As part of a gubernatorial mandate, the Arizona Board of Regents will review the state’s intercollegiate athletics programs to pinpoint how students, the state and universities, benefit from public spending on college sports, the board’s president wrote in The Arizona Daily Star.
“There are public concerns that, for all the acclaim intercollegiate athletics brings to our state and its universities, maintaining big-time athletic programs somehow detracts from the overall goal of providing higher education to the citizens of Arizona,” Ernest Calderón wrote. “Critics often point to massive department budgets, escalating coaches’ salaries. . . and subpar academic performance of student-athletes as indications of a system in need of reform.”
