Louisiana Voice

Today’s test will consist of a single multiple-choice question.

Is LSU’s Athletic Department:

• a subsidiary of a major academic institution exempted of any real oversight;
• a multi-million-dollar enterprise that places scant emphasis on academics;
• a silent partner with sports betting companies in promoting organized gambling.

The answer, of course, is all three.

That may seem to be a harsh indictment of one of the premier sports programs in the country, but consider this:

An ANALYSIS of graduation rates for the 2012-13 school year at LSU (More recent objective figures were difficult to come by) showed that the overall graduation rate for the school was 64 percent compared to 53 percent for student-athletes.

Report by the Baton Rouge media and news releases by he university tend to put a more positive spin by citing higher rates achieved by men’s swimming and diving, men’s tennis, women’s soccer, women’s golf, and volleyball which led LSU with perfect scores of 100. Other sports with scores of 90 or better included women’s swimming and diving, women’s track and field, baseball, softball, gymnastics, women’s basketball and men’s golf.

But a closer look shows that women’s sports propped up the men in student-athlete graduation rates. The women athletes had a graduation rate of 73 percent compared to a dismal 36 percent for male athletes, primarily football and men’s basketball.

Now we learn, no thanks to Baton Rouge media, that a four-month INVESTIGATION by the Shirley Povich Centers for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland has revealed that LSU is one of five major universities are participating in multi-million-dollar CONTRACTS with sports betting companies in an apparent effort to rake in even more money for their programs.

LSU, at least, has been a bit furtive in setting up its 10-year partnership with an outfit called PLAYFLY SPORTS PROPERTIES that currently calls for payments of about $8.5 million to the school. Playfly, headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. Playfly, in its role as a third-party company, has entered into promotional agreements with sports gambling companies for advertising at school sporting events, raising the question of why LSU is shilling for a gambling casino.

The answer, of course, is money.

In addition to the $8.5 million to be paid LSU by Playfly this year, the school also receives 50 percent of all revenue generated from subscriptions, sponsorships, commercials, vendor agreements, and any other revenue “specific to LSU Gold.

And while both LSU and Playfly will evenly share the operating expenses each year for LSU Gold, LSU’s share is limited to a maximum of $800,000 in any calendar year. That’s against that $8.5 Mil, of course.

Here’s the shame of it all:

The contract between LSU and Playfly went into effect for the 2016-17 fiscal year and runs through 2025-26 and yet, the local media, with notable exception of the Baton Rouge Business Report, has been uber-silent on the agreement, choosing instead to focus on the controversy over the naming of the basketball court in the Maravich Assembly Center. It took an investigative team from Maryland to peer into the specifics of the agreement between universities like LSU and sports gambling companies.

Even as politicians are fretting over the literature available to young impressionable minds in our public libraries, no one seems to be paying attention to the efforts of universities on the make for more and more revenue to inundate thousands of students with a barrage of glamorous advertisements selling them on the potential of big winnings.

And LSU, by climbing in bed with casinos via a third-party contractor, can questionably claim that while the contract with Playfly is a public record, Playfly’s contract with the sports betting company is not. By structuring its agreement in this manner, LSU is attempting to shield its business from the public.

There is a Louisiana Supreme Court decision, however, which could force LSU – or Playfly – to make that agreement public. The case, NEW ORLEANS BULLDOG SOCIETY v. LOUISIANA SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS New Orleans Bulldog Society v. the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, more or less ruled that if public funds are involved, then the record should be made available.