(07-10-2019 10:44 AM)panama Wrote:  

(07-06-2019 03:50 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  I mean. yeah---its a cautionary tale for schools that use an 80+ million dollar budget to play G5 football. Thats a category with one member.

I doesnt have to be that way. S MIss and LaTech may not be Alabama---but they field perfectly respectable teams in a number of sports---for only about 25 million a year---and they typically have a pretty darn good football team. It can be done.

Frankly, Im not one that is all that big on athletics needing to break even or deliver a profit. To me, its a student amenity and a marketing device. Both are expense items---not profit centers. I see them as the front porch of the university. I think there is value in that. So, if they lose 5, 10, or even 20 million---you can probably make a reasonable argument that they are still a benefit to the school. Once you break that 20 million mark---I think that argument gets substantially harder to make.

Here's where I am---I dont think any school should be spending 80 million on sports unless they have the ticket sales and donor base to keep the school subsidy in that 20 million or below range. A 40 million dollar athletic deficit is just too large to reasonably defend---especially when the current performance of the 2 big revenue sports is so far below expectations.

Largely correct. Large public universities generally have operating budgets of about $1B. $15M - $20M as a marketing expense isn't a big deal.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

Squandering $20m on marketing that doesn't work is a very big deal to your typical company with a $1B budget. In the private sector it would get you fired.