(03-09-2020 04:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 01:29 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 10:46 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 10:38 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  "It helps attract and retain students," is usually the college response.

Thing is though, it really doesn't, at least not (ironically) for the schools that seem to soak their students the most. There was a study published last year that showed that truly elite performance in the major sports - like winning a BCS bowl game or making the final AP top 10, or making the Final 4 in men's hoops, did cause a non-trivial increase in student enrollment, which faded out after about 3 years.

IOW's, it really is a "Flutie Effect", you need to win a major bowl like the 1985 Cotton Bowl, and have the Heisman Trophy winner, to get the effect.

All other achievements, even in women's hoops and baseball, had zero impact. And of course 99% of all the schools soaking their students with athletic fees never attain the kind of success needed to gain these benefits.

The simple answer is that there are humans involved here and, at the end of the day, administrators that would dare downsize or eliminate an athletic department have more to lose *personally* than administrators that keep them going. (See UAB football.)

I'd compare it to pro sports stadiums. Every economic study under the sun shows that municipalities are on the losing end of public funding of pro sports stadiums.

So, why do governors and mayors still sign onto pro sports stadium deals? It's because despite all of the taxpayer watchdog group warnings, the simple fact of the matter is that governors and mayors have a history of getting voted *out* of office if they lose a pro sports team, whereas they get hailed as heroes when they get a pro sports team. Public opinion polls might even state that a majority of the people don't want to have public subsidies for pro sports stadiums. However, when a pro sports team actually carries out an act of leaving for another location, the politicians get hammered by the voters much more than if they had signed onto a new stadium deal.

Ultimately, "we" the public (and I mean the royal "we" as opposed to this board in particular) are to blame for this because we all talk both sides of our mouths on this issue (myself included). We claim that we don't want overspending on sports, whether college or pro... yet our TV viewing habits and actions support the notion that spectator sports are actually more valuable than ever. We claim that we don't want public funding for a pro sports stadium, but when our favorite team leaves for another city, we then blame the mayor.

Politicians *fear* that this will happen, but recent events suggest that maybe they fear too much. Voters did not punish mayors in Oakland, San Diego, or St. Louis, though no doubt the NFL did its best to spread fear of voter retaliation.