[Vision2020] Football

[Ron Force]

That's what athletic boosters would like you to think.  Unfortunately, the
costs are so large that only a handfull can break even without general fund
subsidies.  From the article:

"One reason B.C.S. members do not want to share is that college sports have
become so immensely expensive that even some of the biggest of the big lose
money. The University of Michigan, which averages more than 110,000 fans for
home football games, lost an estimated $7 million on athletics over the
course of two seasons, between 1998 and 2000. Ohio State had athletic
revenues of $73 million in 1999-2000 and ''barely managed to break even,''
according to the book ''Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in
Big-Time College Sports,'' by Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics
professor. A state audit revealed that the University of Wisconsin lost
$286,700 on its Rose Bowl appearance in 1998 because it took a small army, a
traveling party of 832, to Pasadena."

>From the Chronicle of Higher Education May 31, 2002:

When Budgets Are Tight, Subsidies for Sports Are a Harder Sell

"...Apart from a few dozen sports programs that get millions of dollars in
television revenues and consistently sell out huge stadiums and arenas, most
colleges that play big-time sports don't bring in enough money to pay their
bills. Many therefore subsidize their sports programs in some way, and those
subsidies are often unpopular with many professors and some students."





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Ron Force	      	  rforce@moscow.com
Moscow Idaho USA
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: vision2020-admin@moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-admin@moscow.com]On
> Behalf Of Tim Lohrmann
> Sent: Monday, December 23, 2002 10:50 AM
> To: Ron Force
> Cc: vision2020@moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Football
>
>
> 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.

>