<p>and here I thought you folks were referencing Ronald Reagan. College football…athletic scholarship…president.</p>
<p>And how are those other UC sports funded?? Either student fees or general University funds. None make enough to pay for themselves. So you have to divert money from general funds. Funds that are very tight at all UC schools.</p>
<p>There is another football player, Supreme Court Justice - Bob Thomas of Notre Dame. He kicked the field goal that beat Alabama in the 1973 Sugar Bowl. He then went on to play in the NFL for 12 years, most of them for the Chicago Bears. While playing with the Bears he attended Loyola University Law School. Like Alan Page, he has been a member of a state supreme court. For almost 13 years, he has been a member of the Illinois Supreme Court, including a term as Chief Justice.</p>
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<p>That’s kind of my point. The bright kids don’t have to choose either football or academics - they get both. Some marginal kids get at least a portion of an education in exchange for their physical gifts. It was in response to the idea that college football players should be paid and should not have to attend classes (as Vonnegut wrote about in 1952). </p>
<p>If anyone thinks selling pictures and signatures is good for amateur sports, imagine the bidding war for top HS recruits’ “signatures” or google Paul Donahoe.</p>
<p>Personally, I’d rather extend the college opportunity to disadvantaged youths who are gifted in the classroom than to those who are gifted on a playing field. </p>
<p>And, it’s a myth that football is a moneymaker…for almost ALL schools, that one sport eats up its own revenue. Schools that eliminate big-money football tend to not lose women’s sports, but actually enhance non-football men’s sports. Football eats up so much of the men’s sport budget that smaller sports get cut to make room for them.</p>
<p>The stereotype that athletes are not bright is awful.</p>
<p>There was a “movement” at ND where AA non-athletes did not want to be automatically assumed to be football players just because of their race - since that meant they were not bright.</p>
<p>Is the stereotype that athletes aren’t very bright any worse than the one that most very bright people aren’t very athletic? Are we supposed to believe it’s equally common to win both of those genetic lotteries as one of them?</p>
<p>Unless a school has a very big-time basketball program there is NO way sports are self-supporting overall. All those smaller sports (M&W) require funds from the gen fund and/or student fees. About half of FBS football programs make money when TV is included and few if any in FCS do. But when they talk about excesses it is almost always at the upper FBS schools (Bama, Oregon, BIG, PAC12 etc)</p>
<p>High level Basketball likely does net certain Universities a cash benefit…the costs of maintaining a basketball program are much smaller than that of football. </p>
<p>And, in my state, the highest paid public employee is the University Basketball Coach – the WOMEN’S coach. Around here, the female athletes are generating more income for the University than the male. ~preens a bit~</p>
<p>RacinReaver - yes it is much worse because it is racist as well as a stereotype. These AA kids on ND’s campus are “assumed” to be athletes because they are there!</p>
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<p>Depends at what level. According to the NCAA, 23 of the 120 FBS-level schools have athletic departments that are self-sufficient, i.e., they bring in more athletic department revenue (mostly from football) than they have in athletic department expenses. This includes 7 of 12 Big Ten schools; in that conference, only Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Northwestern have athletic departments that spend more than they take in from self-generated revenues, but even at those schools, football is a net revenue-producer, generating far more in revenue than it costs–just not enough to fully support all the non-revenue or low-revenue sports.</p>
<p>These blanket generalizations can be very misleading. Yes, at most Div. II, Div. III, and FCS schools, football is a money-loser. At many “mid-majors,” football is a money-loser. At most schools in the “major” conferences, football is a money-maker, and at 23 such schools football generates a big enough surplus to pay for all other athletic department costs in all other men’s and women’s sports. So the blanket generalization, while technically true, obscures enormous differences in the economics of intercollegiate sports from level to level, conference to conference, and school to school.</p>
<p>Kennedy2010, I agree assuming because someone’s a certain race they have to be an AA admit or on scholarship is bad. My statement was more directed towards people that actually were on an athletic scholarship for a moneymaking sport.</p>