Posted on: Friday, September 12, 2003
Budget for budget, UH has no business being on same field
| • | USC fired up and focused |
| • | USC marching band will be hoping game's a 'Wipeout' |
| • | Cockheran, Owens practicing, but hobbling |
| • | UH supporters a vocal minority |
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Coloumnist
LOS ANGELES — The five Heisman Trophies, each with their own glass showcase and pedestal, are what first draw your attention in the aptly named Heritage Hall athletic shrine at the University of Southern California.
But beyond all the bronzed and granite trappings of a football program that has won eight national championships and minted 124 All-Americans are reminders of what has helped underwrite it all.
On a wall facing USC's Heisman collection are plaques with the names of donors who have endowed, at $300,000 or more each, scholarships at every position — and some two-deep — on the football team. And it does not stop there. On the doors of the football coaches' upstairs offices are gold plates that give testament to who writes the checks on the six- and seven-figure salaries of those who toil inside.
Only then do you begin to understand what the University of Hawai'i is really up against tomorrow at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
For as high as the price of success is at this level, at Southern California they have a ready, well-heeled legion willing and able to pay it.
UH isn't just lining up against the No. 4 team in the land, heir to one of the storied traditions in college football, it is staring down a cash colossus.
In the land of Division I-A college football, where there is a widening gulf between the haves and have-nots, there is no problem discerning who plays what role tomorrow on national cable.
Financially, at least, this is a saimin stand taking on McDonalds.
On the betting line UH is 21-point underdog. On the budget sheet it is as much as an $8 million underdog.
That's the difference between what UH spends on its football team and the $11 million USC antes up. And while UH takes in about $4.5 million in football revenues, USC hauls in about $21 million and underwrites almost all of the school's 19-sport program.
While June Jones' new $800,016 salary raised more than eyebrows at UH, not a peep was heard when the Trojans signed Pete Carroll for $1.2 million and then paid his assistants, including offensive coordinator Norm Chow's reported $350,000, handsomely as well.
As a private school, USC gets no tax dollars, no state money for the operation of its athletic program. In fact, sports information director Tim Tessalone said athletics pays the school the cost of each scholarship plus operating costs. No mere drop in the bucket at $35,000 per scholarship.
"Football here," said Ken Sereno, a UH graduate who has taught communications at USC for 33 years, "is more than big."
As one athletic department staffer put it, "the president of the university makes no bones about it, a lot of the alumni donate by how well the football team does."
And, at USC, where the endowment was $2.1 billion in 2002, the Trojans have some alumni who can be very generous in years like last season's 11-2 Orange Bowl championship.
Football is big business at USC and UH has shown up just as business is booming.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.
