(08-14-2018 01:45 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote: (08-13-2018 11:16 PM)Stugray2 Wrote: It's a mixed bag. I think when a program is big enough you do tend to get more institutional donors along with sports. But if don't reach that level, say and Eastern Michigan, there is pretty strong evidence of Cannibalism, that is donations to athletics drain money that might have gone to the University.
Overall it's hard to truly correlate. Almost all evidence is purely anecdotal and not systemically collected.
Perhaps the best comparisons can be found in the UC System and CSU system, where you can compare say UCLA or Cal to UC San Diego ... possibly UC Davis (not quite the same pedigree as the first three) where schools are pretty much identical except athletics. (It is already pretty clearly demonstrated that level of athletic program has zero impact on applications or admission quality for schools in either the UC or CSU system; so donations are a good thing to examine.)
Somebody (probably me knowing this board's work ethic when it comes to research) should look into those schools over the last decade.
Doing a study like that would ignore decades of sports history.
However, it's safe to say that merely fielding a team isn't good enough. You must have athletic success in a major sport.
There's plenty of evidence that winning improves your academics: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ar...mp/519846/
Where was Notre Dame academically in 1915, before Knute Rockne? My friends who are ND alums swear that ND would be worse than Marquette if it weren't for football (because the schools used to be pretty similar other than location, and Milwaukee is more attractive than South Bend). Today Notre Dame has an $11.8 billion endowment, and Marquette's is $550 million.
Then all you are doing is BSing. Telling tales we like to hear and which bear out our preconceived notions.
Athletics at one time was a great driver for publicity of schools. But is that still true today? I think not. Liberty grew like gang busters before they ever got to FBS. The UC system and Ivy League donations have nothing to do with Sports as far as anyone can tell.
In all of California, one school, San Diego State, can probably make a really strong case, and another Fresno State a much weaker case. But in a way their situations are similar to Memphis or Boise State, in that they are located in a significant urban area and the town identifies with the school. And further the school's academic chops are pretty sketchy.
For the UC system and Stanford the picture is extremely clear, that sports has always been very secondary to donors. And as the massive donations to the non Pac-12 and in some cases like UC San Diego non D-I schools demonstrate, there is ZERO impact from athletics. I very much doubt the recent growth tied especially to graduates from mainland China has anything whatsoever to do with athletics.
The same is almost certainly true at similar schools like Washington, Virginia, Duke, and North Carolina. It is certainly true that massive donation machines like those of the Ivy League, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech, MIT and CMU have nothing whatsoever to do with sports.
The picture I see is that a very small subset of schools see a worthwhile difference. And the question is for those G5 schools, is that difference as great as the annual 8 digit subsidies thrown at the programs? Memphis for example would need to see a donation increase of $11M annually (how much institutional money is transferred to keep the lights on at the athletic department) to the general fund to justify the expenses. A school like Eastern Michigan would need to raise $28M just to break even (Their entire endowment is barely $68M). But if you get $12M for transferring $11M is that any better than 90% overhead fundraising effort?
So yes, hard numbers can be had and points of value obtained, rather than vague and meaningless anecdotal BS.