COLUMN: Publicity machine at work in sports

Jordan Smith, Commentary And there is the ceremonial first freshman gazing at the sea of students surrounding him and saying, "How do they make any money letting us all in free?" The answer, of course, is that Penn makes no money at all from football. In fact, it loses about $800,000 every season on this most expensive of athletic programs, according to documents the Athletic Department had to file with the NCAA. With inflation and ever-rising costs, Penn football should cross the threshold of losing $1 million on its gridiron representatives early next century. These are big numbers in absolute and relative terms, but football -- and all the other financial black holes in the Penn Athletic Department -- are in no danger of disappearing. Basketball, with fewer coaches and less equipment, comes much closer to breaking even, but even it falls short. Sports are seen as part of the school's historic mission, and Penn is justifiably proud of its athletic tradition. Athletics add an element few often appreciate. Every time Penn is successful in either of the major collegiate sports, it means tons of free publicity. And while the connection is not strong, the rapid rise of Penn in the national rankings is not wholly unrelated to its total dominance of Ivy athletics between 1993 and 1995. Only the occasional athlete comes to Penn, or any other school, solely due to athletics. This publicity works more subtly, in the same way that croaking frogs work for Budweiser -- pure name recognition. The importance of this free publicity is not lost on Admissions Dean Lee Stetson. While they have "very little direct influence" in his view, Stetson credits sports for raising Penn's national profile. For example, in the 1994 NCAA men's basketball tournament, the Quakers defeated nationally ranked Nebraska, 90-80, in the first round. The defeat of the Cornhuskers loomed particularly large. Nebraska is in the heart of the sparsely populated region on which Penn has focused its admissions energy as part of its geographic diversity campaign. "In the Big 8 and parts of the Far West, it was very well received that Penn had such a good team -- and that we won so easily," said Stetson, referring to the now-defunct conference to which Nebraska belonged. That is an extreme example. But every Sunday in the fall, Penn's name pops up in The New York Times, the most important paper for the upper-class parents of its future students from greater New York City. The Times is probably a more important paper than even the hometown Philadelphia Inquirer. That publicity is care of the Penn football team, which, like all the other Ivy teams, is featured in brief stories every weekend. Those stories may seem minor, but only top 25 and local schools receive better treatment. And baseball teams other than the Yankees and Mets can hardly expect equal space. The proliferation of sports tickers at the bottom of the screen on several channels also lifts Penn's visibility. The Ivy League receives its share of coverage from the influential cable channel ESPN, which often updates scores on its halftime show as the league's race heats up. It may seem this publicity is irrelevant, since all the Ivy schools share it. But many schools who compete directly against the Ivy League, highly regarded institutions like the University of Chicago, Washington University at St. Louis, Emory, M.I.T. and Cal Tech, are known exclusively for academics. "It's certainly different -- it's certainly true that people don't know us from Division III," said Nanette Clift, Director of Recruitment at Washington University. "You're not going to see us on TV on Saturday."

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