
Sports At Any Cost: How Colleges Are Bankrolling the Athletics Arms Race - shaneshifflett
http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/ncaa/sports-at-any-cost
======
Quanticles
I don't get the table of subsidies - according to Google, Eastern Michigan has
a $10.73M annual budget, but the table says that they have a $120M subsidy.

For comparison, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has a budget of around
$137.5M.

The article is talking about annual student fees but the listed subsidy is
apparently for a decade or more of time.

~~~
dalke
They break it down at
[http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
sco...](http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
scorecards/eastern-michigan-university) and link to the yearly reports, like
[http://chronicle.s3.amazonaws.com/DI/ncaa_subsidies/eastern-...](http://chronicle.s3.amazonaws.com/DI/ncaa_subsidies/eastern-
michigan-fy2014.pdf) .

The report shows $8 million in Athletic Student Aid, $4.3 million in 'Coaching
Salaries, Benefits, and Bonuses Paid by the University and Related Entities',
etc., with a 'total expenses' as $30,081,523 . That's well over your
description of a $10.73M annual budget; where did you get your number? Does it
include all of the details that go into support sports?

As for subsidies, that same eastern-michigan-fy2014.pdf describes $17,136,12
for direct institutional support and $6,374,741 for indirect support, giving
$23 million.

That's for one year. The Huffington piece computes 'Total subsidy income, 2010
- 2014: $120,777,522', which is 5 years. 5 * 23 = $115 million, which is close
enough that I won't dig up the numbers across all of the reports.

~~~
Quanticles
[http://www.annarbor.com/news/eastern-michigan-university-
fis...](http://www.annarbor.com/news/eastern-michigan-university-
fiscal-2014-athletic-department-budget/)

That was their athletic department's official budget for 2014.

HuffPost has a table that implies an annual budget, but the numbers are
actually for 5 years, and that is not clearly stated directly on the table.
That fact makes all of the other numbers that they provide suspicious.

~~~
dalke
Yes, and that link goes on to say "The operating budget does not include $7.1
million in scholarships for student athletes, which also are funded by the
general fund."

Which agrees with the numbers I quoted.

> and that is not clearly stated directly on the table

Is this the table which ends with "Source: 2010-2014 NCAA Financial Reports"
and the link to the methodology which says "detailing athletics spending
between 2010 and 2014", and where each university is hyperlinked to a
scorecard (like [http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
sco...](http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
scorecards/eastern-michigan-university) ) which says "Total subsidy income,
2010 - 2014"?

And where the subsidy is given in percentages, so the time period doesn't
really make much of a difference? And further linked to the primary documents
for each year?

And you are suspicious because .. why? What would have made you not
suspicious? Because as far as I can tell, the only reason for your doubt is
that you chose a methodology (look at a headline from a Google search),
assumed they did the same one, and compared the two without checking to see if
it was a meaningful comparison.

