About 400 students packed O'Neill Plaza Tuesday night and listened to Matt Ryan talk about a national championship.
Free T-shirts were handed out to a lucky few, and football head coach Jeff Jagodzinski answered his phone, telling the crowd he heard "opportunity calling."
That's funny, because most of the time, donors are the ones who want Jagodzinski's ear.
According to a recent survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education, college athletic departments raised a combined $1.2 billion last year (a hair more than the total contributed to the Salvation Army) and now account for over 25 percent of all fundraising done by universities.
This comes in sharp contrast to just 10 years ago, when athletics donations made up only 10 percent of donor dollars.
It's no shock that college athletics has become a business, but what is startling is the industry's remarkably swift growth, and Boston College is no slouch in the fundraising department.
While seven academic departments at BC have fewer than eight full-time faculty members, that's the number of full-time athletics fundraisers who worked to raise $19 million last year, a 500 percent increase from 15 years ago.
That puts BC at 31st in the country for athletic fundraising, better even than the supposedly die-hard Notre Dame fan base.
Thankfully, fundraising hasn't gotten quite as out of control as it has at Oklahoma State, where the athletic department has taken out life insurance policies on its 28 most prolific and most elderly donors. The Cowboys will reap $10 million post-premium payments for each coffin.
To be sure, paying for one of the country's largest and most successful athletic programs is no small feat for BC, which is home to 29 teams.
Though BC is not required to release its contracts with coaches because it is a private school, the school's most recent tax return available from 2005 showed that basketball coach Al Skinner and then-football coach Tom O'Brien each made more than twice the salary of BC's highest-paid undergraduate professor (political science's Alan Wolfe, according to the tax return).
But the Chronicle survey poses an interesting question for academics: Is athletics fundraising hurting academic fundraising?
In one sense, the University isn't doing too badly on its own. In the past 10 years, overall fundraising has nearly tripled to $77 million last year. But that increase pales in comparison to the 500 percent jump made in athletics fundraising over that time, which means athletics now makes up 24.6 percent of the all gifts to BC.
Both BC's athletic and University-wide fundraising offices claim there is no infighting for donors. Jim Paquette, associate athletic director for development, pointed to several instances where a relationship he fostered with a strong athletic donor would lead to significant donations to the University later.
"At the end of the day, donors decide where they want to donate," Paquette said. "It's a huge assumption to say that if athletics didn't exist, the gift [to athletics] would go to the rest of the community instead."
Indeed, it's much easier to raise money for football helmets than for school supplies. And an argument can be made that $19 million is a small price to pay for the national exposure and the on-campus excitement that having a Top 5 football team brings. I'd be remiss to say BC's athletic program wasn't a factor in my decision to come to Chestnut Hill.
But there must be a way to harness the success of our athletics program to help fundraising for the school as a whole. Here's one way to start: If you're going to require alumni to pay $1,000 for a seat-license, let them choose where it goes, rather than requiring an athletic donation.
Finding ways like this to connect athletics to university fundraising could pay huge dividends.
Money isn't going to become less important to athletics, and it will still matter in academics. After all, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
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