(04-09-2018 09:47 PM)McKinney Wrote:  What about the subsidies needed for the service academies? Those are the most concerning in my opinion because they don't come out of the pocket of, for all intents and purposes, "willing" students but rather directly out of the pocket of taxpayers.

I say this as a big fan of Army football, a brother of a cadet, and a member of family with many active servicemembers and veterans across every branch of the military - including five grads from the Military, Naval, and Coast Guard Academies and an OCS Air Force officer. Despite that bias I have to acknowledge that the service academies are a boondoggle. At $300k+ per officer they cost four times as much per officer compared to ROTC and OCS (ROTC and OCS produce 80% of officers and to the same quality). https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...53ba2a7eaf

Surely sponsoring Division I FBS programs at three of the academies is a part of this cost. Especially when you consider since they're all G5 programs, they probably aren't making that much money (even though Army and Navy are some of the most storied football programs). Not to mention as members of the Patriot League, Army and Navy certainly aren't making any money in basketball. Air Force might be a bit better off as a member of Mountain West.

There is, IMO, a huge difference between subsidizing athletics at our service academies and doing so at civilian institutions. The service academies don't use sports to entice students to enrol. They aren't doing it to keep up with the Joneses.

Sports at the service academies are an integral part of the training of future combat leaders. Lessons about teamwork and learning to persevere in the face of adversity aren't just platitudes here. Physical conditioning of all academy students is essential to every future Lieutenant or Ensign.

And, frankly, I doubt you will find many private lounges for athletes at the academies. Or plush dorm rooms, private bowling alleys or all of the excesses we see at "high resource" universities. The subsidies the service academies provide are all ones I can live with - in fact, we can't live without them.