(05-10-2013 07:52 PM)JRsec Wrote: (05-10-2013 05:59 PM)Wedge Wrote: (05-10-2013 05:27 PM)JRsec Wrote: And there was a thread around here just a few days ago questioning the profitability of FBS football programs? Do you really think they would be the highest paid persons in 27 states if the programs weren't profitable?
In many places, to call the program "profitable" you have to count the money donated by boosters as revenue. Some athletic departments count the money collected from "student activity fees" as revenue. (See the USA Today report on college athletic finances for several examples.)
That's different, obviously, from the sense in which NFL franchises are profitable.
Student fees are why they can buy their football tickets for $5 a piece or $10 in some places. So they are in essence a subsidy for both the Athletic Department and for the student who might otherwise have to buy some of the $70 & $80 tickets at full price.
As for boosters they give more when you win. So counting on that is probably a touch unrealistic.
Not many students go to the games. A public school with 40,000 students might have 5,000 football tickets available, but every student pays the fees. Of course if it's a school that uses student fees to subsidize football, they probably don't have 50,000-plus season ticket holders anyway, and maybe they don't cap the number of student tickets. But even then, most students don't go to the games.
And they do budget for donations, and report them as revenue.
Example from that USA Today database,
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/co...54955804/1
For 2011, UCF reported revenue of about $42.8 million, broken down in the chart as follows:
Ticket sales $5.2 million
Student fees $18.8 million
School funds $2.9 million
Contributions $6.4 million
Rights/licensing $8.2 million
Other revenue $1.3 million
NFL teams don't have accounting line items for "student fees", "school funds", or "contributions".