<p>Those sports don’t “lose” money. They cost money, like most extracurricular activities. You wouldn’t talk about whether the debate society or the folk dance troupe “lose money.” You’d talk about how much it costs to maintain them, and, of course, if they are worth the cost.</p>
<p>This, again, is why football and basketball are different–they are businesses, not extracurriculars.</p>
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<p>Uh, no. The Miami game was a sell-out, and WVU and Clemson were pretty darn packed. The Temple game wasn’t half empty either. Oh hey, that’s already 4 out of 7! So where are you pulling this “routinely” from? Games didn’t start dropping off in attendance like that until it was clear the team this year was pathetic. And the BC game really can’t be counted the same, because the darn snow/30 degree weather in October was the main factor there (though they still SOLD over half the tickets, so really, they’re still making that money).</p>
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<p>Why are we doing this on a year-by-year basis? If you read the report, you’d know that the commission said that we NEED a successful men’s basketball AND FOOTBALL team to get out of our financial debt. That is KEY. So why the heck are we going to kick football while it’s down? How is that going to help it get better? It’s not. We need to be building it up (and we’re only a year removed from going 9-4…) so that we don’t have to cut even more sports, not taking away from it. No matter how good our men’s soccer team is, it’s not going to magically bring in enough money suddenly. We NEED football to succeed. As you said, in 2010 it brought in money!</p>
<p>Also, I haven’t seen you mention how Maryland had 27 sports and that was a reason we had to make the cuts and were having problems. A lot of schools have about 20 sports. There’s teams in the ACC that have like 17 or 19. 27 is a lot of sports to sustain. It’s unfortunate we had to do it, but it’s just not feasible for us to carry 27 sports.</p>
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<p>They do too. They spend money on them and don’t get a profit in return. Not even close. Men’s basketball doesn’t really “cost” us money, because we’re turning millions in profit off it. We make money off it. Athletics and things like debate teams aren’t funded the same way, so I don’t understand why you’re trying to compare them.</p>
<p>Smitty, yes, I would actually feel better if the football program found a way to cut $64K. I think it would send a positive message. </p>
<p>Sure, $64,000 isn’t much in the big scheme of things, but that kind of thinking is what produced the economy we are dealing with now.</p>
<p>Which brings me back to the original topic of this thread. If the “revenue producing” team is producing revenue, then I don’t really care where they sleep. If the “revenue producing” team just lost $64,000, then I care.</p>
<p>I hesitate to pop my head back in this thread, however it is indeed very possible that the $64k loss at UMD does represent cut backs. Without looking at the books and detailed knowledge of the program there is really no way we can make a fair judgement call of cost savings measures that were or were not taken. Just a thought…</p>
<p>It’s possible that the Maryland football team has seen budget cuts. Small things here and there can go a long way. They may just be so small that you don’t actually see them without a line-item budget in front of you.</p>
<p>The 85 full scholarships cannot be cut. Not even 1. That is a requirement to play football at the FBS level. But I’m sure they can and have found ways to trim their budget in other places. </p>
<p>One thing to be careful of when talking about these budgets is that some of these departments will charge a sport for another sport’s expenses. My alma mater was known to “charge” the football program to pay game expenses for the soccer team. It was in the “football stadium” afterall even if it were soccer actually on the field at that time…</p>
<p>*Quote:</p>
<h1>What’s wrong with that? If you can’t fill the bleachers, what’s the point? </h1>
<p>Hunt Quote:</p>
<h1>I thought this was about “athletics.”</h1>
<p>PG Quote:
Apparently athletic performance is only achievable in front of a fully packed stadium, Hunt. * </p>
<p>No, it’s the other way around. When you have high-achieving academic performance, you’ll then have a packed stadium. How often are off-off-Broadway performances packed? </p>
<p>Playing mediocre or less-popular athletics can be on one’s own dollar, **if the argument is **that athletics is taking away from the academic budget.</p>
<p>*Football is a revenue source. I get it. I’m not disputing that. I do wonder why they shouldn’t have to share the misery, since the Athletic Department’s deficit is directly related to money spent on the football team:</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Uhh…if my business is making money, and your business is losing money…then YOU need to make cuts…why should I share in your misery and make cuts myself…especially if I’m already subsidizing you? And, more so if doing so might negatively affect my bottom line?</p>
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<p>Except that the athletic department pays their tuition…</p>
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<p>Should’ve been the first sentence of the thread.</p>
<p>If you’re going to run a university, you will have to decide which programs, including extracurriculars, you’re going to fund. How are you going to decide? Perhaps you will say that academic departments have to “pay their own way” by recruiting enough majors, or perhaps by getting research grants. How about for ECs? Will it be how many students want to participate, or how much money it brings in, or something else?</p>
<p>It appears that UCLA football has snagged a new revenue source: [Justin</a> Combs, son of Diddy, commits to UCLA - CBSSports.com](<a href=“http://eye-on-recruiting.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/26895818/33583116?ttag=gen10_on_all_fb_na_txt_0001]Justin”>http://eye-on-recruiting.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/26895818/33583116?ttag=gen10_on_all_fb_na_txt_0001)</p>
<p>Forbes estimated Sean “Diddy” Comb’s net worth at $500 million, making him the richest hip hop artist.</p>
<p>Honestly, I am not a big football fan and until very recently never watched much more than the Super Bowl game each year. I am just starting to appreciate the complexities of the sport because I’ve become interested in a particular college team.</p>
<p>That said, I dislike the arbitrary assignment of certain human endeavors to a lower place on the hierarchy of cultural values. In what holy book is it written that football has less value to society than the other human expressions typically seen on college campuses? Based on what standard do people judge art, music, dance, drama, debate, student government, social activism and the like superior to athletics? When people strive to perform a certain activity (within moral and legal bounds of course) with skill and excellence, it is a wonderful expression of human culture, creativity and striving. Personally, I think campus Quidditch teams are ridiculous because muggles can’t fly on those brooms in their crotch. I also consider the OWS campus movements damaging to student job recruitment and a particularly distasteful drain on campus resources. But I respect the fact that there are students who view these activities as significant. Football in particular might not be your or my favorite thing, but judging by all the talk I hear in social circles, a heck of a lot of people place a whole lot of importance on football–including college administrations apparently.</p>
<p>Perhaps students at each university should be allowed to vote on which EC’s will remain and which will be cut.</p>
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<p>I think you misunderstand how this works. The university’s general fund gets every dime of tuition owed for the scholarship student-athlete’s place in the class; it’s giving away nothing for free. The general fund gets paid the full cost of tuition through a transfer of funds from the athletic department (as the costliest part of the student-athlete’s scholarship). The athletic department, in turn, gets its revenues from primarily football and secondarily men’s basketball ticket sales, broadcast rights, concessions and parking, athletic conference distributions, and so on. Take away football, and the athletic department has no revenue. Take away the athletic department’s revenue, and it has no more capacity to pay for athletic scholarships, i.e., to pay the tuition of student-athletes on scholarship. Without the scholarship, many of those students don’t attend, and the university’s general fund is out that tuition revenue. Of course, they could go out and find other students to fill those slots, but a certain fraction of them will require institutional need-based FA which generally does come out of the general fund. So it’s not exactly a wash.</p>
<p>I just looked up UCLA’s athletic department budget on an NCAA financial reporting database. For the latest reporting period, UCLA’s football revenue was $18.835 million. Its football expenses were $13.220 million, for a net football surplus of $5.615 million. Men’s basketball had smaller revenues of $7.845 million, but also smaller expenses of $4.023 million, for a net basketball surplus of $3.822 million. Women’s basketball lost $1.190 million. All other sports combined lost $18.108 million. In UCLA’s case, it’s apparent football and basketball surpluses are not sufficient to absorb the full budgets of the non-revenue sports. (In contrast at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, football generated a net surplus of $35.705 million and men’s basketball generated a net surplus of $3.202 million, more than enough to cover the losses of $1.501 million in women’s basketball and $13.662 million in other non-revenue or low-revenue sports).</p>
<p>UCLA football’s team travel expenses came in at $1.393 million, or about 10% of the total football budget. This is maybe a little on the high side, but not way out of line with other FBS-level schools. UC Berkeley was higher, at $1.480 million. Oregon State was much higher at $2.041 million. But then you had Arizona at just $495K and Oregon at $624K.</p>
<p>For comparison purposes, the Big Ten schools’ football team travel ranged from a low of $398K (Indiana, which must stay at the Motel 6) all the way up to Ohio State at $2.751 million and Wisconsin at $2.557 million. My alma mater Michigan, I’m pleased to say, came out toward the low end at $440K. So there is quite a range here. No doubt some of it is bowl travel expenses—they usually spend a week or more in hotels when they travel for bowl games. But that can’t be the sole explanation, because Oregon has certainly been in a lot of bowl games recently and its travel expenses are fairly modest. So I do think the OP raises a valid point; there does seem to be some real discretionary spending here, and it’s fair to ask whether the football team should travel lavishly when others are just scraping by. </p>
<p>Though others (particularly men’s basketball) may be traveling lavishly, too. With a much smaller squad (but more travel dates), a number of men’s basketball programs report team travel expenses in the $700K to $800K range.</p>
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<p>Another thing to consider is look at the number of away games. Oregon may be able to bring more opponents to them while Oregon State may have to travel for more of their games. That can make a big difference in that budget. Also, the distance traveled is important to note. Indiana, for example, is more centrally-located than a lot of schools in the Big Ten. Their football team likely does not have to fly as often as say Minnesota.</p>
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<p>I just addressed this, you’ve yet to respond to me.</p>
<p>Regarding travel expenses, the compactness of the conference, and the selection of away games out of conference does have an effect.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to see the travel expenses in the Western Athletic Conference (which includes Hawaii and Louisiana Tech, and recently included Boise State) compared to those of a relatively compact conference like the Big Ten (with twelve teams). Or perhaps some of the more compact FCS conferences like the Colonial Athletic Association and the Ivy League.</p>
<p>I had to pipe into this discussion. D is in the premiere orchestra at her UC. Perks for the talented musicians who have worked their butts off for most of their lives? Nada. The big concert is coming up where they will be rehearsing then performing from 5pm to 11pm and maybe (not necessarily) they will get bagels.</p>
<p>I know all the points, “but football brings in money…” but I guess I’m just not enough of a capitalist to buy that. To me, even though I like football (not a sports hater), its not right that football players are treated like royalty when musicians are treated like dirt. If the sports teams truly do bring in large amounts of money, why can’t that support other campus endeavors? In most places there are certainly cross-subsidies for less profitable, but highly worthy activities.</p>
<p>Well, the figures above suggest that football and basketball profits are used to support other sports. I see nothing particularly wrong with that, except that you get the situation where if football has a bad year or two, other sports get cut, even if kids at the school want to play them. If you really value athletics like other extracurriculars, I’m not sure why that should be. Why shouldn’t football, like all other activities, have a budget, and pay any surplus into general funds, or get any deficit made up from general funds? Why exactly is it separately “entitled” to its own income? (Leaving aside the question of boosters, and whether they should be able to give to whatever program they want.)</p>
<p>*Those sports don’t “lose” money. They cost money, like most extracurricular activities. You wouldn’t talk about whether the debate society or the folk dance troupe “lose money.” You’d talk about how much it costs to maintain them, and, of course, if they are worth the cost.</p>
<p>This, again, is why football and basketball are different–they are businesses, not extracurriculars.
*</p>
<p>Point taken.</p>
<p>So a cost analysis should be done. If the cost is deemed “worth it” because there is some value/benefit from the expense then the expense is worth it. If the costly expense exists solely because of Title IX and only provides short-term benefits for the few participants and the money would be better spent towards academic pursuits, well…</p>
<p>*Originally Posted by menloparkmom:</p>
<p>athletic scholarships mean the university is giving away a college education for FREE.*</p>
<p>No…it doesn’t mean that at all. Athletic scholarships, which are providing the funds for those “free college educations,” are funded thru the athletic dept…which largely gets its money from football and basketball… ticket sales, TV broadcasts, donors, boosters, ticket sales, etc. However, if there are athletic scholarships that are being funded with univ funds or taxpayer dollars, then those programs need to be analyzed.</p>
<p>Obviously, winning football and basketball teams are often televised (hopefully, nationally) for big bucks. Home games can be especially lucrative, with each game potentially bringing in millions. Schools that are paying their football coaches million dollar salaries aren’t really paying those salaries. Those salaries are essentially being paid for by CBS, ABC, and ESPN and their advertising sponsors.</p>
<p>If you don’t think these big Div I football programs are bringing in the big bucks, ask yourself why the cupcake teams are willing to play the big boys in non-conference. They do it because they get to walk away with as much as a million dollars to pad their coffers.</p>
<p>Why shouldn’t football, like all other activities, have a budget, and pay any surplus into general funds</p>
<p>I think some do. Well managed athletic depts do keep a reserve for those “bad years,” but well-heeled athletic depts do contribute to the the general fund, merit scholarships, and other needs. When Tuscaloosa suffered that devastating tornado last April, the athletic dept immediately donated $1M for relief efforts.</p>
<p>I think Indiana stays at the KOA, based on how they play! (my alma mater)</p>
<p>Basketball has a LOT more travel and sometimes only a day in between games. They also do a long pre-conference stretch with games all over the place.</p>