Interesting.

Typo? UC Davis Finance Director Kelly Ratliff says we have 125 sports?

Terrible article! Looks like it was written by a college intern at KCRA who has never taken a statistics or Econ class. UC Davis has almost half again more athletic teams than Sac. (25 vrs.19) and specifically 5 more women’s teams than Sac. These women’s teams are not expected to be anywhere near “making money” and yet they all require coaches that have to be paid salaries. The programs are not close to being comparable. I guess maybe I don’t really get the point of the article if there was one.

The first part of this KCRA "investigative series" aired last night. My wife and I saw it and we both agreed that it was terrible reporting. It felt heavily biased and very misleading.

They included just a couple of sentences from a brief interview with Kevin Blue that didn't even scratch the surface of the topic. UC Davis Finance Director, Kelly Ratliff, was very articulate and essentially said that, yes, athletics receives funding from a variety of sources just as all the academic departments do as well and it is UCD's goal that they are all represented and supported fairly.

They started the piece off by talking to a professor from Shenandoah University, Dr Fritz Polite, who began by calling college athletics the "the athletics industrial complex." So you get an idea about just how unbiased he seems to be.

It was awful news journalism and the worst part is that it is to be continued with more "investigative reports" to be aired.

You would think KCRA would at the very least Google the “Knight Commission” and read the Wikipedia info before airing this show. They do reference the Knight Commission but do not explain what it has done or what recommended actions it wants from college athletics. The Knight Commission essentially focuses on FBS schools although it also references all “Division I” institutions in its reports which focus in large part the academic integrity of these colleges as it pertains to athletics. It recommended the adoption of the “Academic Progress Report” (APR) that the NCAA has long ago adopted, including requiring a 50% graduation rate to qualify for a post season game- an incredibly low bar by any accounts. No school to my knowledge has ever been disqualified for post season due to this rule, but I could be wrong. As to criticizing UC Davis or Sac for “not making any money,” this is a ridiculous statement because, in fact, part of the problem with big time college sports according to the Knight Reports, is that many of these big time schools do sacrifice academics for revenue and still lose money. In fact, since 1999 over 50% of all DI institutions lose money on average of $3.3 million per year. I don’t think either UC Davis or Sac are anywhere neare that staggering statistic. A Very bad and misleading program by KCRA to say the least.

I don’t think it’s awful, but do agree that I don’t really see the point to the piece. A simple, “college athletics don’t make as much money as y’all thought,” would’ve done the trick.

I REALLY didn’t like one graph toward the end of the article comparing coaches salaries. It had a UCD men’s coaching salary listed as above $200k which is only the case for Hawkins and maybe Les. It was not an accurate average for all UCD men’s coaches.

That graph looks completely incorrect. Looking at the website below, I come up with an average salary for any title with "coach" of $46K in 2017. The average head coach salary is $92K.

https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/

Edit: I emailed the author, response below:

"I pulled the salary data of the coach directly, through the state’s Transparent California portal. As a coach, with benefits, any bonuses, and other income, he made that $237,000.

Also…our example was for the Sac State coach, not UC.

The “average salary” system takes into account salary only. It does not factor in other wages or benefits. Added to that, it’s the average across all the coaches. Not just from the singular coach. It’s not uncommon for these systems to pay benefits and other wages on top of salary for the remainder of the contract. Not just for Sac State but all schools. It’s been done across the state and the NCAA."