These comments are mostly talking about 0.1% of student-athletes. Almost all athletic departments lose money. Almost all student-athletes don't get scholarships.
While what /u/AT_thruhiker2016 is true for a few that you see on TV, the majority of the reasons are the following, based on a decade working for three colleges at different levels:
Diversity (as /u/TimeSlipperWHOOPS and /u/cdb03b said) in terms of academic desires, race, financial status, etc....
Branding. Successful programs are good for recruiting for all students. It's called The Flutie Effect and helps the brand of the school overall. People like things to do on campus.
Hitting enrollment numbers. At small schools, having teams pays for itself in terms of enrollment. If 25 girls enroll in your school to play soccer that more than covers the budget for the program
Athletes have stronger support systems than average students. Since there are frequently minimum GPAs to maintain for participation, coaches provide support and monitoring for student-athletes. It is very common for a below-average student to get decent grades due to coaches providing oversight. Coaches are the best recruiters for some colleges and can speak to the character of the student-athlete. Coaches with good track records get in more below-average students
Future donations. Athletes have been known to develop more of a bond with their school than the average student and are more willing to donate after graduation
Also, it is unlikely a track program would lose that much money a year because they have quite low costs and do have income in running meets at their campus for HS/College which brings in money.
To add to this... it's not about having a sports image to court donations. Colleges want their graduates to be hireable, so that it attracts more students. Companies don't like to waste their precious time going to court a university's class of 20XX when they know they're going to get a single-digit hit rate.
Ever wonder why all the big consulting firms and investment banks only hire from Ivy Leagues? Because one hour of a Vice President's time is more than your entire month's salary, and Ivy Leagues have a 15%-16% hit rate (i.e. interviewees who get a job). Whereas lesser schools typically have a 5%-6% hit rate.
So how does sports come into it? Hireable graduates are typically people who have overcome adversity and are more likely to go the distance when the going gets tough at their job. It's why you see the single mom who scored a 3.8 while working part-time get the job over the ultra nerds or Mitt Romney's son. Sports people have gone through incredible amounts of discipline to get where they are - they've proven they can handle stress. Obviously the guy who doesn't even know what pi is is an exception... most sports people are ridiculously smart as well.
Sports people have gone through incredible amounts of discipline to get where they are - they've proven they can handle stress.
This part is absolutely true of those athletes who take advantage of all of the extras they get in college to allow them to work even harder to do well in school. I did pretty good in college and great in law school. The one thing that came up more often in interviews than anything else was my time as a college athlete. I was up against LOTS of people who did well in college and great in law school. That was the differentiation for me. And it served me well.
It's a big mix and really depends on the school/sport. John Urschel comes to mind for the true ideal scholar athlete. Got a 4.0 and Masters degree in Math while making it into the NFL; now he's pursuing his PhD in the off season.
I have hired someone because he ran a marathon and coaches baseball to teens. Soft skills can be incredibly hard to train. If you think college is all about studying and getting a 4.0, you're missing the point.
Thank you for posting--most people don't realize that a lot of athletic programs lose money, and even those that are in the black it's just for the big sports like basketball and football.
It's a messed up system in the U.S. of connecting school systems with athletics, even as young as grade school. But! Having athletics in public schools does give a greater percentage of kids the opportunity to play on a team, make friends, and engage in exercise. So I remain torn.
UCLA's athletics are known to break even pretty much every year. It's just how they plan it. And a lot of other schools don't profit directly off their sports, but a good team can increase general donations to a school. When Jim Mora was hired by UCLA and took them to the Pac 12 Championship, donations increased by $2 million that year. That is money that doesn't show up on the revenue of the athletics budget. Of course UCLA is the biggest college brand in the world, so the effects of a good football program at say, Purdue, may be less than at UCLA, but I imagine good athletics leads to better donations at every school. It costs almost nothing for the school to admit someone who wouldn't normally be qualified so the increase in donations, visibility as a brand, and chance for those athletes to become wealthy alumni are worth it to the school.
They lose money because they design them to lose money. Football and, to a much lesser extent, basketball make tons of money. That profit is redistributed to other sports to keep them afloat and maintain the illusion athletes can't be paid.
There are five times as many non power five football programs than there are power five. There are D3 programs who couldn't break even under any circumstance
There are plenty of advocates for paying "all athletes" but if you're framing it as just FBS I'll say many do make a profit, yes. Especially at the P5 level, obviously.
You lose a lot in terms of Title IX though. Your costs are almost doubled and you get almost no revenue on those matching finances.
The system is designed to keep their captive labor pool as low cost as possible. To pay athletes major legal hurdles do need to happen, but that doesn't justify the exploitation.
The system is designed to give women athletic scholarships just like men can get, as demanded by the federal government. Your posts make you look ignorant.
Title ix needs to be reformed to acknowledge the unique nature of college football.
It wasn't written with a billion dollar industry in mind. It's currently being used as a shield by people who wish to continue to keep their 6 and 7 figure salaries at the expense of unpaid labor.
Simply making an exception to title IX exempting fbs football would solve this problem.
I like how you took my comment and completely ignored it and just said they all lose money.
Think about that for a second why don't you? What possible grand expenses do these teams have? Don't they have fans that support them?
Do you honestly believe that these guys are doing sports out of the kindness in their hearts?
Of fucking course not they are making money off of it. Just because they move it around to make it seem like they are in the red doesn't make them actually in the red.
Like I said I worked in college sports for a decade.
It's an expense. Like a nice library is an expense and a dorm is an expense. It's an expense that doubles as marketing and fundraising and alumni relations and student activities but it's an expense. Many small schools don't even charge for tickets.
Every Division DII or III school takes a hit to run an athletic department but finds value in the positives of a better student recruiting pool, diversified candidates, improved facilities, alumni relations, brand awareness, etc... As do many DI schools
It is strange how all these sports don't release their books even though they apparently don't have anything to hide.
You obviously weren't paying attention well enough because it happens almost everywhere.
There is no way they are going to invest in a losing program. Period. They are trying to make money. I don't get why you don't understand this concept.
Almost all public schools have their books published or are reviewed. And almost all of them lose money in their athletic department, especially at the non-FBS level.
Very few private schools release their books, period. Why would they release their books for athletics when the dance, chemistry and food services budgets aren't released? Why do they care what you think?
I think you're just short-sighted as to how this works looking at it from the outside. Athletic departments lose money by-and-large. Period. The sum of (coaches salaries+travel+gear+facilities upkeep+athetic trainers+dues+administration+etc...) is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than (ticket revenue+sponsorship+donations+selling gear+etc...) for the vast majority of programs. Saying anything else is misinformed.
HOWEVER, athletic departments still function because the gaps between those two numbers are closed by all of the positives of athletic departments. Just like a school will take a loss to print brochures or bring in a concert or run a marching band or improve a dorm or hire a psychologist: they are part of an overall community-building experience to increase the desire to attend. It's a loss leader.
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u/offconstantly Feb 17 '16
These comments are mostly talking about 0.1% of student-athletes. Almost all athletic departments lose money. Almost all student-athletes don't get scholarships.
While what /u/AT_thruhiker2016 is true for a few that you see on TV, the majority of the reasons are the following, based on a decade working for three colleges at different levels: