QUOTE (Zero @ Jul 10 2016, 06:02 AM)

True, but to me the greater issue is our willingness to look for and recognize all sides of a given problem.
To me, it's apparent that the institution is making a lot of money on the backs of student athletes .. that's the obvious part of the discussion. While the institution is making more money and the student athletes are at least compensated with free education and provided with expert training in their given sport, the student with no scholarship is playing the part of an indentured servant to the institution but is ignored in the discussion.
The people who are benefiting from the arrangement are either remaining quiet (institution) or complaining that they're not getting more. The people who get nothing and are arguably contributing to the beneficiaries, remain silent. So to me, the truly important point is that we fall into a trap of elimination. Intelligent people allow themselves to be misdirected from relevant parts of a discussion by those who have a vested interest in the outcome.
This isn't restricted to this topic and we're probably headed to the G&G closet with this.

So Z, let me make sure I understand your point.
You are saying that the non athlete students are footing the net bill for the athletic programs. Correct?
If I understand you then a few follow up points.
In looking at RF's link to the finances, there are 219 of 231 athletic departments were not self sufficient. So they needed subsidies from the school fund.
I didn't have the time to research it and/or compute it, but it would be interesting what that net subsidy is for non athlete students.
So going forward with this, let's cut out the drain on college funds and the subsidy paid by non thlete students and lets do away with all college athletics.
What will happen?
Initial reaction is that tuition for paying students will go down because no need to subsidize. I'm guessing, even in the net, that's less than $200 per year/ per student. Again, no time now to look in detail. So bear with me and let's use the $200 figure per year.
If we wave our magic wand and athletics disappear, there will be a drop in attendance of PAYING students. True Dexter the book worm will still go, as will most other paying students, but what you will lose is some athletes who are on partial scholarship and some who are not on scholarship. Even though they don't pay for it all, they do pay some. Using my team as an example, we had 25 players. We also had a JV club team, with 25-30 guys on it. On our varsity team, we probably had 12 guys on full ride, 8 guys on partial and 5 guys with no athletic scholarship. On my team, I think we would have lost 6 of the 8 partial guys as these were players who hoped to get a full ride and were biding time in school hoping for that to come to be. They were there to play ball and the discounted rate made it more feasible. So we're at six on my team. Now it was not the norm that a kid who didn't make the varsity team would move up. It wasn't like high school that way. However, there would be maybe two or three over a four year period who did make the jump. But, there were a few guys on that team who were there to earn a spot on the main squad. Not many, but I'd say 3-5 of them were there just for ball. Call it four. So at my school and in my sport, enrollment would have dropped by 10 of 55. Really, the 6 varsity guys were probably paying 1/2 tuition, so that is really three lost FTE plus the four JV guys and we would have lost 7 FTE tuition fees. That's one school, one sport. Extrapolate that across all men and women sports at my school, and we're talking at least 75-100 fewer paying FTE's. The fact that most athletes live on campus also takes away room and board revenue. Today, that tuition without R&B is over $40K/year so zapping sports would result in a revenue loss of $3-$4 Million per year. Now that is not profit. That is revenue. I’d guess that maybe 25% drops to the gross profit line, so maybe the net loss is $750K to $1M per year. It is difficult to cut expenses for small drops in attendance. You still need that English Lit teacher, whether there are 22 students in the class or 20. You need to offer the same amount of majors, etc. You need to have the same amount of buildings for dorms. Instead of being full or near full, you have a few more empty rooms. Still need a library etc.
My point is that there will be some net profit drop off by removing sports. This does not consider less interest in the school by alums, which will result in less donations. That is a fact. Sport success does lead to increased donations. My daughter worked in the phone donation department at La Salle and they saw a big increase in donations during their sweet sixteen run a few years ago.
Maybe that revenue completely covers the $200 per paying kid subsidy. But what if it doesn’t? Say it covers half. Then we’re talking $100 per paying kid per year over a four year period.
Schools have a name for such things: activity fees.
My daughter was on the Resident Student Association board for three years and they would get a nice piece of the activities fees in their budget and their job was to find fun things to pay for to make life on campus more enjoyable for the students. They used it for food truck carnivals, movies on campus, comedians and magicians, barbeque, you name it. Could not that $100 be thought of as an activity fee for the students to enjoy a fun event that makes college more enjoyable?
I think that the subsidy is in actuality an activity fee and just like paying for things to do on campus to RSA, paying $100 for enjoyment of sport can be considered the same.
This is strictly a dollars and sense look at assigns no net benefit to athletics at all which there are many IMO. (education and open avenues for people who may not have them otherwise, team skills which are valuable in real life, being teammates with people with very different back grounds than you etc)