![]() On Wednesday, I filed a federal FOIA lawsuit against West Point and AWPAA. Thus, Americans have less insight into West Point’s athletic department than they do for a private university like Notre Dame’s. Not only do the service academies habitually deny athletics-related FOIA requests, but their athletic associations each successfully petitioned the IRS to avoid having to file an annual tax return, called a Form 990, which must be publicly disclosed. Though secrecy was perhaps not its main rationale for seeking to privatize athletics, it seems to have been treated as at least an ancillary benefit. ![]() “As such, AWPAA will not be releasing any requested information/documents.” “Please note Army West Point Athletic Association (‘AWPAA’) is a non-Federal entity and not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,” wrote Wen-Kang Chang, Army’s senior associate athletic director, in the first of several similar emails I’ve received. And it’s the same situation, I can confirm, if you want a copy of Army’s athletics multimedia rights agreement, its apparel agreement with Nike, its broadcast deal with CBS Sports Network, any NIL consulting contracts that it may have entered, or emails sent or received by its athletic department employees. ![]() To be sure, in the summer of 2021, AWPAA set about the mission to raise monies for a $145 million, privately funded fancification of West Point’s football stadium-earnestly dubbed the Michie Stadium Preservation Project, as if it were about keeping a military structure from caving in-which is due to break ground as soon as this summer.īut if you want to know details of how this is being orchestrated, you’re out of luck. The service academies’ main justification for establishing this set-up was to better financially compete in Division I college sports, and fundraise in ways uninhibited by the strictures and limitations of the federal government. In 2015, Army followed in the footsteps of its Commander-in-Chief Trophy peers, Air Force and Navy, by petitioning Congress to allow it to spin off its entire athletic department as a separate nonprofit organization-Army West Point Athletic Association (AWPAA)-which would then contract with West Point to manage and run the department’s intercollegiate activities. These requests have been reflexively denied, as has been West Point’s practice for at least the last eight years. Over the past 12 months, I have been trying to better understand that relationship in order to do so, I have requested a number of Army West Point’s public documents related to its athletic department. The incident served to remind the public of the peculiar-and at times, questionable-relationship between the service academies and intercollegiate athletics.
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