philip_ponebshek wrote: > << "Don't blame the women for the cutting of men's sports," she said. > "We're > not the ones who pay million-dollar salaries to football coaches." >>
> Larry Morgan replied: >>My wife and I argue about this topic all of the time and my angle is this: >>If >>hundreds of college football players earn and draw in these millions of >>dollars each year through sold out stadiums and bowl games, then there is >>no >>>question as to what a coaches' salary is. > Yep. Until a few years ago, you could have put me in the "they're > overpaid" camp. > Now, I'm firmly in the "they may be 'overpaid' in some egalitarian, > societal sense. But to many Universities, given the star structure and > revenues in College Football, they bring in what they're paid. I thought I was going to stay out of this, but there seems to be a confusion between high revenues and high profit. The last statment above is simply not true. Most football programs lose money hand over fist. (I believe that Texas is one of the half dozen or so Div I programs that make money, which probably accounts for Phil's views.) The great majority of programs are financed by basketball. A few years, the U. of Michigan -- which fills its 101,000 seat stadium every game -- got in trouble because they only made one of the lesser bowl games and lost over a million dollars on that game alone. A lot of money is flying around, but the balance is negative for all but a very few programs. Football is a very expensive sport. I think even Phil would be surprised to compare the balance generated by the UT basketball team by that generated by the football team. I don't know why the football myth is so persistent -- mostly, basketball balances athletic dept's budget. The only financial justification that I have ever heard that makes sense to me is that in many states, a lot of the voters never went to any college, and their favorable or unfavorable impression of their state universities is based on the performance of their athletic teams. From this favorable impression, universities hope to gain benefit in negotiations on their budgets in the legislators. Unfortunately this is not very amenable to quantitative analysis. Pat Palmer (I have been involved in some title IX concerns, and was thinking of providing a summary of the recent interpretations of the three prongs, but it is just too boring. One comment, though: the reason universities fear running afoul of title IX has nothing to do with "political correctness" as some have suggested, or even fear of bad PR; it is simply that defending themselves in this situation is incredibly expensive with lawyers, audits, etc. -- easily a million dollars in fees and staff time.)
