(04-10-2018 04:42 PM)McKinney Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 04:40 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 04:18 PM)McKinney Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 04:02 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Yes, and ArkSt should remember that even adjusting for inflation, the athletic dollars were really small back in the day.

For example, in 1995, not exactly ancient history, Baylor's athletic expenditures was a whopping .... $7.5 million. That's $12 million in today's money. That's the entire athletic budget, not just football.

So schools like ARK-State are squandering far more money these days than Power schools did in the past, even if the Power schools were losing money then, which hasn't been proven.

Very true Quo. This cannot be understated. For example, Alabama's legendary Coach Bear Bryant was paid a total compensation of $450,000 in his final year (1982) or ~$1.2M in 2018 dollars. Today Nick Saban is paid just north of ~$11M, or 10 times what their 6 time national championship winning coach made when adjusted for inflation.

Say what you will about how wrong it is for schools to subsidize, I think what's more frightening is the amount of money that the Power schools bring in for athletics and yet they still charge what they do for students to attend.

I see your point, but FWIW, it doesn't bother me if a school like Alabama or USC charges its students $50 for a football game ticket. That's money the student does truly voluntarily pay, unlike a mandatory athletic fee, his attendance at the university itself isn't being held hostage to it.

As a student myself once, I never really thought I had a special right to attend games above and beyond the man on the street. I felt it reasonable that i get in line to buy tickets with everyone else (not that this was needed much at USF, sadly), and if the university did carve out some kind of student section with lower ticket prices, then i was grateful for that as a bonus, not something i felt they had to do.

I meant to attend the school, not the games. Although that does apply too.