As a member of the official party representing the University of Michigan at the 2007 Rose Bowl, Ross School of Business Prof. Thomas Kinnear spent the game mingling with California-based alumni, shaking hands and making introductions.

He'd traveled to the Rose Bowl as a member of the University’s Advisory Board on Intercollegiate Athletics, a group comprised of faculty, alumni, student-athletes and administrators who together advise University Athletic Director Bill Martin on major financial and policy decisions involving Michigan athletics.

As a faculty member on the ABIA, Kinnear also served on the board’s Committee on Academic Performance (APC). The committee, made up of all the faculty members on the ABIA and one University administrator, reviews the academic performances of student-athletes whose grade point average drops below the University’s required 2.0 and decides whether they are eligible to practice and compete in games.

Though APC members make decisions in student-athlete eligibility cases, an internal University audit obtained by The Michigan Daily found that the Athletic Department paid for seven of the 10 committee members to attend the 2007 Rose Bowl. The audit suggested that it "may appear to be a conflict of interest" for the Athletic Department to offer free airfare, hotel accommodations, tickets and meals to the faculty members charged with overseeing the eligibility of the University's student-athletes.

According to the July 2007 audit, the Athletic Department offers to pay travel expenses for APC members attending Michigan bowl games. For the 2007 Rose Bowl, the seven APC members attended the game as “guests of the Athletic Department,” the audit said.

Pharmacology Prof. Charles Smith, who chaired the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs from May 2006 to April 2008, said SACUA’s members all agreed that the audit’s findings “looked bad" when the audit came out.

“Everybody agreed on SACUA when were given the audit by the provost that it appeared as if there were a conflict having (APC) members having their ways paid to the bowl games,” he said.

Despite the audit's findings, the University has chosen not to change the practice. University spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham said University Provost Teresa Sullivan “has taken the audit’s findings under advisement,” but doesn't intend to change any policies.

Athletic Department spokesman Bruce Madej said the money used to pay for APC members’s expenses comes from funds the Athletic Department receives for appearing in bowl games.

“When you go to your bowl, you get a budget for the amount of money you can spend for that bowl,” he said, adding that the budget’s amount depends on the bowl game.

Madej said the practice of paying for APC members’s bowl game expenses is long-standing.

“I’ve been here 30 years,” he said, “and it’s been ongoing for 30 years.”

Kinnear, who also serves as the executive director of the Samuel Zell and Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, said he never thought about who paid for his Rose Bowl trip. He later insisted that even if the Athletic Department had paid for APC members’ trips to past bowl games, the practice never influenced the committee’s decisions in his eyes.

“Everybody on that committee is a dignified faculty member with very high integrity,” he said. “Such issues did not influence people on that committee in any way, shape or form.”

REVISITING THE DEBATE

Though the audit was released in July 2007, no actions have been taken as a result of its findings other than a unanimous motion by SACUA at its July 30, 2007 meeting saying the findings should be reviewed.

At the Oct. 27, 2008 meeting of the Senate Assembly, the University faculty’s governing body, Physics Prof. Keith Riles renewed talk on the potential for conflict of interest with the Athletic Department’s practice.