(07-02-2017 10:54 PM)Attackcoog Wrote: (07-02-2017 09:47 PM)Stugray2 Wrote: Houston athletics is one of the worst tit suckers in the American taking massive sums of tax payer money. Roughly $134M the last decade. The State of Texas higher education should look into that. Houston only drew $2,381,665 in 2006-07 and $2,308,000 in 2007-08. Obviously there was a policy change to go into deep debt after that season, and the debt has been piling up ever since. ("Investment" is the term they will use)
2016-17 $19,000,000 (est)
2015-16 $18,733,954
2014-15 $14,006,414
2013-14 $18,331,757
2012-13 $16,936,151
2011-12 $15,779,750
2010-11 $12,691,796
2009-10 $15,334,786
2008-09 $13,148,040
And yet, enrollment is way up and so is every academic measure. Is it possible that the better students want to experience life on a campus with a competitive athletic department? Again, its still completely within a students control as to how his tuition is spent. If he wants to attend a school where not one cent of his tuition goes to athletics---he can. Not really sure why your being so salty. Lets be honest here---athletics is essentially the marketing department of the university. UH for example has a 1.5 billion dollar budget. The 45 million dollar athletics budget (which is really effectively the schools primary marketing arm) is essentially being subsidized by alumni donations and ticket buyers (26 million in free money from folks that have already left the university). So, who is being subsidized is all in how you look at it. Its really a pretty ingenious way of getting much of your marketing paid for by others---while providing a popular amenity for existing students. The increasing enrollment and grad rates would tend to indicate this form of marketing is working well for UH (at least thus far it is).
1. it is a $1.3 billion dollar budget
http://www.uh.edu/news-events/stories/20...BUDGET.php
2. the argument that "this is a % of that budget" is specious at best because a very large portion of that budget is not available for athletics and funds specific things that are set expenses
3. lets look at some numbers and use actual common sense instead of nonsense and we will look at the 2014-15 fiscal year because that is when numbers are readily available for everything needed
http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/
the athletics budget for dem coogs doh
Year.....Ticket Sales.....Contributions........Rights / Licensing......Student Fees.....School Funds.....Other......Total Revenues
2015.....$4,283,816......$6,408,388.........$7,225,130...........$7,260,060............$18,733,954........$903,862.........$44,815,210
so
A. there is no "$26 million in free money from people that have left the university" there is $18,821,196 in ticket sales, contributions, rights and licensing and "other"
so that is about $8 million short of that "free money"
B. in 2014-15 the dem coogs doh budget (page 27) was $1.1632 billion
http://www.uh.edu/finance/Departments/Bu...Budget.pdf
now lets go over that budget
$173.6 was state appropriations and thus not eligible to be spent on athletics
$44.9 was HEAF/NRUF and thus again not eligible to be spent on athletics
$178.1 was contracts and grants and thus not eligible to be spent on athletics
$49.2 was endowment income and gifts and we know the athletics contributions for that year from above ($6,408,388)
so $49.2 - $6,408,388 = $42,791,612 not generated by athletics and not donated for athletics
then there is $146 million in other operating income
so we know what athletics generated with ticket sales, $4,283,816, rights/licensing $7,225,130 so the rest was not generated by athletics
so from a budget of $1.1632 billion we have a total of $573,882,666 not eligible to be used for athletics
so that leaves $589,317,334 from tuition and other monies available to subsidize athletics
and we know that in the "tuition and FEES" there is already $7,260,060 in student fees as well so we have to subtract that
so we have $582,057,274 left to take money from and subsidize athletics with
so $18,733,954 in school funds as a subsidy from $582,057,274 in money that can actually possibly be used for athletics is 3.21% of the available funds that can subsidize athletics
and while that may not seem like a large % I can guarantee if the state mandated that dem coogs doh cut their tuition income by 3% they would complain a great deal, but they will think nothing of cutting the available money from tuition by 3% and taking it away from academic needs and putting it towards athletics
4. as for the "enrollment growth" argument
lets compare other similar universities
...........2009 enrollments....2015 enrollments....gain
north Texas State 34,781...37,175.......2,394
Texas State.........30,803...37,979 ......7,176
Texas Tech..........30,097...35,546.......5,449
dem coogs doh.....37,000...42,704.......5,704
UTA...................28,085...37,008........8,923
UTEP...................20,977...23,308 .....2,331
UTD.................15,783...24,554 .........8,771
UTSA................28,955...28,787 ...... -168
so UTA and UTD that do not have football and in the case of UTD they do not even have D1-A or D1-AA athletics had the largest enrollment gains over that period of time
Texas State that had just moved up in that time period had the next largest gain and then dem coogs doh in the mega ultra fastest growing city on earth evAR barely grew their enrollment faster than Texas Tech and then UTEP and north Texas state and UTSA with an enrollment drop in spite of adding D1-A football (in large part because of increased enrollment metrics in one large jump)
so there is clearly no real validity to the argument that spending that money on "marketing" through D1-A athletics pays off in terms of enrollment
and in the case of UTD they have a higher tuition and a much smaller athletics presence and yet their enrollment has grown dramatically in a metro area with UTA also growing very fast (and with no D1-A football) and with north Texas state just up the road in Denton
but of course what UTD HAS DONE is funnel that higher tuition (the highest of any public university in Texas by a large margin) into ACADEMIC REPUTATION and their rankings in all publications reflect that
so there is clear evidence that spending on ACADEMICS pays off because Texas State has been doing the same as well and so has UTA