And even if they paid more back thant the university invested, it still has not to do anything with education. It is then just a part-time money making scheme to keep the university alive. Since such investments into the sports business do not have anything to do with the core business of the university, education, they could they could easily invest into other kinds of non-educational but profitable businesses like, for example, porn. It then also means that universities can obviously not survive financially just by doing their core business, i.e. by offering educational and research services and _have_ to invest into more profitable but completely non-intellectual endeavours.
Bzz, wrong. Education is a college's job. A university's core business is research. Education is just a part-time money making scheme to keep the university alive.
You are oversimplifying the educational system to a very large degree (pun intended).
Education isn't about the 'information', it's about the collective sum of benefits that a university provides. If it were strictly about the education (courses, books, etc.) there would be no purpose -- most of it can be found for free online.
University is about the whole package, of which a strong alumni network is often a major piece. Without a strong sports program, many of these schools would lose a large fraction of their alumni's attention - and I don't mean dollars and cents. To use a previous commenter:
Ding ding ding. I went to a D3 school for football, and when considering a possible MBA, something I was looking at half jokingly, but half legitimately, was whether the school was large - because I thought it would make watching sports on TV for the rest of my life, and having true attachment, a lot more fun.
Undoubtedly, as I progress further in my career, that fervor would have grown with team success, and also made my attachment more real - while my current alma mater (Chapman University in Southern California) - would have fallen away from consciousness with no legitimate way to grab my attention.
Whether I make a donation to any school in the future is up for debate, and I am now not likely to get an MBA based on many of the points raised here and elsewhere - but the point made on this comment hits the nail on the head.
I find it extremely unlikely that I will ever donate to my small private school in Southern California - because the thoughts of how it's helped me depart with every passing second, and they have no way to get it back.
This obviously leads to a weakening of the school on a whole, in terms of future enrollment and overall reputation, leading to a decline in the quality of education.
And when those 50,000 alumni show up on campus, what do they do to make the education at that university better?