Should American Taxpayers support unprofitable sports at public Universities and Colleges?

CrispyChicken wrote:

Of course, all of the real estate devoted to athletic facilities is tax exempt, denying tax revenue to the people; so others are paying more in real estate taxes to make up for what is lost to the educational institution's footprint.

The actual amount of real estate a school's athletic facilities take up is a quite small percentage of the overall university land. Yes, the municipality in which the school is located is not getting property taxes from the school but if there were no athletic facilities on the campus the land still belongs to the university and there still would be no tax revenue.

On the other side of this, universities are generally money pumps for their municipalities because students live there and spend money. Big time sports are particularly good at doing this. Remember all the articles about how badly businesses in towns with big time college football programs were going to be hurt because covid meant no spectators at games?

Capital projects are funded by state capital budgets in most cases. The bball arena at my alma mater received $45m in capital funding. Very few athletic depts could afford to fund major projects. Alabama (or PSU even) and similar places are not representative of the majority.

Projects are often disguised as mixed use but the reality is that they would never happen absent the desire for more athletic facilities.

A few schools are banking big money on sports, many pretender Universities are bleeding because they think they're in the same class as the Alabama's of the world and think of they just keep investing that one day it will pay off. For most, it never will.

As for foreign athletes, there isn't a huge dollar cost but there is a lost opportunity cost for the residents of the state who are the ones supposed to be served by the university. I can understand bringing in a truly elite foreigner but lots of places have totally mediocre foreigners on the roster.