http://www.orlandosentinal.com/sports/college/orl-sptbudgetcht09020903feb09.story This is the link to an Orlando Sentinel article about the revenues at every division 1 school (note, this is ONLY for D-1 schools). It's broken down three ways: 1) total athletic department revenues 2) total football revenues and expenses 3) total women's athletic department revenues and expenses The title IX and funding article has been all the rage on this board for as long as I have been lurking, so now I feel the need to give my $.02. Facts of life: 1) Of the 117 D-1 athletic departments, the average profit was $1,500,000. 2) Of the 117 D-1 athletic departments, 36 lost money. The average loss was $2,279,000 3) Of the 117 D-1 football teams, 40 lost money. The average loss was $1,323,000. 4) Of the 36 athletic departments that lost money, football specifically lost money at 20 for an average loss of $1,300,000. 5) Of the 16 athletic departments that lost money but where football made money, the average profit from football was $3,500,000. 6) Of the 117 D-1 women's athletic departments, only five made money. They average profit was $1,000,000. But consider that of the $6,000,000 made, $5,500,000 of that came from ONE Athletic department; Akron. 7) The five women's athletic departments that made money were: Akron, Alabama-Brimingham, Central Michigan, Middle Tennessee State and Central Florida. 8) Of the 117 D-1 women's athletic departments, the average loss for each athletic department was $3,340,000. Women's athletic departments lost almost $400,000,000 in 2001-2002. 9) Of the 117 D-1 football teams, the average revenues for all 117 was a profit of $4,980,000. The football program made more than $580,000,000 in 2001-2002. Conclusion: 1) The men's athletic department is subsidizing the women's athletic departments 2) On the average, it's the football program that is subsidizing the women's athletic program. 3) If any of us ran a business of less than 500 employees that lost an average of $3,340,000 a year, we wouldn't be in business for very long. 4) Don't shoot the messenger.
Are athletic departments for-profit ventures or are they non-profit ventures that serve an educational mission?
skipshady, nothing in life is free and if you want funds distributed in any manner, you have to have funds to distribute. One group made a ton of money, another group lost a ton of money. Reconcile that please.
Are all other university departments required to generate profit? Or are some departments supported in large part by tutions and fees? And I think you're missing the point re: for-profit vs non-profit. For universities, the educational mission takes priority over generating revenue. So in short, what if football does indeed support women's sports? Also, a question about the report - do you know if football revenues include booster donations? You know that money never makes it to non-revenue sports, which would weaken the "football subsidises women's sports" argument.
skipshady, I can't say for sure if that report includes donations or not. But tuition and fees do not go to support athletics, those are self-sustaining programs. as such, the bottome line really matters. Also, if you don't think universities are in the business of making money, you've clearly never attended a university. Making money is the only business a university is in.
skipshady, I went to a state university as well (The University of Texas) and they made no bones about it. The UT athletic department is a juggernaut that is completely self-sufficient but it can only be that way if the football team puts 90,000 people into DKR Stadium 7 times a season. You factor that in with luxury boxes and you can see where the money comes from...but also the pressure to win. The Texas athletic department is one of the few in the country completely in compliance with title IX and that has only been in the last three years and that has only been because of the success of the football team. Should the Texas football team fall on hard times and the fans not sell out the stadium, the athletic department would then have to depend heavily on donations to pay for a women's program that - despite being on the finest all-around departments in the country - lost $4.5 mill last year. Again, people can say whatever they want, but somebody has to sign the check at the end of the day and title IX's assault on the football programs of this country is coming dangerously close to slaughtering the goose that laid the golden egg.
TSipper, A few things - You haven't backed up the statement that "making money is the only business a university is in." The conventional notion is that universities are not-for profit and/or publicly funded institutions that put education (and in the case of state universities, good of the people of the state) ahead of profit making. So the burden of the proof is on you. - My assumption was that at a state university, most or much of the funding would come from the state and tution/fees merely existed to cover costs. If they were in the business of making money, surely they could charge more than $1,000 for in-state tution (given the popularity of the school and the availability of scholarships and financial aid). - Unfortunately, the article you posted is no longer available so I can't go back to it. But it only discussed Division I-A schools, even though I-A is only a football class. Why is this distinction important for this debate, you ask? You cited UT as an example, a big time school in a big time confrerence. Well, it stands to reason that lesser football programs in lesser conferences make less money, especially when you start talking about I-AA. Wouldn't women's sports lose money at those schools too? Sure, but those sports cost much less to operate so losses for each sport would be less than those of football. - I am curious about the case of UAB, which made the jump from I-AA to I-A. It was quite an expensive move with facility upgrade, etc. I wonder if it was worth the price of admission to "big time" football. - Or take the case of FIU, where football was recently added, and private donations were needed to save the men's soccer program. - Even if football is the goose that laid the golden egg, there is a substatial amount of fat that could be cut. If NCAA were to cut football scholarship from 85 to say, 60, or make 25 of the scholarships partial, would big time football programs suffer financially at all? And would it not actually help the lesser football programs by reducing cost but increasing parity? - So football programs that make money are fine and dandy, but what about the money losers? Since you want to run athletic departments like Fortune 500 firms, wouldn't it make sense to cut a high-cost, low-reward program? - Where is this "assault" on football and how close are we to "slaughtering the gooes that laid the golden egg"?
skipshady, backing up my statement about universities being bottom-line oriented...obviously, you're unaware of the tremendous fight at universities for research dollars, this is why so many universities are horrible teaching univerisities, the professors are there to research not teach. Teaching is left to the graduate student/T.A. The rate of tuition increase at UT the last 10 years has been more than eight times the rate of inflation and this is despite UT sitting on one of the largest endowments in America. But maybe I shouldn't complain, eight times is significantly less than the national average which - as UT kept telling us - was over 12. Again, the fight for the almighty dollar on campuses is as great as it is anywhere else. College football at 85 scholarships is already running at the bare minimum. You cut it to 60 scholarships and it becomes to difficult to run any program. If you cut it to 60, you might as well discontinue football because you will have killed the sport. I realize that title IX advocates would love to kill football and they may get their wish. - If you look at the football programs that lose money, they lost 4 times less than the corresponding women's athletic departments. I could argue that if a school only focused on what it could make money doing, it would make money doing it. Now, I will readily admit that some schools need to drop football because they are never going to make money doing it. But at the same time, football is the biggest united on campuses across the country and has been historically the biggest single generator of donor revenue. This is why schools are willing to run football at a loss, the money that is brought to the school on the side is worth the loss by the football program.
HAHA!!!!! Clearly, you have no clue. If 10 of those 53 NFL players are injured on sunday, the NFL team can go out on and HIRE 10 more players on Monday. In fact, if the NFL team loses 10 players a DAY the entire season, the NFL team can hire 10 players a day for the entire NFL season. What happens if a college team of 60 loses 10 players on a Saturday game? OOOPPPPS!!!! You can't go get 10 more. What happens if they lose 10 more the following week? OOOOOPPPS!!! You can't go get 10 more. So, now a college team takes the field with 40 players while its NFL counterpart takes the field with 53. Tell me again, how cutting scholarships to 60 doesn't kill the sport? See, the NFL is a professional sport where your body is resume. College football is not. You are subject to little details like ELIGIBILITY, GRADE REQUIREMENTS, LIMITED PRACTICE TIME, you know, all the things that make going to college going to college. By the way, this assumes that all 60 of the college kids are ready to play the game to begin with. As anybody who watches football knows, not all 18-year old freshman belong on a college football field which is why most schools redshirt half to more of them. So, if you have a freshman class of 15 players (assuming 60 divided by 4) and 10 of them aren't ready to play, that means you're taking the field with 50 scholarship players BEFORE injuries. You better have one hell of a walk-on program....OOOOPPPPSSS!!! They count against you too. Damn! If that is the best argument you can make, thank you for playing!!!
Goodness. I did get under your skin for pointing out a simple fact, no? I remember when, years ago, everyone said that football programs would die when scholarships were limited to 105, then again when they were reduced to 85. The doomsayers were wrong. Tell you what -- instead of reducing football scholarships, which I'm not sold on, how about we do this, since you're all about the bottom line: Programs that make money for their athletic departments get to be exempt from Title IX equations. In short, if the football program at, oh heck, let's go with Washington since it's down the street from me, turns a profit from ticket sales and TV revenues, then the Huskies don't have to factor football scholarships into any balancing equation required under Title IX. Same goes for men's basketball. Deal? FWIW, I'm with you when I don't think walk-ons should be limited. It's a little disingenuous to claim that 18-year-olds on scholarship aren't ready to go, though, and then turn around and sing the praises of walk-ons.
Your idea - while interesting on the face of it - can't be done. Schools would simply stop offering sports that didn't break even because they couldn't afford to lose 10-15 million dollars every year. In the case of Washington, since it is down the street from you, the Husky athletic department LOST $204,000 last year. The football team had profit of over $15 mill. So, how many sports is Washington offering? My guess is football and maybe men's basketball as everything else had to have lost money. So, would you be ok with Washington only offering football and maybe men's basketball? Because if you don't take that 15 mill profit from the football team, the Washington athletic department loses 16 mill in 2001-2002. How long is the unverisity going to continue to fund a department that loses 16 mill a year and where are they going to get the funds to do it? 2) The move from 105 to 85 has cut too deeply into college football, 95 is the perfect number which was what it was from 81-91. I could live with 95 scholarships and that would end the hand-wringing from college coaches. 3) 18-year old scholarship players aren't ready to play 75% of the time. My point about walk-ons is that if you're taking the field with just 40-45 scholarship players a week, you better have kids not on scholarship who can act as warm bodies to get you through the game and practice or you will have nobody playing the position. Clearly, you don't understand what a walk-on program does. Only at Nebraska does it turn out players consistently, at almost every other school, walk-ons add practice depth. The walk-ons know their role and are cool with it, the coaches know their role, everybody is happy. But if you're now asking them to contribute, well, the games are going to get really ugly. Will anybody pay $40 bucks a ticket to watch walk-ons?
You didn't understand a word of what I wrote. Go back and try again. Tell Rick Neuheisel to check for spare change under his sofa, then. No. But them I don't believe that the bottom line is the only thing worth caring about when it comes to educational institutions. And if I had wheels, I'd be a bicycle. I could live with 85. More programs are competitive now than in the history of Division I-A football. The USCs and the Ohio States now can't just stockpile players; they have to come up with a different strategy to beat the Oregon States and Wisconsins. If you had 60 scholarship players, yes. But I'm not sold on the idea that we should reduce scholarships, anyhow.
What? Again, if you break the football program away from the rest of the athletic department, where is the $16 mill going to come from to pay for it?
Which is precisely why I said "If I had wheels, I'd be a bicycle." Who's talking about breaking away the football program besides you?
So, if you free the Washington football program from the shackles of Title IX, and thus the football team can give away as many scholarships as it wants, who's going to make up the $15 mill difference that the rest of the athletic department is going to lose? Trust me, Washington could give 170 scholarships, which would add another $10 mill to their expenses, they could raise the salaries of the coaches, they could spend much more money recruiting...in short, you've lost $15 mill dollars. Now, where is this going to come from to maintain the rest of the athletic department?
Presumptious little one, aren't we? I am quite aware of the publish-or-perish dilemma at research universities and I considered discussing it in my last post but I assumed you would not be disingenous or foolish enough to use it as a comparison. But it seems we are both are not very good at reading each other's mind. Your argument is akin to claiming that the government is a for-profit organization because departments fight over budget allocation. Sure, they try to be cost effective but that does not mean that libraries and housing projects are bottom line driven. And yes, there is a fight for research dollars, but you seem to be confusing a means with an end. You see, a research grant pays for research, not the chancellor's $37 million year-end bonus. Are professors at more prestigious schools better compensated than their counterparts at Bumblefuck State? Yes. Just as Bobby Bowden gets paid a lot more than the coach over at Kent State. Is money a factor? Yes Is money the primary motivating factor? I doubt it. There's more money in the private sector. It's more about the quality of the research rather than the money that comes along with it. Is it a coincidence that the dramatic rise in cost of college education has coincided with an equally dramatic expansion in colleges across the nation to accomodate the dramatic increase in college aged children, who just so happen to be the children of baby boomers? I don't profess to know how to effectively run a college football program so I'll trust you on the "85 is the bare minimum" issue. But would making the last 20 or 25 scholarships partial cripple the sport? Is it necessary to house football players in hotels on Friday nights before home games? Right, but my guess is most schools have more than 4 women's sports. I could also argue that if I only focused on eating food that gave me gas, I would have gas. Again, the donation issue is not as clear cut as some suggest. Much of the donation generated because of football do not make its way beyond the football program, let outside the athletic department.
You still didn't understand what I wrote. So let me try again: I'm saying that if a school makes a profit off a sport, if revenue from ticket sales and TV rights fees exceeds the program's expenses, then that sport's scholarship count would not count as part of any Title IX-mandated equation. So those 85 football scholarships wouldn't have to be matched by an equal number of women's scholarships. If the men's basketball program makes money, those 15 scholarships wouldn't have to count as part of the equation. Deal?
I'll respond only to the parts of your post that are worth it. This is a faster increase than when the vets came home from WWII on the GI Bill and when the hippies/baby boomers went to college to avoid Vietnam. Further, what about running a school is anymore expensive in 2000 than it was in 1990? The majority of a college is a capital cost but after that it's a simple matter of maintainment. I could understand a sharp spike in cost if a school was expending to accomodate 1/3 more students, but UT has actually made efforts to curtail enrollement and in the last 12 years, they've built just three new buildings, two of which were funded entirely by private donations. I could understand a rate increase that was inflation or maybe a tad higher, but eight times is ridiculous. Also, for all of the children of the baby boomers, while they are more college-aged people in this country, their are also many more colleges to attend or educational options available than say, 30 years ago. So, again, why the rise in cost? They don't. Under NCAA rules you can only hotel a travel sized team, which means just 60 players. Now, everybody can dress out the following day for a home game, which means that 30-40 kids were left to their own devices the night before the game. I guess I have seen it work differently and maybe my school is the one different. But we've undergone tremendous athletic facility upgrades in the last eight years, all of which was funded by private donations. The women made the biggest gain with the new softball complex and the new soccer/track and field stadium. Both of these were built by donors who wanted to make a contribution but wanted it to be noticeable, so they were advised to not give to the football program - as we had money coming out our ears - and to give to the women's program. Thus, the facilities and the endowment of scholarships and assistant coaches salaries. But make no mistake, football brought these men to the table.
No. The sheer amount of legal bills that would be generated through the lawsuit filings of such an idea would be a greater cost to society than the current system. Every mid-major to below school would have ever alumni lawyer they could find filing every motion in the world. Clearly, such a bill would favor the big six conferences and as it is, the NCAA is going to face litigation because of their dealins with these schools. This would only excerbate it.
My best friend doesn't have a chance to post on BigSoccer either at home or at work, but he can read it. He played club soccer for his alma mater and was an assistant coach for the women's team for a year. I asked him for his thoughts, and while I disagree with him on the wrestling, here they are: Without Title IX it is affirmative action for male athletes. According to SI recently, there are now MORE men's teams since T9 was passed and not less total. If you are going to have scholarships for athletes that are just men, that is fundamentally unfair. Scholarships are paid for by tickets, TV, and donors, not the states. Which is why schools like mine play late season games at night to get on TV, even though that can make kickoff and game temps below freezing for people who've been drinking all day. T9 opponents tend to point to things like wrestling programs, which have been cut, and no one cares about, and no one goes to, and youth participation has dropped on. Most of the men's sports cut are dying anyway. Men's college tennis is irrelevant. Men's college wrestling gets no one outside of Iowa interested and does not even get real coverage during the Olympics, the only time Americans care about such things. Replacing T9 will do nothing to help those sports, they are dying on their own. Women's sports are becoming businesses unto themselves, with NCAA tournaments in various sports drawing good numbers and some sports women's teams outdrawing men's teams. Think Stanford, UConn, UNC, and others (like Tennessee where Pat Summit is actually paid what she's worth) and realize that T9 is not bad. It is not unfair, it is actually fair. If a man is to get a scholarship to go to a school just because he is male, then there should be equal opportunity for a woman who plays a sport to earn a scholarship, that is fundamentally fair and the opponents completely miss the point. Also, many of those who argue they hate women's sports have not watched games in decades and have no current understanding of how good these athletes are now. Elite athletes 30 years ago would be lucky to make the teams now if they played at the same level and had the same training they had then. These women are as deserving as men of scholarships, that is fairness. Football is a cash cow. Fact. Think of government. Many states get back in basic services much more than they put in to the federal coffers in taxes. Is it fundamentally unfair to Washington to get less back compared to Mississippi? There are always differences in companies and organizations that make more or less than other parts. That is just business. It is not evidence of the inferiority of a given sport. I have both a son and a daughter. She is already heading towards being an athlete. He is a good runner and is starting soccer this spring. Without T9 I would have to tell my daughter that her brother can go for a scholarship, but she can't. The people against T9 get to wipe her tears if I ever have to tell her that.