The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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THE BUSINESS OF MICHIGAN ATHLETICS the shared model is out-performing those. "By us, as a Big Ten, agreeing to share television revenues, then we get to market the block of games to- gether. We are in the middle of our agreements as a conference, coming to a point where now they can be renewed or extended. We don't have all the data on that yet, but it has lots of promise." Meanwhile, Michigan's $169-mil- lion deal with Nike, set to begin in August 2016, represents the most lu- crative such agreement in all of col- lege athletics. Hackett insisted there are still plenty of financial threats on the ho- rizon. Some, he pointed out, emanate from the need to provide watchdogs on major sports. "If you over-regulate, you can de- stroy value," he said. "My fear in ath- letics is as it's gotten more successful, and as that has attracted some forms of cheating, then you over-regulate for everybody else. "You can create a culture that now, you've got to hire a lot more watch- ers of the system to make sure the system can behave, versus just mak- ing the penalties strict enough if you misbehave. You shouldn't really be able to stay in this world if you mis- behave." Meanwhile, he cites the push re- garding student-athletes getting paid above and beyond scholarships, in- equities in cost-of-attendance fig- ures between schools, and the Ed O'Bannon lawsuit calling for com- pensation over the use of athlete's images for commercial purposes. Michigan has the financial re- sources to fend off plenty of threats, Hackett noted. Others can't, and he recalled a famous episode of the old "Twilight Zone" series to make the point. "Burgess Meredith was this book- worm," Hackett recounted. "All he wanted to do was read books. He couldn't stand the noise, the cacoph- ony of the traffic. He just wished all of it would go away, so he could just read his books. "There was a nuclear event, and he ended up being the only one that lives. In this scene, he's so relieved now. There's no noise, and he can read his books, but he drops his glasses and steps on them. There's no one to repair the glasses." Hackett has delivered this story in other settings to underscore the threat. "To be the only University that can afford the irrational things means the other universities will drop sports," he said. "So now, who do we play? "We have to be all for a system that can sustain itself. It's a big threat. Who is the author of that whole sys- tem? Who is thinking about the 'Twi- light Zone' kind of scenario that says, 'Well, we thought we were doing the right thing here, but we actually ru- ined the end product.' I'm concerned that there needs to be thoughtfulness around that." While his predecessor drew sharp criticism from some regarding the monetization of Michigan athletics