Losing money

[SoonerNorm]

http://thebiglead.com/2016/04/20/womens-college-basketball-loses-14-million-a-year-says-mark-emmert/

 

[soonerstar]

And some still pay in excess of a million dollars for a head coach and in the hundreds of thousands for multiple assistants. Make sense?

 

[j2d2]

I cringe at the thought of the national communists against athletes taking control of each college/university's athletics and dictating salaries, policies and details. It is ignorant(doesnt see the dots), stupid (cant connect the dots it doesnt see) and has no integrity(plays politics with everything). It has become a bureaucratic dictator with the accumulation of power its main concern with athletes' benefits coming very far down the priorities.

 

[35TangoTango]

I'm with JD. The last thing we need is for the NCAA to start controlling revenue division!

Each school has to decide for themselves what the non-revenue sports are worth to them. Can the importance of Men's and Women's gymnastics at Oklahoma be valued on the basis of revenue vs. expenditures?

 

[BigTime]

I'm with JD. The last thing we need is for the NCAA to start controlling revenue division!

Each school has to decide for themselves what the non-revenue sports are worth to them. Can the importance of Men's and Women's gymnastics at Oklahoma be valued on the basis of revenue vs. expenditures?

I tend to agree with this. To each university, their own value...

 

[sybarite]

Will we become so oblivious to the purpose of a university that we provide the English, History, Art, and Music Departments forms upon which they must justify their existence via the profit produced?

We have permitted something really stupid to become involved in the discussion. Universities are not about immediate profit. They are meant to provide an educated product that is of benefit to the society and civilization that values knowledge. The fact that a football program is even associated with a university is a bit of a stretch, and the fact that it may or may not be profitable has no part in the discussion of its value to the university. The fact that it might be the only profitable component of an athletic department is of no consequence. It is a university, not General Electric, and its product cannot be measure by its sales price at WalMart.

We have made the determination that if it is appropriate for any athletic endeavor to be associated with a university, it must not discriminate against women. Whether or not the women's program is profitable is irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether either football or women's basketball should be associated with a university in the first place. If so, appropriate revenues and effort must be addressed to both, regardless of any potential return in the sales department.

 

[MsProudSooner]

That's what happens when the bean counters are in charge of everything.

 

[Speedy17]

Will we become so oblivious to the purpose of a university that we provide the English, History, Art, and Music Departments forms upon which they must justify their existence via the profit produced?

We have permitted something really stupid to become involved in the discussion. Universities are not about immediate profit. They are meant to provide an educated product that is of benefit to the society and civilization that values knowledge. The fact that a football program is even associated with a university is a bit of a stretch, and the fact that it may or may not be profitable has no part in the discussion of its value to the university. The fact that it might be the only profitable component of an athletic department is of no consequence. It is a university, not General Electric, and its product cannot be measure by its sales price at WalMart.

We have made the determination that if it is appropriate for any athletic endeavor to be associated with a university, it must not discriminate against women. Whether or not the women's program is profitable is irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether either football or women's basketball should be associated with a university in the first place. If so, appropriate revenues and effort must be addressed to both, regardless of any potential return in the sales department.

Unfortunately, while most people posting here went to college under the reality of what Syb is stating in his post. I am here to tell you that it has changed. I fear paying athletes because it will make Title IX extinct.

As the states have tightened their budgets, the universities have experience massive budget cuts. When I was an undergrad, the largest portion of an in-state student's cost came from the state budget. As these cuts have come, there has been a major shift to increasing tuition to offset these cuts. The top administration is looking for dollars and they are now checking class sizes with profit models and Return on Investment determining curriculum and course offerings. The profit model is really a sustainability model - OU is not immune. OU was giving faculty early retirement this year. It is happening to virtually every public university in the country. Ten years ago, KU was funded only about 10% by the State of Kansas. You look at Louisiana, almost every school is about to go under. There was even talk for a little while that LSU might not play football in the Fall.

The athletic departments are having the same situation. They are losing money hand over fist. Only 12 university athletic departments in the country are not being subsidized out of the university budget. OU is one of the few. In addition, donations to the athletic departments are about 20-30+% of the revenue being brought in. Without football and men's basketball, all the other sports would not be funded. Check out the data.

http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

 

[sybarite]

This simply means that we can no longer have sports affiliated with the universities if we pay athletes. It may become a club program. It will beg the question of what they are doing there in the first place.

 

[SoonerinNC]

It is too bad that so many things are determined by legal technicalities rather than common sense.

If college sports become club sports for pay then a lot of poor kids will not get an education that they are getting today.

Paying football players because it is a profitable sport opens a very slippery slope. Don't bet that Title VII will go away. And then it will be a question of equal pay for equal work. And how do you determine what is equal? Equal practice time?

There will always be competative sports because we are a spectator nation but the shake out could be difficult and contentious.