{ "id": "1999-september-school-sports-as-big-business", "slug": "1999-september-school-sports-as-big-business", "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-september-school-sports-as-big-business.html", "year": 1999, "month": "September", "monthNum": 9, "headline": "School sports as big business", "kicker": "FUNDING FOOTBALL", "author_name": "Mike Fish", "author_title": "Reporter", "affiliation": "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution", "summary": "Examines the significant role of high school football in Georgia communities, highlighted by financial investments and social status, with data collection revealing the economic impact of football programs.", "keywords": [ "football", "schools", "Georgia" ], "topics": [ "Business & Economy", "Education", "Investigative Methods" ], "technologies": [ "Excel", "Access" ], "full_text": "In the small towns and one-school communities across Georgia, life has historically revolved around the fate of the high school football team. I was already kicking around the idea of a season-long package that would reveal just how important the game is to these communities - the role of parent-run touchdown clubs; the level of local and state tax monies spent on football, particularly for coaching salaries; and the status enjoyed by high school football coaches. Then, the letter came across my desk. It was an invitation from the pastor of a congregation in Macon, writing in his capacity as secretary/treasurer of the Westside High School football booster club. The club, he explained, wanted to show off its new football complex. And if The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspapers were so inclined, the boosters would gladly take a reporter up in a helicopter for a birds-eye view of the complex. The thought of parents raising almost $2 million to build a football complex - not on school property but rather on land owned by its football booster club - was enough to convince the newspaper's editors that this was a story worth pursuing. The idea behind \"Pay Dirt! The Big Business of High School Football\" was to explore what separates the winners from the losers, the box-office successes from the failures. To do so, I teamed up with David Milliron, the newspaper's director of computer-assisted reporting. We built a comprehensive database of the nearly 2,400 high school football coaches and assistant coaches in the state. Forming a game plan Since teacher salary and personnel information is kept at the local school district level, the newspaper compiled an electronic database from information obtained from each of the state's 180 school districts - including payroll records, teaching certificates and teaching assignments. The AJC also obtained the state's annual school report card data, (in electronic form), which contained such information as school enrollments and average district salary data for teachers, administrators and support personnel. The database was built in Microsoft Excel and the analysis performed in Microsoft Access. The data were collected using the state's Open Records Act, which mandates the release of such information. Once each school district responded, the data were entered into the computer, and a \"proof sheet\" was then printed out for each of the state's 180 school districts. The \"proof sheets\" were then mailed back to the school district for verification of the information. The AJC sent out a third round of mailings and made numerous telephone calls to obtain 100 percent compliance. The last survey was faxed to the newspaper by a secretary just prior to leaving her office to attend her mother's funeral on the day before publication. While Milliron handled the survey and data collection, I spent my time interviewing coaches, administrators and booster club members. Many schools and administrators thought we were prying and refused to cooperate, but some expressed pride in their accomplishments. I eventually narrowed my reporting down to three schools to illustrate how the big business of high school football has evolved in Georgia. What the newspaper found was a startlingly well-financed support system for the game, one rivaling the model found on big-time college football campuses. Statistics suggest that interest in high school football is waning nationwide, but that certainly isn't true in Georgia. The established programs in southern Georgia continue to drum up huge financial and fan support. But increasingly, the Friday night fever has spread to the wealthier Atlanta suburbs, evidenced by the fancy stadiums - some with their own lounge boxes, spiffy weight rooms and well-appointed booster club headquarters. The final score Georgia may still struggle to shore up a comparatively weak public school academic record, but schools and taxpayers spare little expense to field competitive football teams. Our package questioned whether education is being compromised for playing games. Consider: $79.6 million in state tax dollars went to pay coaches' teaching contracts last year, although nearly a third have minimal or no teaching workload. Georgia taxpayers contribute through local school taxes another $9.6 million annually in supplemental pay for football coaches. Head football coaches make an average salary of nearly 55 percent more than the average for the state's teachers - $55,686 compared with $36,042. The earnings of 10 individual coaches each exceed the $75,724 annual pay for the state's lieutenant governor. Two coaches were found to earn higher salaries than their school principals, putting the schools at odds with certification standards of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. (It's likely both principals will be getting raises.) Seven percent of all state coaches are either ineligible to teach or hold conditional or probationary teaching certificates. Many parent-run booster clubs provide cash bonuses to coaches. The more successful coaches are rewarded with vacation trips and the keys to leased vehicles. These football booster clubs routinely operate as non-profits outside the jurisdictions of the schools, and at least one dub was found to have run a foul of IRS guidelines. The investigative package brought a huge readership response, both from the daily publication and the newspaper's Internet site. Some 300 e-mail messages, phone calls and letters showed up in the newsroom. And the newspaper's Internet site / which put up a searchable database of all the football coaches salaries and data - received an average of 1,300 hits an hour during the week of publication. Still today the database gets an average of 800 hits a day, with nearly 1 million searches conducted since the package was published last December. The package is accessible online at www.ajc.com/reportspagedirt Two coaches were foundto earn higher salaries than their school principals As a result of the AJC inquiry, the touchdown club at a suburban Atlanta high school which has an annual budget in excess of a quarter million dollars and which has raised $2.5 million for its new football complex retained an attorney and accountant to get the organization in compliance with state and federal tax laws. The Secretary of State previously dissolved the non-profit organization for failing to file annual reports and the AJC found the touchdown club hadn't filed tax returns with the IRS for at least three years. The package also alerted the IRS to the many taxable perks afforded some coaches from cash bonuses to vehicles to vacation trips. Stumbling blocks Gathering salary and teaching assignment information from all 312 public high schools proved to be a daily battle. Initially, some districts refused to comply or said it would cost hundreds of dollars for them to produce the information. We gathered information right up to the last hour. A lot of data were returned incomplete- either they didn't list coaches' names, omitted their teaching responsibilities or failed to differentiate football earnings from base teaching salaries. We constantly faxed and mailed requests to the districts. Finally, we shipped our data to the individual school districts and had them sign off on the accuracy of what we planned to publish regarding their coaches. The booster or touchdown clubs posed a different problem because they are set up outside the school as private non-profits. We got a grasp on budgets and annual income from reviewing IRS Form 990 tax records. But in almost all cases, it came down to piecing together information from a variety of current and past club officers, coaches and athletic directors. In the end, trying to get reactions from educators and public officials proved a surprisingly daunting chore. Outgoing Gov. Zell Miller, who championed education and promoted the state lottery to fund the state Hope Scholarship Program, said it was too hot a subject to take on in his last days. Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard didn't respond to interview requests. And Linda Schrenko, head of the state Education Department, turned down repeated interview requests on the subject, including a personal visit to her office two days before the articles were published. Tips for new players Next time, we'd allow more lead-time to gather and obtain the relevant documents and records requests. It requires a great deal of diligent follow-up to get a 100 percent response when requesting information from 312 schools. It's also important to clearly define early on what you're seeking in the open records request. We'd probably have been better served to start with a small school sample to get a better idea of what kind of information we could expect to get back. Then we could perfect our request for data relatively easily. Mike Fish can be reached by e-mail at mfish@ajc.com", "provenance": { "extracted_by": "pre-v2", "extracted_at": "", "verified": true }, "similar": [ { "slug": "1999-september-pac-power", "score": 0.39 }, { "slug": "2000-december-equity", "score": 0.2 }, { "slug": "1999-november-behind-school-walls", "score": 0.151 }, { "slug": "2001-julyaugust-a-new-wrinkle", "score": 0.148 }, { "slug": "1997-november-poll-producer", "score": 0.138 } ], "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-september-school-sports-as-big-business.html", "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-september-school-sports-as-big-business.json" }