<p>The Big Ten pools revenue from its network TV contracts, football bowl and NCAA basketball tournament payouts, and revenue generated by the Big Ten Network, a cable TV network owned by the conference; it then pays out equal shares to conference members. Last year the conference paid out approximately $21 million to each school, roughly twice the next largest conference payout, the SEC’s. This is on top of the money each school generates for itself from ticket sales, concessions, parking, corporate “sponsorships” (e.g., fees paid by Nike or some other company to have the school’s athletes wear its shoes and such), and intellectual property rights on school-logo paraphernalia, all major revenue sources. </p>
<p>Football is king when it comes to college athletic revenue. Here’s how it breaks down at Michigan, for example:</p>
<p>Ticket sales (FY 2009-2010):</p>
<p>Football $33.8 million
Basketball $2.0 million
Hockey $1.8 million
All other sports $186,000</p>
<p>Conference Distributions:</p>
<p>Television revenue (football & basketball, but mainly football) $15.0 million
NCAA basketball distributions $2.7 million
Football bowl distributions $1.7 million</p>
<p>Michigan’s athletic department generates about a $10 million surplus annually. That’s after football, with lesser assistance from men’s basketball and hockey, pays for all other men’s and women’s athletic programs. If you took only football-related revenue and compared it to football-related expenditures, the surplus (or “profit,” if you will) from football would be enormous. The same is true at other Big Ten schools. Now I’m not saying that pattern holds nationally; the Big Ten benefits from an unusually lucrative network television contract for football, plus its own highly profitable Big Ten network, plus a huge fan base that fills some very large stadiums on a consistent basis, plus a lot of BCS bowl and NCAA tournament appearances. But those who would sweep with a broad brush and dismiss college sports in general or big-time football in particular as a secret money-loser obviously haven’t examined the finances of Big Ten football programs. Most colleges and universities do lose money on athletics as a whole. Some even lose money on football alone. But not Big Ten schools; far from it.</p>
<p>*To summarize again: Big-time football programs MAKE a lot of money for schools</p>
<p>To summarize again: They cook the books. They report revenue, but they don’t count costs. *</p>
<p>Big time football doesn’t have to “cook the books”. Do you really think that a college football team is costing a school - say - $100M per year? Yet, a Big Time football team can bring in $14M per home game in TV rights alone…not counting all the other income. ESPN, CBS Sports, and local channels are paying big bucks to these big football schools to broadcast their games.</p>
<p>mom-- I think you may be mistaken with the statement that a big-time football team can get TV revenue of $14MM per home game for football. That seems way out of line with the widely reported data that suggests that Big 10 teams get TV revenue of $21MM per season.</p>
<p>I think the big time football programs make a profit for their schools. Perhaps a couple of dozen teams at least break even? The rest are caught in an escalating arms war for coaches and recruiting that eats up tons of cash. A private college has scholarship costs of, what, 80 players at $50,000 each or $4MM per year?</p>
<p>When revenue increases, atheltic departments just spend more money. I live in Louisville. U of L is one of the premier basketball programs in the country and the Cardinals draw 20,000 fans per game. So, what happens??? Rick Pitino’s salary gets increased because the university has more money. Rick makes $2.5MM per year and got a $3.6MM loyalty bonus this year for remaining as coach. He’ll get another $3.6MM in 2013. So, if U of L enjoyed attendance of 20 X 20,000 or 400,000, the first $6.00 from every ticket sold went to Rick for his salary and the loyalty bonus (if amortized this one year only) was another $9.00 per ticket. I’d say U of L basketball does generate a profit, but most colleges do not as not many can draw the 20,000 per game that U of L does yet they still must compete with coaches salaries and pay travel expenses, etc.</p>
<p>Too bad the rest of the university doesn’t enjoy the riches (if there are riches). I’ve worked at 3 Div. I big-conference universities and not a dime of athletic money makes its way to the “other” side of campus. AND Development for academic programs suffers as well . . . many alums give to athletics and think that they’ve been generous to the university.</p>
<p>Big-time sports are fun, the students love it, arguably it attracts some students to the university, but in my experience, they do not have a positive effect on the “real” mission of a university.</p>
<p>If you actually read the article from the original post, you would see that $400,000 in royalties went to the university for administrators to put in the general fund. I’d say that is more than a dime.
That money went to need-based and merit based scholarships.</p>
<p>That’s at one school (UNC-CH) and the article also cited Florida doing something similar. That’s very nice. But the exception to the rule. Far more often athletics is a drain on a university or, at best, it’s own profit center that doesn’t share with the rest of the place.</p>
<p>On out tour of Bama the point was made that the football team’s profits go to fund the other athletic teams. What was left unsaid was “…not to the University”.</p>
<p>It was almost as if there was no connection between the two.</p>
<p>That said, enrollment certainly benefits from a successful program so that must be why Presidents don’t care. (How many kids would know of Gonzaga if not for their basketball success?)</p>
<p>The vast majority of colleges that don’t have big-time football programs have athletic departments and intercollegiate sports, too, and must support the non-revenue and low-revenue sports with large subsidies from their general fund. To the extent surplus football revenue relieves the general fund of that obligation, it’s a direct benefit to the educational mission of the university because it frees up money for other uses.</p>
<p>Also, it’s not all that uncommon or “exceptional” for the most financially successful athletic programs to help fund general university operating expenses. For example, in both FY 2009 and FY 2010, the University of Michigan Athletic Department transferred $1.6 million to the University’s general fund to support undergraduate need-based financial aid. That’s in addition to the $15 million the Athletic Department spends each year to provide athletic financial aid, including tuition, room & board, and books (the maximum permitted under NCAA rules) to 476 student-athletes competing in 25 men’s and women’s sports, the vast majority of them non-revenue or low-revenue sports. It’s only talented athletes who get these scholarships, of course, but a lot of college gymnasts, golfers, swimmers, and tennis players are also serious students and for many the athletic scholarship represents a ticket to a college they might not otherwise be able to afford.</p>
<p>OK, how about UNC-Chapel Hill, Florida, and Ohio State? The Ohio State Athletic Department recently gave $9 million to the University to fund long-overdue renovations on Thompson Library, the main campus library. In addition, since 1990 the Athletic Department has transferred $500,000 annually to fund library operating costs; gives annual grants to the student-run radio station; and contributes $100,000 annually to the School of Music, over and above the Marching Band’s $200,000 annual budget which is also paid entirely out of Athletic Department funds.</p>
<p>And that doesn’t even count tuition payments for student-athletes on athletic scholarships, which also represent revenue to the University’s general fund coming out of the Athletic Department budget. Look at it this way. If a University were to shut down its Athletic Department tomorrow, most of those scholarship athletes wouldn’t stick around to pay for their education out of their own pocket. The University, then, would need to make up the lost tuition revenue by finding an equivalent number of new full pay students; or recruit an even larger number of new students coming in at a discounted rate under need-based or merit-based financial pay. From the standpoint of the University’s general fund, scholarship athletes are effectively full-pays whose tab is being picked up by a “third party,” the University’s own Athletic Department. That’s not a trivial financial contribution.</p>
<p>Latest figures I’ve seen for Michigan say that varsity athletes across all sports graduate at an 84% rate, compared to 88% for the University as a whole. Pretty gosh darned close. And many of these are pretty good students; nearly half of the varsity athletes maintain academic GPAs of 3.0 or higher.</p>
<p>Michigan has a huge, lucrative, well-run athletic department. Good for them. In general, however, scholarship athletes in helmet sports at other schools do not graduate at nearly the rate that other students do.</p>
<p>“Michigan does this, but in fact it is extremely uncommon. Name three other schools that fund general expenses with sports revenues.”</p>
<p>From the LSU website:
“According to a study by USA Today, LSU is one of only two universities in the nation that uses no state financial support to fund its athletics program. In fact, the LSU Athletic Department annually assists financially with the mission of the University by contributing to academic programs and campus maintenance. The Athletic Department provides more than $2 million in recurring annual transfers to the University as well as assistance with special projects such as $4.5 million for a new band hall and $1 million to assist with the construction of a new Business School.”</p>
<p>“Michigan does this, but in fact it is extremely uncommon.”</p>
<p>Do you have any facts to back up this claim that it is uncommon? If not, it seems like you are just throwing out accusations based on your personal bias against big-time sports teams.</p>
<p>BTW - I would actually agree with you about the graduation rate of student athletes, but that should be the subject of a different thread on this forum.</p>
<p>There is a list published every year of the graduation rates for all football bowl teams. Some do well and some are hideous. It’s hard to tell how useful the data is because we can’t tell if the classwork is useful or even genuine and thus whether the degree is more than a piece of paper. </p>
<p>That said, I find the argument that athletes in scholarship programs graduate more - by a little - to be uninformative. We’re talking about athletes who don’t pay and who have massive academic support. If they don’t graduate, that should be the story. Instead, it appears that even with the huge investment, they barely do better than average even without financial pressure and even with huge investments in tutoring, academic lounges, etc. A system that can’t do better than that is not one to be proud of.</p>