
Athletics cost colleges, students millions - anu_gupta
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/15/athletics-cost-colleges-students-millions/2814455/
======
bane
On some level, college sports programs exist to train students how to be
professional sportspeople (which includes things like becoming a professional
middle school sports coach). No different, conceptually, than any other major.
The fact that supply _far_ outstrips demand just means lots of college sports
students end up doing different jobs out of school, just like a creative
writing major might end up working in an unrelated field.

But sports are weird and mysterious to me. They seem to integrate so strongly
into people's identities that they're willing to overlook any number of
rational issues with them. At times it becomes downright bizarre and cultish -
Penn State football. I think sports are mildly interesting, but nowhere
interesting enough to have the esteemed place of prominence that it has in the
educational system.

When I was growing up, I studied in my school's music program, and I remember
attending many school board meetings where we had to justify our existence to
receive any funding at all. We squeaked by with a combination of reducing
budget, bake sales, corporate donations and a teacher going unpaid for a
semester. And there were other challenges, ancient equipment, incomplete
scores and no money to buy more (outfitting a 100 piece orchestra with music
to read off of is very expensive) and on and on. We got very good at
fundraising.

Meanwhile the school sports teams got new uniforms for free every season
(music kids had to either provide their own instruments or rent them from the
school), equipment was mostly new, regular morning announcements let people
know about sporting related events, the school newspaper was 40-50% dedicated
to the sports teams and students were forced en masse to attend rallies for
the sports team in the middle of the academic day. When I was there my 30 year
old school got a new state of the art stadium that occupied several acres of
school property. They claimed it was to support all of the students, but it
was only ever used for sporting events.

Support to the music program? Not once in middle or high school was an
upcoming music program event mentioned on the morning announcements, and only
one time that I can recall did the school paper mention a music program -- it
was to let everybody know that an exchange program hosted by the music program
was underway and we were about to have a bunch of foreign students attending
classes with us. Students were encouraged to make nice nice with the foreign
kids and invite them to sporting events to make them feel welcome.

When my school's orchestra won a prestigious national competition it was never
announced and the trophy we won wasn't allowed to mix with the sports trophies
in the school's trophy case. So it sat in the music teacher's office, which
was a converted janitorial room. Our yearbooks had 30 pages dedicated to
action shots for the school's sports teams, the music program (4 orchestras, 3
bands and 2 choirs) had to jam onto one page. Our national win was cut in
editing.

Like most high schools the cheerleaders and football players were minor
celebrities able to get away with any number of school infractions including
physical violence and property destruction against music program kids and
their instruments.

I hated school sports teams.

One of the reasons I went to the college I went to was that it had no well
known sports team and the President of the college refused to fund a stronger
sports program citing research like the OPs that it was a waste of money for
the schools. Our sports arena was more likely to be used for circus
performances and concerts than basketball or hockey.

I agreed with his stance and secretly enjoyed watching the sports program kids
learning how to raise equipment funds and fight for notice like the arts kids
had to do.

And then he retired, his replacement poured money into the sports program and
in a couple of years one of them made it into a national tournament. The
sports program exploded, new teams were added, sports pavilions were added,
practice fields were cut out of wooded parts of the campus.

I hated that once again, sports were finding this kind of irrational support.

And then...almost overnight my school went from being a virtually unknown to
the largest one in the state with individual schools getting ranked in the top
10 in the country. Money and endowments started flooding in, new performing
arts centers, science, tech and R&D buildings started construction. Entire new
dormitory blocks sprang up. Two, all new, state of the art sports centers
opened up and were opened to the local community. Why? The school president
was able to spin the sports teams success into money raising (fund raising,
donations, loans) opportunities to invest in every other aspect of the school.

So...I think I learned a powerful lesson. Sure sports look like a parasite on
schools, sucking out way more then they appear to immediately return. But used
as a tool, the new president was able to benefit the entire school in ways his
predecessor could never have dreamed of. So yeah, I feel a sense of school
pride, and while it's not _about_ the sports teams, I have to recognize that
it's _because_ of the sports teams.

~~~
Vivtek
It's _because_ the new guy was a competent professional and realized the point
of a school is to educate. That's a lucky strike for your school and not a
general rule. Most school administrators wouldn't have had that foresight,
because they believe the buck stops with the sports - period.

~~~
bane
That's true, I've heard lots of stories at other schools about cutbacks in
other departments while the stadium gets a multi-dozen million dollar refurb.

~~~
Vivtek
The school my daughter just graduated from is a great example. She had stories
similar to yours - she captained the science team to a state win for the first
time in a decade and it wasn't even announced. Golf? Sure, that's important.

This year they spent a truly staggering amount of money, given they're a city
of 20,000 in the rust belt with a persistent unemployment problem - on
Astroturf for the football field.

To be fair, they have pretty decent facilities for science labs, etc. They
have great support for drama. They're not a really bad school at all (we
especially liked their AP program). But the preference for rock star treatment
of athletes is truly weird to me, and I grew up in that same county.

------
UweSchmidt
The article starts with "College sports create undeniable campus pride and
identity" and leaves this sentence unquestioned, as if it was a positive
thing.

Regardless of the money spent (or made, if college sports could be run
profitable somehow), there seems to be a huge cost for society by setting the
focus on the wrong things.

It seems that being a good student is valued highly by society, but the
shortcut - becoming a (sports) star is even better! This leads to a large
percentage of young people investing significant resources (time, energy,
health) into this dream.

Professional sports is just entertainment, and assuming that the enjoyment
comes from a relative comparison between players and teams, or the delta
between two rather abstract numbers (this performance, compared to a
"record"), then it seems that there are some resources not spent well.

I cannot see how sports and educations should be married the way they are at
american colleges. Anyone?

~~~
cafard
I think that at a visceral level we are uncomfortable with education--it is
undemocratic, anti-egalitarian, hierarchical--and are happiest when we can
turn it into something else: a sports program, a jobs program, daycare.

On the other hand, I suppose it does serve as advertising. Probably a lot more
people know of Stanford because of its occasionally excellent football and
basketball teams than know of it because of what it has done for computing.

~~~
lolcraft
Sports are democratic and egalitarian? Tell that to Messi or Lebron James ;)

Anyway, that sports and education are so tangled is purely a national oddity
of the US, maybe stemming from its tradition of great, and expensive, private
universities. During the 19th century, if I recall correctly, it was a sign of
distinction and wealth to practice sports; I conjecture that's what got it
started in the universities, and then it spread in the early 20th century,
when those colleges started courting new talent, intellectual or otherwise,
from the up and coming middle classes, helped by the New Deal and the GI Bill.

That could also be why Oxford and Cambridge are relatively so keen on sports,
i.e. rowing, as compared to other European universities. Sports were quite the
posh thing back then. But, of course, I'm just guessing.

------
Vivtek
_College sports undeniably have their benefits, creating university pride and
an identity that no philosophy or classics program will ever match._

Right there is the failure of the American experiment.

~~~
jseliger
Colleges have always changed shape and form, and today they've grown into what
Clark Kerr calls the "Multiversity" in _The Uses of the University_
([http://www.amazon.com/The-Uses-University-Essentials-
Governm...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Uses-University-Essentials-
Government/dp/0674005325)), which is worth reading if you're interested in
such issues.

Beyond that, philosophy and classics are interesting citations because the
healthy, important parts of philosophy have mostly been shucked into science
([http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html),
or William James's _Pragmatism_ ) and classics are interesting but the corpus
is static; it is not easy to come up with new and interesting things to say
about _The Iliad_

In 1946, I'm sure someone was writing about the decline of theology and Latin
and lamenting the failure of the American experiment.

(Despite what I wrote above I am still against the giving of scholarships for
sports and think that the pro sports run by big-deal programs should be
treated as professions, which they are by any reasonable standard of the
word).

~~~
Vivtek
It's not the reference to philosophy and the classics I meant - it's actually
the decline of academics in general in favor of Reality College, and it's not
new. I regard the specific mention of philosophy and the classics as a sort of
fusty stand-in for all the other academics.

Add to that the "running the university like a business" \- which generally
means jacking up CEO pay into the stratosphere while cranking the productivity
screws on adjuncts and raising prices for the customers (which in an earlier
world were "students") - and you have the recipe for the ruination of the
university, just as you have the recipe for the ruination of everything else
American corporatism touches.

These programs are sold as _advertising_ \- which is insane. Seriously. If you
want to compete for students, then make sure your students have fulfilling
and/or lucrative careers (whichever your students are optimizing for) - don't
sell them on which college is _fun_. You do that, you're not going to get
quality students - and that means low-quality end product, a failing
reputation in the job market, and you'll end up having to pay even _more_ for
a president who says he can fix it all. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

------
mehwoot
The thing is, it's mostly the smaller university athletics departments that
take the losses. Of the top 40 public university athletic departments (by
expenditure), only 5.2% of income is from University subsidies. The top 10
receive only 1.2% of their income from subsidies. The rest is from ticket
revenue, direct donations, TV deals, etc (usually with football heavily
subsidizing the other sports).

For all 227 Division I athletic departments of public universities, subsidies
provide 30% of the overall budget, other revenue 70%. So when people complain
about this issue, it really probably isn't any of the universities that they
think it is.

Check it out yourself:
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/college/story/2012-05-...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/college/story/2012-05-14/ncaa-
college-athletics-finances-database/54955804/1)

------
natejenkins
And this is without paying the athletes, who should be earning their market
value. Students walk around campus wearing their favorite player's jersey and
said player gets nothing more than a scholarship out of the deal.

I'm however surprised to hear that football isn't a big moneymaker for
universities. I remember being told that Kentucky, a famous place for
basketball, makes more off of football, and a quick search seems to confirm
that:

[http://kykernel.com/2012/09/17/less-funding-could-hurt-uk-
fo...](http://kykernel.com/2012/09/17/less-funding-could-hurt-uk-football/)

Kentucky made $18 million off of football for 2012-2013, while making only $8
million off of its wildly popular basketball program. All other sports
combined lost $11.6 million.

Still a pretty nice little profit. Maybe their math is a bit different.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>And this is without paying the athletes, who should be earning their market
value.

Wait a minute. I'll agree that student athletes ought to be paid something,
the current arrangement is exploitation. But I'm not sure that starting a
athlete salary arms-race is the answer.

And what about students who (end up) contributing disproportionately through
research & development (patents, and patent licensing)?

>I'm however surprised to hear that football isn't a big moneymaker for
universities.

Isn't everyone? Someone finally addressed the myth that pouring money into
athletics is like buying golden egg laying geese. Good.

~~~
natejenkins
I should say that I don't think college sports should exist in their current
form at all. However, coaches making millions of dollars while players make
nothing leaves a bad feeling in my stomach.

If college sports were not about making money, I would have no problem with
student athletes not making money. But college sports are all about making
money, and they are making it off students who have such a time commitment
with their chosen sport that they cannot afford to major in something that
will lead to a decent career afterwards. Sure, there are the stars who will go
on to the NBA or NFL, but for the rest of the student athletes I'm not
convinced that this is a great investment in their future.

------
coldcode
I wish I could start a tech focused university without any sports at all. Be
interesting to see what happened.

~~~
iliis
This seems to be the norm here in Europe. Our university does have a very
diverse offer of sports activities (everything from running, dancing, boxing
or paragliding to jazz and waterboarding), but it is more a hobby-thingie and
doesn't touch normal study-life at all.

~~~
itsbonczek
True, but there's a pretty good chance that you have a local football club to
root for. College athletics is the American equivalent of that.

~~~
johnchristopher
No, really. Our equivalent is much less hyped and attended and players are
rarely university or college students. Most don't have any HS degree and are
"international" or at least "inter-city player".

~~~
brudgers
I think you missed the basis of comparison. In the US, the role of local
sports team is largely filled by scholastic sports programs - i.e. small towns
in the US turn out on Friday nights to root for the local high school football
(American) team in 8000 seat stadiums in part because there are no significant
second and third and fourth division professional sports teams.

The public land grant universities tend to fill a similar role at the regional
level due to the geographic expanse of the US relative to European countries -
e.g. Alabama is about the size of England as a catchment area.

It might be argued that the US minor league baseball system maps onto the
European football pyramid model - but it is probably a mistake. Unlike the
lower tiers of the footballing pyramid which tend to consist of independent
teams which sell players on for profit, minor league baseball consists almost
entirely of developmental teams affiliated with major league franchises and
have their rosters and lineups and substitution patterns dictated from above
rather than in the interest of points on the scoreboard or standings.

------
ksk
Hmm, have they calculated the secondary markets that athletics generates?

As a CS person I believe that computing/CS is largely irrelevant (like much of
science) unless someone, somewhere is making money from its applications. Also
keep in mind that non-athletes also end up benefiting. At a coarse level - (in
strictly discretionary spending) - people buy tickets, misc gear, subscribe to
the internet/cable, purchase large screen TV's to watch games, etc.

Sports is a great common uniting activity for the masses. Geeks/Engineer types
get hired to work on shopping websites, ticketing backend systems, payment
gateways, wireless HD video chipsets and whatnot.

Even Google who hires all the 'academics' puts them to work so someone
somewhere can click a button to buy something while watching a YouTube video
(probably sports related :P)

------
greenyoda
_" Nearly every university loses money on sports."_

That overly broad statement was made without citing any evidence. The handful
of anecdotes that follow don't support the claim of "nearly every university".
If there were any studies that support this claim, the author should have
cited them. Otherwise, we just have to assume that they're making it up.

~~~
jackmaney
If only there were some kind of engines that could power searches for such
information. Oh, wait....

"The latest annual update to USA Today’s mammoth database on revenue and
expenses at institutions in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic
Association notes that just 22 athletic departments are operating in the
black. Spending across the 227 public universities for which USA Today could
gather data rose by $267 million from a year earlier."

[http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/05/16/texas-
to...](http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/05/16/texas-tops-money-
making-athletic-departments)

And that's just Division I. Care to make an argument that football teams in
either of Divisions II or III are cash cows?

~~~
greenyoda
Yeah, I know how to use Google too, but it should be the author's
responsibility to back up his assertion with facts, not the reader's. Making
an unsupported claim like this is the sign of lazy journalism.

Division I schools probably have much higher expenses (more and better paid
coaches, more spending on stadiums and other infrastructure, more perks for
the players, etc.), so it's not immediately obvious whether they're actually
more profitable than the other divisions. Economics is full of surprises.

------
khitchdee
I think its great that American Universities place such a great emphasis on
sports. It's really good for the athletes and it's raised the standards of
American collegiate athletics to Olympic standards. For this reason American
Universities become aspirational destinations for high school athletes all
around the world. Why is this bad?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Because colleges are supposed to be about something else - skills, education.
Sports has taken a disproportional share of the money and attention.

~~~
khitchdee
Who is going to produce the worlds best athletes if the colleges stop their
supposedly disproportionate spending on athletics? Athletics standards would
go down if they did that. I think athletics has an equally significant role to
play in life as mind training and memorization. To be a good coach and to
learn athletics requires a lot of skill and a lot of discipline both qualities
that the education system is trying to inculcate anyways.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
True but irrelevant to 99% of the students at any given college. Only the best
in their sport get the attention and training. The rest of us look on, maybe
cheer them on, then go back to our shabby classrooms and underpaid teaching
assistants and try to learn something useful.

~~~
khitchdee
That means standards are really high so you're spending disproportionate
amounts of money to train the cream of the crop. Most universities have
programs for the casual sportsman. From a practical perspective, even thinking
about sports or watching it is useful because it helps balance you out. Having
trained as an athlete is like any other training, like a monk meditating or a
more academic student going deep into their subject.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Those 'intramural' programs for casual sportsmen are great. But little or no
money is spent on them; they pale to insignificance compared to the giant
corporation that is college athletics. That's another issue entirely and
almost completely unrelated.

------
fooyc
Is "and" banned from headline titles?

Does this punctuation make sense for native english speaking people?

"Athletics cost colleges, students millions"

Does it mean that "Athletics cost colleges" and "students cost millions" ?

Or do every english people find this phrase very clear on first read?

~~~
w1ntermute
This sort of abbreviation is commonly found in headlines. "and" isn't banned,
it's just that this is acceptable too.

------
tpainton
Baseball did it right with minor leagues. Football needs to follow. College
should not be a minor league football franchise.

~~~
acjohnson55
I'm not sure baseball can be held up as a model, given that the minor leagues
are "minor" because they are under the boot of the MLB, due to the antitrust
exemption [1]. Also, it's noteworthy that college baseball does exist and it
goes deep into the summer. Pro basketball has an official minor league, the
NBA D-League, but college basketball is still out of control.

[1] [http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/12/3/678134/the-
histor...](http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/12/3/678134/the-history-of-
baseball-s)

------
jackmaney
And in other news: water is wet. Also, that big, yellow-orange ball in the sky
keeps us warm. More at 11.

------
Tichy
No idea why athletics is bundled with colleges, but I would guess those
expenses count as advertising?

------
VeejayRampay
Athletics are also premium advertisement for a university.

A quick example: I'm from France and I'd never have heard from Gonzaga weren't
it for John Stockton. That in itself has tremendous value, for big or small
universities. It can put you on the map.

~~~
Zaechie7
Like sports successes (especially of individual players) have anything to do
with their education and/or research quality.

~~~
VeejayRampay
Of course it doesn't. I'm just saying all the money invested in those sport
teams are not 100% money down the drain. They're sometimes a good investment.

~~~
acjohnson55
I have to disagree with you there. It's a zero-sum game. College athletics
aren't significantly expanding the national pool of college students. Without
them, colleges could use much more mundane, direct (read: far cheaper) forms
of advertisement. In most cases, athletics programs are public money and
tuition money being poured on something with absolutely minimal academic
merit.

~~~
jasonlotito
> In most cases, athletics programs are public money and tuition money being
> poured on something with absolutely minimal academic merit.

That's not true. In "most" cases, athletics programs do not provide tuition at
all, and most student athletes do not receive anything in terms of tuition
reimbursement.

In most cases, students are still paying all the tuition and still are
required to maintain their academic standings.

Because of this, a good program can attract out of state students, who will
generally pay more out of pocket precisely because they are out of state.

Finally, lumping all sports together and claiming they are a waste of money
ignores the reality that all sports are not created equal. Sure, adding a
football stadium will be expensive, but counting that against the cross-
country team is silly.

~~~
acjohnson55
I think you might have missed what I said. I'm not saying that sports provide
tuition to many students because you're right, most student-athletes aren't on
scholarship. I'm saying that big-time sports are a drain on the tuition money
of _all_ students in many cases.

I'm not against athletics at college. I played rugby in grad school, and it
was one of the highlights of my experience. I think athletics are a great
thing, but that the growth of football and basketball into quasi-professional
programs is tremendously wasteful, morally suspect, and unsustainable.

My point is that the pool of college students nation-wide is not being
expanded do to sports. If you're at college (anywhere) and were attracted
there as a sports fan, you'd probably still be in college elsewhere if not for
the sports, and you'd probably be there for more acadmically valid reasons.
You are definitely right that athletics attract out-of-state students, who pay
more. But I'd argue that this is actually a bad thing systemically given our
national student loan debt crisis.

I love athletics. But I also think that big-money athletics is a cancer on
higher ed right now.

------
randyrand
I hope this article doesn't get passed around very much - it's terrible.

How can you have a discussion on athletic spending without mentioning revenue
_at all_!

~~~
Zaechie7
Did you _read_ the article?

"Nearly every university loses money on sports. Even after private donations
and ticket sales, they fill the gap by tapping students paying tuition or
state taxpayers."

Personally, I don't understand this US college sports thing at all.

~~~
arbitrage
gambling on college sports is a huge secondary black market, with many
billions of dollars changing hands every year.

that should clarify the popularity of US college sports.

------
dbg31415
Sports also serve to keep alumni connected to the school, and thus increase
donations.

You can't justify "student athletes" as having any value to the community
other than entertainment, but from a fundraising and marketing perspective
they've got some uses.

~~~
gambogi
I understand where you're coming from, but you have to remember that student
athletes are also people, and members of the community. I could walk you
through the argument about physical fitness and the value of exercise, but
I'll save you the time. Just step down from that absolute up there.

