(07-06-2019 09:27 PM)Side Show Joe Wrote:  You are right. Large public universities can displace the costs, and we do have a larger alumni base to tap for funds.

I, like the North Texas administration, view football and basketball as marketing for the university.

The problem with this thinking is that there isn't really much evidence to support it, which makes its prevalence on campuses rather odd, given these are universities dedicated to facts, logic, etc.

For example, at your North Texas, the six years from 2005 - 2010 were absolutely abysmal in football, you guys never won more than three games in any of those years. And yet institutionally, they were years of excellent growth in enrollment, facilities, quality of students, and quality of faculty. The presence of abysmal football didn't abate that.

And since moving to CUSA, your have had up and down years, with the last two being up, but regardless, that institutional growth has continued unabated.

So growth at UNT - the kind of growth we would expect effective marketing to be the cause of - seems entirely unrelated to the UNT football team. Claims of $20m in marketing value for an Arkansas punt muff seem to be ephemeral, not connected to the real world.

And you are not alone - e.g., USF and UCF both experienced the same kind of institutional growth UNT has had, before they had football teams at all.

What seems to be the case is that rather than being a CAUSE of institutional growth, the presence of a football team backed by $20m+ in subsidies is an EFFECT of that growth: Once a school grows to a certain size and stature, the elites at the university - donors, prominent alumni, student leaders - develop the feeling that We Are Big Time Now, so we need a Big Football Team, as that is a Marker of Being a Big Time School. If we don't have Football, FBS football, then the other Texas (or Florida, or etc.) schools we see as Our Peers will Look Down on Us. So we Must Have It.

Squandering money on football is an effect of growth, not a cause. It becomes a toy in the house, or really in the porch or driveway, and at most places a very expensive one, a status symbol for the neighbors to see.

Even if the neighbors are chortling at the WannaBeism of it all.