UBooster is on a mission to save college sports
Businesspeople love clichés.
Sometimes it seems that half of the business world revolves around regurgitating old business axioms or sharing the quote of a famous person. Basically, you can find any adage you need to fit a business story and then find two more that contradict it.
For example, one of the oldest is “the customer is always right.” But then there is Henry Ford’s acknowledgement of “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
The mental battle between these two adages can keep even the most battle-tested of entrepreneurs up at night trying to decide what is the best course of action. Both have merit, and it comes down to what kind of business do you want and is it serving the need.
In the Upstate, there are scores of entrepreneurs trying to make a change in the marketplace with technology being the biggest engine. One of the more interesting ones right now is UBooster, which is a Web platform with the goal of trying to change the face of college athletics.
That sounds lofty, but it is needed. College athletics faces a major funding problem. The average person thinks that programs are rolling in dough, when the reality is much different. Only 20 Football Bowl Subdivision athletic departments – those are the big boys in the sports world – finished in the black in 2013, according to an NCAA study released in April. That is 20 out of 123. If the coaches at those schools had those records, they would be fired.
The report doesn’t state which schools were not losing money, but on average the losing 103 ran a deficit of $14.9 million. The 20 that made money had a median average of $8.4 million.
Meanwhile, the average major division football coach’s salary has doubled since 2006, according to a study done by USA Today. According to the NCAA, salaries make up 31 percent of athletic budgets, while grant-in-aids (a.k.a., the funding for the students) is 27 percent.
Yet somehow people feel that college athletes are compensated enough with free tuition. However, many others believe athletes need to be getting more of the pie, arguing that they that do the lion’s share of the work and are who the fans want to see.
Evolving requirements to compensate college athletes for use of their likenesses and image, guaranteed full four-year scholarships, and increased stipends to cover an athlete’s full cost of attendance are quickly creating new financial obligations for hundreds of colleges and universities. Cases such as O’Bannon v. NCAA and Jenkins v. NCAA could threaten the ability of collegiate athletic programs to survive in this new climate.
The University of Alabama-Birmingham decided to cut its football program and two other sports because of these changes, while many others are evaluating their options in this increasingly expensive environment. While that was one college, it is not unreasonable to think that more schools may do the same.
Which is where UBooster enters the equation.
UBooster offers fans an entertaining and educational platform for helping their schools meet these additional financial challenges in a way that is unique and focused on compliance with existing NCAA regulations.
UBooster allows people to pledge funds to honor the choices made by high school recruits. On National Letter of Intent Signing Day, once a high school recruit chooses a school, the pledges for that school are collected and transmitted to the school’s booster club by UBooster’s nonprofit partner.
As a sports and entertainment attorney, I see what UBooster is trying to accomplish. They are straddling the line between Henry Ford and giving the customers what they want. The customers know that college sports are losing money, but if you were to ask them, they likely don’t have an answer.
UBooster is a Greenville company trying to find that answer.
