@twoinanddone , The “dumb jocks” stuff is always insulting. My H played basketball for CMU and is anything but a dumb jock. Other family members played for Yale. My kids are both engineers and played lots of sports, had recruiting interest but decided not to pursue it in the end. @klbmom18 , UMD also has a great Ultimate Frisbee team !
Note, however, that the NCAA minimum for athletes may not necessarily be lower than the standards for non-athletes at the school. For example: https://admissions.olemiss.edu/applying-to-ole-miss/freshmen/
@PurpleTitan You really should use endowment per student instead of just total endowment. Swarthmore and Pomona are ~500 students smaller than Williams. That’s a difference of 25%. Here’s a listing: https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/college-rankings/details/EndowmentPerStudent
At East Mississippi CC, they are playing NCAA/JUCO sports, so they have to have the required minimum to play. There are many CC’s that are JUCO schools, and have high standards for admissions (Santa Fe CC next to UF, many of the California CCs) Their admission level is not ‘zero.’ Watch the documentary Last Chance U. If these players want to play D1 (and some of them have played D1 but been tossed off the teams for some reason, often disciplinary), they have to keep their grades up.
None of them are taking a spot a more qualified student wants. None of them are heading off to Stanford after a year or two at EMCC. I think sports is a good thing for them. It is keeping them in school.
I like sports and think they add to a school. I also think music adds to a school, and art classes, and a journalism department. If someone doesn’t think sports adds to the college experience, they can pick a school that doesn’t offer sports, but they can’t pick Harvard or Notre Dame.
@nostalgicwisdom, note that I am measuring relative change. Unless schools have dramatically changed sizes over the past 25 years (and other than the U of C expanding their undergrad population a fair bit; I believe they’ve near doubled since 1991), I don’t think looking at relative change of per capita endowment would change the winners and losers lists much.
I wouldn’t assume colleges avoid admitting top recruiting prospects who cannot do the work, particularly at less selective colleges with strong Div I basketball or football programs. Some will recruit the minimum academic performance allowed by NCAA (or other relevant) guidelines, regardless of whether they believe the student is capable or not. For example, UConn basketball won the national tournament in 2014. They obviously managed to recruit a great class, but the class wasn’t as impressive from an academic perspective. In the previous year the team had 0% federal graduation rate and 8% graduation success rate. They were banned from post season for poor academic progress that year, but managed to get the GSR up to 17% in the following national championship year and be eligible for post season.
Of course selective colleges like Stanford are a different story and really do avoid admitting students who cannot do the work, even though many recruited athletes have a big edge in admissions… They currently have a 100% GSR in men’s basketball and 96% GSR in football.
“College athletics brings billions to the NCAA and millions to colleges, simple research. A lot of schools make a lot of money.”
They don’t actually make a lot of money except the large public universities that have their own tv network (eg. big-10, texas). Other than those, most div 1 football programs lose money. Also only two tournaments make money, men’s basketball and men’s hockey, so all the other men’s and women’s tournaments do not make money for the college. This was before the div 1 football playoff so assuming they make money but we’ll need to see the numbers after a few years.
"Winners:
PSU (+42), UMich (+18), OSU (+9), Duke (+9), UVa (+8), Penn (+8), ND (+4), USC (+4), Northwestern (+3)
Losers:
Dartmouth (-4), Columbia (-5), Cornell (-5), Vanderbilt (-6), Emory (-7), Rice (-9), WashU (-9)"
This has a lot to do with the big-10 network being established in that time period, a money machine for the conference. Also the conference money ( tv, bowls, tournaments) are divided evenly so even if Vanderbilt is getting beaten up, it gets an even share of SEC revenue, i.e. same as Alabama.
@theloniusmonk, erm, those are relative endowment changes and endowments grow due to capital gains and donations. Also, those numbers dwarf the BTN income.
But they don’t cost the schools any money either. The NCAA pays for the tournament teams to travel to the tournaments and for meals and housing. I always wondered how every little school, every Cinderella team could afford to go to a tournament at the last minute, and it turns out the NCAA pays.
Colleges may also make money on tournaments or bowls even if they don’t go, from the TV revenues depending on how the conferences split revenue.
^ Yep. Basically, the revenue from the NCAA men’s basketball tournament subsidizes every other NCAA tournament (besides men’s hockey, it seems).
Athletics has always be a “cost” center and not a revenue generating source for schools. That’s the case with most activities associated with universities. It’s once you get into FBS level football programs, that cost start getting crazy high.
An example of the “impact” of athletic departments that are revenue positive, vs those that need to be supported by increase student athletic fees.
University of Florida, University of South Florida, University of Central Florida and University of North Florida are all Florida public universities, which all have to charge the same tuition rate. However, they can charge different fee rates, including different athletic fee rates. UF, USF, and UCF have FBS football, while UNF does not. UF is one of the 20 some odd college athletic programs that do generate more revenue that what they spend (go SEC football!).
Athletic Fee per semester credit hour:
UF: $1.90
USF: $14.46
UCF: $14.32
UNF: $19.53
Clearly the SEC huge TV contract helps UF keep it’s athletic fee’s low. Why is UNF’s fee’s high, even though it doesn’t have a football program? It has less than 16K students, while the other schools have 42+K (USF), 55+K (UF) and 64+K(UCF) students. The larger the school, the easier it is to support athletics, especially at public universities.
Interesting side note, all four schools charge around $212 a credit hour (In-state). UF’s low athletic fee, allows it to charge more (about twice more than the other schools) for the “Activity and Service Fee” which funds student clubs and organizations. The profitable football and basketball programs are indirectly funding the 1,000+ student clubs and organizations on campus.
Donations from alumni often depend on sports.
Athletic Directors at big time sports schools routinely make twice what the school President makes, if not more. That’s all you need to know.
^ What’s crazy is that Vandy pays it’s AD the most by far of any school ($3.2M).
“Colleges may also make money on tournaments or bowls even if they don’t go, from the TV revenues depending on how the conferences split revenue.”
The NCAA doesn’t get involved in bowls payout, those are done by tv networks that broadcast the games. Most bowl games are now broadcast by ESPN and they pay the conferences who then pay the teams. Teams do lose money on bowl games, especially the lesser bowl games because colleges have to guarantee a certain amount of tickets being sold (10,000 I think) and if they don’t sell them, the eat the cost. Also I’m not sure things like band costs are covered, and the college may have to eat that as well.
I’m not going to read through the whole thread…sorry…but will add something based on a small sample size. Williams sports (I know about lacrosse and swimming) send a ton of alumni to Wall Street…the very same alumni that make huge donations back to the school. My sample size is admittedly small…but this just came up as I was sitting with some Williams alumni and the parents of some Williams alumni.
That maybe true, or not. The vast majority of D1 private colleges do not publish their coaches or AD’s salaries. So all we know is that the Vandy AD makes more than public college AD’s.
It is true that athletes at high academic schools get preference in admissions. However, if you are fan of holistic admissions it is pretty inconsistent to object to athletic preferences. Either you are in favor or holistic admissions or you aren’t. It is inconsistent to be in favor of preferences for race but object to other preferences.
FWIW I have three kids, two are/were recruited athletes at D3 schools. One played football and graduated from Case Western. The other is currently playing lacrosse and attending Haverford College. Both were in the top quartile at their schools.
One thing I can say about the recruitment process is that every single coach asked to see their grades/test scores. ALL of the coaches were concerned with their academics. All of them. They did not want to see you play if they did not think you were able to be admitted at their school. Between the two of them they were in contact with around 20 coaches. Both football and lacrosse coaches at MIT indicated they had very little pull in admissions. Chicago football coach indicated some pull but not much. Haverford coach told my son to “have a backup plan” because not everyone who is recruited get in (most do but not all). NESCAC coaches indicated more pull than those outside NESCAC (mostly Centennial, UAA, NCAC).
The thing you need to understand is that while recruited athletes at highly academic schools do have a leg up in admissions they still need to be qualified. These kids are not all in the bottom quartile. They aren’t even mostly in the bottom quartile. Most of the kids on these teams are like my sons. High GPA, many AP classes, high test scores, achievements outside of sports PLUS high achievement in sports. It isn’t that their grades are lower because of sports. Their grades are the same as everyone else PLUS they played sports at a high level.
None of what I said above applies to large D1 schools. I am speaking of high academic, D3 schools.