(04-08-2018 03:00 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 02:52 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 11:37 AM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 11:15 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  http://www.newsrecord.org/news/soaring-s...06336.html

Cincinnati's student newspaper provided some excellent research into the AAC's athletic subsidies from the student body at each school. Between 2014 and 2017, Cincinnati's athletic department’s deficit totaled almost $102 million — a 33 percent increase over the prior four years.

As high as each student's athletic subsidy was at Cincinnati ($1,238), UConn's was the highest ($1,784). UCF and USF had some of the lowest in the AAC (only a little bit over $100). For UC, it is estimated that athletic fees are rising 13 percent faster than the growth of tuition.

For the OBE programs in UC and UConn, it is pivotal, absolutely pivotal, that the next AAC contract is much more lucrative than the paltry $1.7 million it currently gets from ESPN - especially with the war chest drying up from the Big East severance ending. The rate of these school's athletic subsidy spending in order to play catch up is not only not sustainable, but it is arguably irresponsible to continue spending this amount on athletics while footing the bill to the students. It is very wrong to force even more debt to college students for the potential of "big time" college athletics.

It would be interesting to see if students had the option of paying for these athletic fees, what the percentage would be if they opted into paying them.

No one is forced to attend UC or any AAC school. So the fees are optional for all AAC students and they are opting in at a rate of 100%.

That is a strange way to look at it, because the student should not have his or her valid educational program options held hostage to a dumb athletic fee.

There are very few if any services that are not held "hostage" to some fee or built-in cost that the buyer may or may not prefer be there. If you consider sales taxes, virtually every transaction by definition is subsizing other programs that the buyer may not ever use or even support.

College is not different from the primary public education systems across the nation. Millions of dollars are spent on athletics in every school district---even though most middle and high schools students will never play a single sport. Those that have interests in the sciences still subsidize band, cheerleading, wresting, choir, and theatre, ect. Nothing new here.

Huh? High school kids don't pay a fee to fund the football or basketball teams. That funding comes from the school district. So the athletic fees at college are totally different.

Second, in high school, the regular students aren't paying fees to fund "scholarships" for the athletes. They aren't being asked to pay for their own tuition, PLUS pay a fee on top to help defray the cost of an athlete's tuition. Think about how dumb and unfair that is.

If college students are paying a fee to fund intramural athletics on campus, that is appropriate, as it provides a recreational benefit every student can participate in if they want to. Of course, those fees are nothing compared to the fees charged to fund the school's intercollegiate sports teams.