[Vision2020] Football

[Tim Lohrmann]

As the "minor league" for the NFL, NCAA football is
big business for sure. But I'm not convinced football
programs in general "guzzle" resources at the expense
of other programs at the University level.
Surprisingly, most of them more than pay their own
way. 

I didn't sign in to read the complete NY TIMES
article, but big University football organizations
spend big sums mainly because they take in huge sums
from TV coverage. The PAC-10 will take in around $30
from the bowl games this year. That doesn't include
what they've already received as a result of coverage
of regular season games. The lucrative PAC 10 coverage
is of course why UI finds itself(usually) mismatched
against the Ducks, Huskies, Beavers, etc.

If there is a place where football teams really take
inordinate amounts of resources without generating
more, it's more likely in the high schools.
    TL



--- Ron Force <rforce@moscow.com> wrote:
> The New York Times Magazine (free, but registration
> required) has an article
> on the folly of big-time college football:
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/22/magazine/22FOOTBALL.html?pagewanted=1&8hpi
> st
> 
> Football Is a Sucker's Game
> By MICHAEL SOKOLOVE
> 
> 
> "...Football is the S.U.V. of the college campus:
> aggressively big,
> resource-guzzling, lots and lots of fun and
> potentially destructive of
> everything around it. Big-time teams award 85
> scholarships and, with
> walk-ons, field rosters of 100 or more players.
> (National Football League
> teams make do with half that.) At the highest level,
> universities wage what
> has been called an ''athletic arms race'' to see who
> can build the most
> lavish facilities to attract the highest-quality
> players. Dollars are
> directed from general funds and wrestled from
> donors, and what does not go
> into cherry-wood lockers, plush carpets and
> million-dollar weight rooms ends
> up in the pockets of coaches, the most exalted of
> whom now make upward of $2
> million a year.
> 
> The current college sports landscape is meaner than
> ever, more overtly
> commercial, more winner-take-all. And just as in the
> rest of the economy,
> the gap between rich and poor is widening. College
> sports now consists of a
> class of super-behemoths -- perhaps a dozen or so
> athletic departments with
> budgets of $40 million and up -- and a much larger
> group of schools that
> face the choice of spending themselves into oblivion
> or being embarrassed on
> the field. (Which may happen in any case.)..."
> 
> ********************************************
> Ron Force                 rforce@moscow.com
> Moscow Idaho USA
> ********************************************
> 
> 


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