Don’t worry, college sports pay for themselves (or not)

by David Safier

This from AP:

Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, are crying foul about the millions of dollars in subsidies directed to the school's athletic department.

The campus Academic Senate on Thursday voted 91-68 in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for an end to campus support of the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics and requiring a plan for paying back loans already made.

Cal's football and men's basketball programs make money, but other sports don't. Even with $7.7 million in subsidies from the campus chancellor and student fees, the department ran up a deficit of $5.8 million for the fiscal year just ended and projects another deficit next year.

Supporters of college sports are fond of saying, between ticket sales, revenue from sports-related apparel and alumni donations, sports programs pay for themselves. Apparently not at Cal Berkeley, and I'm sure not at schools with mediocre teams that don't engender the kind of fanatical loyalty of the successful, big school teams.

And as for those alumni. How many of them pat themselves on the back for "giving back to my school" when they give bucks to the sports programs. You think some of them might consider putting a few bucks toward academics if they didn't see coaches standing there with their hands out all the time?

Here's another article in Bleacher Report. I've never heard the site before this or the article's writer, Ray Tannock, but Tannock is more than a bit peeved about the money going into college football instead of, well, college. He writes disparagingly about the costs of lots of college programs, then ends with this spotlight.

But Arizona is the worst of them all.

Arizona’s $378 million spending effort to upgrade sporting facilities in every major sport over the next 20 years is the most idiotic news I have heard from any state in this country to date—see what happens when education get’s cast aside?

This is from the same state who just recently claimed they were going broke.

Despite the announcement, and the exaggerated salary of Mike Stoops at $1.3 million, the state is one of 34 who have cut spending to public colleges and universities. Arizona State has cut almost 600 staff positions; can you guess where that touted $378 million is coming from now?

We're number one! We're number . . . Oh, wait, that's not a good thing, is it?