Finally a University that is smart...

Do your resarch. There are 119 DI football teams....32 bowls games and 64 teams played in a ...bowl game this year .. only 4 team that had a .500 record did not make a bowl game...of the 64 teams in a bowl game.... over 45 lost money going to their bowl game!!

3/4 of the athletic departments lose money but that isn't because of football. Most DI football programs (60-80% depending on how you distribute revenue) make a profit. However they have to support things like XC, swimming, wrestling, soccer, T&F,... which have pretty much zero income.If colleges cut all non profitable sports we would be left with football, basketball, and then about a dozen schools where other sports (womans BB, ice hockey, soccer) get enough fans out to sport the team.

jsquire wrote:

From a column at SI.com today:

Florida and Oklahoma, the schools that played Thursday for the BCS title, make enough money to have self-sustaining athletic departments. At least three-fourths of the 120 schools in the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision do not.

(emphasis added)

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/andy_staples/01/09/playoff/index.html

That leaves half of the BCS-conference schools losing money plus all the others.

People are having a hard time with "profitable football team" vs. "profitable athletic department." Only a handful of athletic departments are profitable. However, many, many more football teams bring in more revenue than expenses. Not all, of course, and when you're talking about D-IAA and D-II you're probably not talking any profit at all. But many D-I football teams do help support other sports at their institutions.

There is not a Mid American Conference school which makes money in football! 5 teams went to a bowl game and they all lost money going to the bowl game!! A few years ago Ohio University lost money going to their conference title game and lost nearly a Million $'s going to their bowl game.

If you count the 85 full rides, the coaching salaries, the cost of running the stadium, their travel expenses…I will say it AGAIN more DI programs lose money going to their bowl games than universities which make money going to their bowl games!!

SI had a article a few years ago how Wisconsin LOST MONEY going to the ROSE BOWL!!

More D III football teams probably make money in football than DI programs. All D III players pay to go to school, their entire coaching salaries is usually less than the head coach as a mid level DI team.

If 2/3 of DI football schools make money, 1/3 will lose money. I expect most of those 1/3 are in nonBCS conferences (I.e. Mid American).Picking out just bowl games is cherry picking. Look at the whole season and decide if the football team is making money or not.Last time I checked, 100% of all DI schools without football have athletic departments that are losing money.As far as Wisconsin and the Rose Bowl, they send 832 people to the rose bowl. I am guessing that is 2-3x the number of people required by the football team. How much of that loss should be assigned to the band and to the university administration budgets?

"Worth it" depends on who is answering. Personally I'd say no. I'm pleased that Shippensburg hasn't sold out its other sports for recognition in football and if I'd run at JMU instead they'd have wrecked their chances of getting any donations from me and no, I can't really imagine that JMU's applicant pool is that superior to Shippensburg's.

On the other hand, I'm also guessing that people in Utah's athletic administration are feeling pretty smart right now about dumping other sports and diverting the funds to football no matter what most of here might think of them.

Incredibly doubtful. Show me the numbers and their sources.

kevin malone wrote:

People are having a hard time with "profitable football team" vs. "profitable athletic department." Only a handful of athletic departments are profitable. However, many, many more football teams bring in more revenue than expenses. Not all, of course, and when you're talking about D-IAA and D-II you're probably not talking any profit at all. But many D-I football teams do help support other sports at their institutions.

Comrade Obamski wrote:

Why should the U.S. and State taxpayers as well as tuition paying students have some of their money go towards paying for some nitwit to compete for the school.

Show me your source for supporting a claim that tax money supports varsity sports.

So thanks for guessing. I guess.

HRE wrote:

I'm only guessing here, but I'd bet that JMU's recognition factor is higher than comparable schools that haven't played for or won a DI-AA football championship recently.

From a very small sample size, I know more people who have heard of JMU than of Shippensburg. All of that extra recognition is due to JMU's higher sports profile which includes a basketball team that occasionally plays on ESPN and has turned up in the DI tournament as well as football games in the DI-AA tournament that have been televised on ESPN where even a small audience numbers in the millions.

It's actually more of an extrapolation that a guess. Excuse me for not spending half an hour or more thinking out exactly what I wanted to say and instead using a casual phrase to indicate that I have no hard data to back my conclusion.

Why does football need to make money in order to be justifiable? Name one other university class or extracurricular that is required to be profitable in order to survive.

You're excused.

$isjustokay wrote:

Why does football need to make money in order to be justifiable? Name one other university class or extracurricular that is required to be profitable in order to survive.

I wouldn't say profitable but at many of these schools football is a big black hole that the administration is pouring money down and diverting resources from other areas. There are tons of programs that are required to be profitable in order to survive. Just for an example, distance learning and working adult master's programs are veritable cash cows for the departments that run them.

At a traditional university a lot of things go on that aren't profitable on their own but they're funded anyway because they're part of the "college experience" and will attract kids wanting that experience.

I'd "guess" that intercollegiate athletics falls into this category for the most part. My son has loved running for his high school team and very much wants to continue runing for his school when he gets to college. There's no reason he needs to do this that relates to his education. He could join a club and run for them or run on his own while at college. But he doesn't want to do that. Any school that wants him to attend needs to have a cross country and track program.

The same is true for kids who play baseball or football or other sports in high school. Lots of them want to keep on and do it in college so a college that attracts these kids makes an overall profit even if the particular team for which the kids play spends more money than it takes in.

But it is possible that a particular sport will become more of a drain than an asset and it will make sense to drop that sport.

What bothered me so much about the JMU decision to drop track and XC (archery, swimming, etc. also) is that this is exactly the role it was playing for many of those kids--it was enhancing the college experience. It was costing the University very little, as there were no scholarships for XC and Track. A little money for coaching (though it was a combined coaching staff), uniforms, and travel. The archery team even raised their own money for equipment and travel.

Meanwhile football continues to be a huge money drain. The only arguments that make sense is that there are intangible benefits--these are very hard to measure, though.

You can't always get what you want.

I think it was a very bad decision and hated to see JMU win that championship. My experience with college ADs is that many of them think they're job is to make sure the football and basketball teams are doing as well as possible and treat everything else as an afterthought. That might be defensible if those sports are bringing in enough money to run the whole athletic department. But if your sports are there to add to the overall college experience then I'd think your criteria should be providing that enhancement to as many students as possible.

What a country! It's a new era, it's foolish to expect that things from the 60s, 70s, and 80s are going to hold over completely for succeeding generations. The sole purpose of a university or college was to provide education for well-rounded individuals. The generation before that went to college didn't have cars on campus or a lot of other things people experienced in college in the 60s-80s. Now the college system in the US is more or less an expensive jobs training program. The university presidents, ADs, and the NCAA have been fully complicit in their reckless drive to pursue big money athletics at the expense of academic values and prestige. None of this has happened by accident.

Universities are now businesses. Their sole purpose is not just to provide education for well-rounded individuals though that's what they'll asy their role is. But like any other business, they look to their bottom line and make decisions accordingly.