Thanks to the Huffington Post for actually sharing the Department of Education Data on athletic spending and equity. However, thanks to the Department of Education for not knowing what athletic division your schools play in! Nice work! NJCAA school Chipola College, is not Division 1, just for the record. So, rather than this being simple, I had to come up with my own way to chop this data.
- Any school under 5,000 FTE was gone.
- Any for profit or 2 year institution was cut. It seemed like these were all correct. If they don’t know this information, we’re all completely screwed.
- Then I only kept schools with revenue above St. Johns University – the highest revenue non-football school that I could find (at least to my knowledge). The next school up was UCF, which just won a major bowl game and has revenue of about $35.5 million
In that sample size, the average enrollment is 20,150 with an athletics revenue of $67.5 million and average expenses of $62.3 million, making for an average operating profit of $5.2 million. Gotta say – this doesn’t really mesh up with previous numbers I’ve seen.
One thing that jumps out quickly is that twenty of ninety schools list the operating revenue and expense the same TO THE DOLLAR. I’m not saying that didn’t happen, but, as the Indy Star article alluded to, the accounting practices of these programs, while not Enron-ian, is not standardized by any means. The money’s going somewhere, and without going through balance sheets, it’s pretty hard to understand what’s going on. However, having expenses and revenue that are exactly the same does raise some eyebrows for anyone with some sense.
Pingback: Department of Education Athletic Program Data Continued « Jeff Lail