this article, written in August of 2012:

Iowa has four nonconference football dates. It has chosen to fill two of them this year with games against teams from the Mid-American Conference

The reason for this: The Hawkeyes wanted two games they would have very good chances to win.

That’s not exactly a revelation. But perhaps you aren’t aware of just how pronounced Iowa’s (and the Big Ten’s) dominance over MAC teams has been.

The columnist wrote that the MAC was “the Big 10’s football piñata”, which in years past it may have been. Unfortunately for the Big 10 (and to the undoubted surprise of the writer), it would lose three games to MAC schools in 2012, and that was just part of a trend — MAC teams have beaten Big 10 squads twelve times since 2008. (MACtion, indeed.)

As for the Hawkeyes and the “two games they would have very good chances to win”…Iowa lost one of them by one point, and won the other by one point.

The truth is the Big 10 just hasn’t been that good in football in recent years, which doesn’t have anything to do with playing FCS opposition. Dropping FCS schools from Big 10 schedules won’t change things, either. SEC schools aren’t winning all those BCS titles because they play FCS teams; they’re winning them because SEC schools have the best players and (in some cases) the best coaches.

So what happens if the Big 10 follows through and has its members drop all FCS opponents? What happens if other leagues do the same thing?

You’ve seen the quotes from ADs at schools that would be affected. Then there is this take from agent/event promoter Jason Belzer:

If other conferences follow the Big Ten’s lead and stop scheduling games against FCS opponents, the institutions that compete at that level will have two options: 1) look to make up the funds elsewhere, or 2) essentially be forced to stop competing at the same level as the larger institutions. Because it is  unrealistic to believe that any institution can begin to make up the difference in loss of football guarantee revenue by playing any number of additional such games in basketball, it is more likely that the second option will occur. With the loss of revenue, the gap between schools in BCS conferences and those who are not will continue to grow ever wider, leading to what may be the eventual breakup of the approximately 340 schools that compete at the NCAA Division I level.

How soon this may occur remains to be seen, but the the additional millions in revenue the new college football playoff will provide BCS conferences, coupled with their decision to eliminate the one source in which smaller schools could obtain a piece of those funds, will almost certainly accelerate the timetable for any such  fracturing.

I think that is a distinct possibility. I also think it may be the ultimate aim of the Big 10.

Not everyone agrees that the outlook is so dire, and at least one observer believes there are other ways for smaller schools to generate revenue:

FCS schools can take steps to enhance revenue streams outside of the on-field competitions with big schools. For example, very few schools FCS schools have media rights deals. Yet there are an increasing number of regional sports networks (RSNs) and national networks that are looking for programming. In fact, NBC Sports Network signed a media rights deal with the FCS Ivy League to “broadcast football, men’s basketball. and lacrosse.” FCS schools can and should continue to pursue these deals to be less dependent on paycheck changes…
…many institutions do not lobby at the federal or state level for their athletic programs or rely the schools’ lobbyists for their athletic programs. As schools like UNI receive more state funding, it is unclear how much of that funding will go to its athletic department. Therefore, FCS can and should make larger commitments to lobby on their athletic programs’ behalf, especially if paycheck games are eliminated.

That comes from a blog by a group (or maybe just one individual) called Block Six Analytics. I’ll be honest. I don’t buy either of those options.

I think many smaller institutions already lobby on varsity sports interests, and at any rate in most cases there would be a ceiling for actual results. To use The Citadel as an example, the school has in recent years begun to play Clemson and South Carolina in football on a more regular basis, as do several other FCS schools in the Palmetto State.

This outcome was basically due to a request by the state legislature to the two larger schools, neither of which had any real problem with it. However, The Citadel can’t play Clemson and/or South Carolina every year, since there are numerous other FCS programs in the state (Furman, Wofford, South Carolina State, Coastal Carolina, Presbyterian, and Charleston Southern).

The first point, that FCS schools should have media rights deals…um, it’s not like they haven’t tried. I’m sure the Southern Conference would like to have a profitable contract with CBS or ESPN or Al-Jazeera, but that’s not likely to happen. Even the mid-major conferences that do have deals (like the CAA has with NBC Sports) usually only get the benefit of exposure. That’s great, but it’s not a big cash situation.

I’m trying to imagine what reaction SoCon commissioner John Iamarino would have if he was told that he should go right out and find a big-money media rights deal for his league. Eye-rolling? Uncontrollable laughter?

Speaking of Iamarino, he had some comments on the FCS vs. FBS situation that were fairly ominous:

The only reason to have 63 scholarships is to be eligible to play FBS teams and count toward their bowl eligibility. If those games go away, the entire subdivision would have to look at if 63 is the right number. Could we save expenses by reducing the number of scholarships? It would seem to me that’s one thing that would have to be looked at.

I disagree with Iamarino that “the only reason” to have 63 scholarships is to play FBS schools (but I digress).

I’m guessing it hasn’t occurred to some of the more FBS-focused among the media that there could be a potential loss of football scholarships if the Big 10’s big idea comes to pass. No one thinks that would be good for the health of the sport. It would also be an sizable number of lost opportunities for potential students.

Iamarino doesn’t give a number, but I could see the FCS maximum dropping to around 50, based on scholarship costs and the lost income from not playing those games. That’s not much more than the D-2 maximum of 36.

This wouldn’t be the first time a Big 10 proposal had the potential to eliminate athletic scholarships at other schools, of course. As far back as 1948 the NCAA, then largely controlled by the Big 10, enacted the Sanity Code, an attempt to get rid of all athletic scholarships. It was a rule seen by many as benefiting the Big 10 at the expense of mostly southern schools.

Famously, the Sanity Code would not last long, and it is a pleasure to note that The Citadel was one of the “Seven Sinners” at the heart of its eventual destruction. I would hate to see the school have to reduce opportunities for prospective students after all these years.

Block Six Analytics did make one good point, which is that the FCS schools do have one other string in their collective bow, namely the NCAA basketball tournament:

One may argue that it is madness to have such a seemingly large organization completely dependent on one deal. However, this deal also means the NCAA will do everything in its power to ensure that there are enough Division I basketball programs to continue “March Madness” (also known as the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship). This requires that schools outside of the BCS have basketball programs that compete at the Division I level. In addition, this dynamic may allow smaller schools to actually ask for an increased amount of subsidies from the NCAA – especially given the elimination of paycheck games.

This may be the biggest obstacle to the Big 10 (and other power leagues) breaking away from the NCAA sooner rather than later. There is a lot of money in that tournament, and the event works in part because the country is enchanted with the “David vs. Goliath” component that is traditionally the major drawing card of the first two rounds. A basketball tournament only open to 65-75 larger schools wouldn’t be nearly as valuable (whether administrators at the BCS schools all understand this point is another issue).

Having said that, I have my doubts the smaller schools could extract a larger pound of flesh for their participation in the event.

—

A couple of other thoughts:

– If the Big 10 eliminates games against FCS schools, it will be harder for its member institutions to become bowl-eligible. This could be even more of a problem if the league moves to a 10-game conference schedule, which is reportedly under consideration.

If dropping FCS schools from FBS schedules was done across the board, there wouldn’t be enough eligible teams for all the existing bowl spots. Either the rules would have to be changed to allow 5-7 teams to play in bowls, or a bunch of bowl games would have to be cut.

– Frank Schwab wrote that a “Big Ten-Sun Belt game in September might not be a ratings bonanza either, but at least it’s better than a parade of FCS opponents”. I believe all but one of the current Sun Belt schools were once FCS (I-AA) programs. It’s not that big a difference from playing these schools versus competing against a quality FCS squad.

In addition, if FBS-FCS matchups go by the wayside, then a bunch of FCS schools will likely move up to FBS — more than are already planning to do so.

—

It’s possible that Alvarez’s comments to a local radio station are just the rantings of one man. I hope so, but I’m not confident that is the case. I think this is probably going to happen (though perhaps not next year). It will have a limited impact unless leagues like the SEC and ACC do the same thing. Then it will become a problem.

When it comes to maintaining financially stable sports programs, smaller schools already have too many problems.

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Variety Pack: The NCAA’s Seven Sinners, Gonzo’s friend Duke Rice, and the Plant of the Week

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Sandlapper Spike

It’s the long-awaited latest edition of the Variety Pack, the celebrated TSA series that debuted earlier this year.  The idea is to write briefly (I hope) on two or three different topics without being limited to 140 characters, like my Twitter tweets.

This is one of two holiday Variety Packs; in a week or two I’ll post the other one, which will (probably) feature The Citadel’s role in the modern-day proliferation of college football on television.

Both Variety Packs are inspired by Google Books.  What  I did, basically, is type in some search terms, and see what came up.

—

In 1948, the NCAA crafted a statute colloquially known as the “Sanity Code”.  The Sanity Code was an attempt to end the practice of awarding athletic scholarships, something many southern institutions had been doing since the early 1930s.

The Sanity Code allowed schools to award scholarships to prospective athletes, but only on a basis of need – and even then the scholarships were limited to tuition and incidental expenses.  Most scholarship athletes would either have to qualify for academic scholarships, or pay their own way, usually by holding down jobs while in school.

This was seen by a lot of the southern schools as an attempt by the “establishment” to keep itself on top of the college athletics pyramid.  The establishment consisted mainly of the Big 10 schools, largely aligned with the Ivy League and Pac-8.  To add fuel to the fire, in those days the Big 10 commissioner also oversaw the NCAA’s daily activities; Walter Byers, later executive director of the NCAA, split time between his NCAA duties and his primary job as the Big 10’s publicity director.

There were myriad problems with the Sanity Code.  It was basically unenforceable.  It was also seen as unfair.  The southern schools had no interest in dropping athletic scholarships, especially when at the same time wealthy Big 10 alums would be giving bogus jobs to football and basketball players with no penalty.

The school most often ridiculed by Sanity Code opponents was Ohio State.  Prior to the 1950 Rose Bowl, it was revealed that at least 16 Buckeye football players had cushy jobs with the state, including a running back on the payroll of the state’s transportation department as a tire inspector.

The Sanity Code was going to allow OSU to do that, but not let SEC or Southern Conference schools offer athletic scholarships.  It’s easy to see why people got upset.

Enter the “Seven Sinners”.  No, I’m not talking about the John Wayne-Marlene Dietrich movie.

In this case, the “Seven Sinners” were seven schools that refused to live a lie, and admitted that they were not adhering to the new statute enacted by the NCAA.  The seven happened to be a very difficult group for the establishment to criticize.  Only one, Maryland, was a major college football power offering a large number of athletic scholarships.  The others were Virginia, Virginia Tech, VMI, The Citadel, Boston College, and Villanova.

For The Citadel, the notion of having athletes work jobs while at the same time go to class, play a sport, and participate in military activities was a non-starter (the same was true for VMI, and to a certain extent Virginia Tech).  The school also questioned the amateur-but-not-really idea of the Sanity Code, with The Citadel’s faculty representative stating that “The Code defines the word amateur and then promptly authorizes students to participate…who do not meet the requirements of the definition.”

At the 1950 NCAA Convention, the association moved to expel the seven schools. That’s right, the NCAA wasn’t going to put them on probation, a concept not yet considered.  It was going to expel them.

UVA president Colgate Darden made a principled argument against the statute, and stated that his school had no intention of following the Code.  Maryland president (and former football coach) Curley Byrd worked the floor at the convention, making sure there weren’t enough votes to expel the seven schools, and using Ohio State’s situation (as an example of the NCAA’s hypocrisy) in order to convince some fence-sitters to support the Sinners’ position.

The Citadel, however, had already announced it was going to resign from the NCAA, stating it refused “to lie to stay in the association”.  For The Citadel, either the Sanity Code had to go, or The Citadel would go.  After all, it’s not like the school had a history of shying away from secession-related activities.

Since all seven of the “Seven Sinners” are still members of the NCAA, you can guess that they weren’t expelled.  Expulsion required a two-thirds majority, and that didn’t happen (although more than half of the NCAA members did vote against the Sinners). This prevented a complete fracture of the NCAA, as it is likely the southern schools would have left the association otherwise.

While most of the votes supporting the seven schools came from the south, there were schools in the other parts of the country which also voted against expelling the seven, a fact not unnoticed by the NCAA leadership.  The Sanity Code was repealed the following year.

In retrospect, it’s kind of funny that The Citadel was in the position of being an NCAA malefactor.  However, it should be pointed out that 111 schools did vote to expel the military college from the NCAA on that fateful day in 1950.  In fact, when the vote was taken, NCAA president Karl Lieb announced that the motion to expel had carried, before being corrected by assorted shouts from the convention floor.  He then said, “You’re right, the motion is not carried.”  Lieb had forgotten about that two-thirds majority rule for passage; the vote to expel The Citadel and the other six schools had fallen 25 votes short.

The echoes from the Sanity Code controversy still reverberate today.  There are still notable divisions between the Big 10 and Pac-10 schools and the other “major” conference schools like the SEC.  The Ivy League has basically withdrawn from the scene.  Even today, there is some distrust of the Big 10 and its closeness (real or perceived) with the NCAA.

Below are some links that touch on this topic.  They are mostly links from Google Books, so it may take a little bit of work to get to the referenced sections.

College Football:  History, Spectacle, Controversy (starting on page 213)

The 50-Year Seduction (starting on page 18)

Unsportsmanlike Conduct:  Exploiting College Athletes (starting on page 53)

College Athletes For Hire (starting on page 43)

Sport:  What Price Football? (column in Time magazine)

Egg In Your Beer (editorial from the January 21, 1950 edition of The Harvard Crimson)

—

While perusing Google Books, I read a passage from a book entitled Gonzo:  The Life of Hunter S. Thompson:  An Oral Biography:

[Thompson’s] best friend from his early days was probably Duke Rice.  He was a skinny kid and not all that tall, and suddenly he shot up to six-six or six-seven and got a basketball scholarship to The Citadel, where he was the only player of the time who was able to shut down Jerry West.

Now, this little blurb interested me, for a couple of reasons:

— Thompson’s friend was named Duke Rice.  With a name like that, he shouldn’t have gone to The Citadel; he should have gone to Vanderbilt or Northwestern.

— The “Blitz Kids” were a group of players recruited by Norm Sloan to The Citadel in the late 1950s and early 1960s (which is also the time period when Jerry West played for West Virginia).  That era was the pinnacle for basketball at The Citadel.  The stars of those teams were Art Musselman, Dick Wherry, Ray Graves, and Dick Jones (and later Gary Daniels)…but not anyone named Duke Rice.

The Blitz Kids never won the Southern Conference, mostly because West Virginia was in the league at that time, and Jerry West played for the Mountaineers.  He was, of course, a fantastic player.  Very few teams shut him down, and The Citadel certainly didn’t.  West played three games in his career against The Citadel.  WVU won all three games, by scores of 89-61, 85-66, and 98-76.

That 85-66 score came in the 1959 Southern Conference tournament championship game, the only time The Citadel has ever made the league final.  West scored 27 points in that contest.  I don’t know how many points he scored against the Bulldogs in the other two games, but since the Mountaineers put up 89 and 98 points in those matchups, I’m guessing he wasn’t exactly “shut down”.

Incidentally, that 98-76 game was played during the 1959-60 season at McAlister Field House, and was arguably the most anticipated contest ever played at the ancient armory (at least for those contests not involving Ric Flair).  West Virginia had lost in the NCAA championship game the year before (to California, 71-70), and West was the most celebrated college basketball player of his time.  People came out in droves to see West play.

West was so good, both in college and in the NBA, that he had no fewer than three great nicknames — “Zeke from Cabin Creek”, “The Logo”, and “Mr. Clutch”.  There are a lot of great athletes who would love to have just one cool nickname, and West had (at least) three of them.

Going back to the book, the person who stated that Duke Rice had played for The Citadel was another friend of Thompson’s named Gerald Tyrrell.  Now, I was sure Tyrrell didn’t make up that story.  After all, there wasn’t any reason for him to do so, and I suspected that part of it was true.  It’s just that it was rather obvious that The Citadel part of it wasn’t true.

No one with the last name “Rice” is listed as having lettered for The Citadel in the school’s media guide.  I briefly considered the possibility that the last name was incorrect (and that Duke was a childhood nickname), but Hunter S. Thompson grew up in Louisville, and none of the players for The Citadel during that era were from Louisville, at least from what I was able to determine.

As it happened, it didn’t take much effort (just some additional Googling) to come up with the answer.  Duke Rice had in fact played college basketball, and had played in the Southern Conference for a school with a military component…but the school in question was Virginia Tech.

Rice is mentioned in this interview of Chris Smith, who starred for the Hokies from 1957-61.  Smith described the 1960 Southern Conference championship game:

We had great athletes.  Bobby Ayersman, Louie Mills, and Bucky Keller were each outstanding high school football quarterbacks.  Dean Blake and Duke Rice did a great job  during the game as they took turns guarding Jerry West.  They held him to 14 points.  When Jerry fouled out in the third quarter, we were tied 49 to 49. Unfortunately, the rest of the WV team responded well and they scored on several long shots during the final 10 minutes of the game.

There he is!

What’s more, it appears that Tyrrell’s comment that Rice was “the only player of his time to shut down Jerry West” has some validity to it.  Maybe it’s an overstatement, but at least it’s rooted in fact.

In the end, the Duke Rice story doesn’t really have anything to do with The Citadel.  It’s more about a slightly blurry memory (which I suspect Thompson himself would have appreciated) and a lack of fact-checking by the book’s editors.  This particular book happens to be co-authored by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner.

[Edit: 12/9/2020…

Actually, this story does have something to do with The Citadel. It only took me 10 years to find out!

As it happens, Duke Rice began his college career at The Citadel — but transferred to Virginia Tech before ever appearing in a basketball game for the Bulldogs. So there was a connection. However, he never faced Jerry West while wearing light blue and white.]

It also illustrates the inherent danger of taking oral histories at face value.  Anyone who follows baseball knows this all too well.  The success of Lawrence Ritter’s classic The Glory Of Their Times has led to a number of similar books, a lot of which are a little short in the truth-telling department.

—

It’s time for the Plant of the Week.  For this edition, the honoree is a canna lily, the Cleopatra canna, which when it comes to coloration basically has a mind of its own.

Warm weather can’t get here fast enough…

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