Jeff Lail

Since I started working at a college, I’ve had a much more difficult time rooting for college sports.  Usually when I tell this to someone, I get multiple bizarre looks, especially from those who know the kind of sports junkie that I am.  If you follow my tweets, you will see a constant barrage of sports tweets during major games but yet I am disinterested by college sports.

I wanted to spend a few posts explaining myself as well as asking some pertinent questions about college sports.

I’m still digging into and learning the numbers but here are a few figures…

The NCAA makes $600 million on their current contract for the college basketball tournament in the spring.

A report from the Indianapolis Star in 2006 found that “athletic departments at taxpayer-funded universities nationwide receive more than $1 billion in student fees and general school funds and services, and that without such outside funding, fewer than 10 percent of athletic departments would have been able to support themselves with ticket sales, television contracts and other revenue-generating sports sources. In fact, most would have lost more than $5 million.”

Here was one particular school’s line from the budget report:

If you’re not into finance, those numbers might be a little difficult to make sense of, but essentially the critical part to notice is that this is a CASH COW football program that is staying afloat largely on student fees.  Most NCAA (or NAIA) programs have nowhere near the potential to generate revenue that most of these programs do.

Now some of you might say, “that’s not so bad”.  But is it?  What are the educational/learning outcomes of athletics for students?  Is collecting 6 million dollars in student fees (at VT, this is essentially $200 per student) a wise use of student funds?

For the athletes, while many of them receive scholarships, their time is often FAR more invested in their sport than in the classroom (especially in the revenue generating football and basketball).