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Comment by hyperbovine | Hacker News Reader

Why in God’s name should an institution of higher learning have a nine-figure athletics budget? That is just pure lunacy. The NCAA represents everything that is sleazy and wrong with the relationship between colleges and athletic programs, that is why everyone hates them. When the reckoning finally comes, and it will, we will look back upon this period and marvel.

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Why shouldn't they, exactly?

As earlier stated, they supporting multiple programs with multiple facilities, scholarships, Title IX, coaches, strength programs, trainers/medical support, practice facilities, etc.

Of all of those programs, at most schools only 1 or 2 actually MAKE money. At Clemson, the football program supports EVERY other scholarship sport that competes at the D1A level.

Is the profit you’re counting at Clemson including stadium outlays?

As in the cost of building/improving the stadium? Those are usually multi-year projects so I'm not sure how it figures in to the accounting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Stadium_(Clemson)#Con...

Yes, that’s what I mean. Pointing that out because athletic programs are sometimes “profitable” because they bill the school for stadiums. My alma matter charges a yearly fee straight to the students for their new football stadium.

As long as I’ve been getting donation requests, the school has touted its pride in paying for everything with fundraising in terms of facility improvements.

Again, what is the purpose of our universities spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year managing multiple athletic facilities, coaches, strength programs, trainers/medical support, practice facilities, etc.? How is that at all related to their core mission of research and educating young adults? If we as a society think that we should be devoting those sorts of resources to running what is essentially a shadow professional sports system for unpaid athletes, fine. But let's dispense with the fiction that this is somehow aligned with the goal of higher education.

Do you see a purpose to the non-revenue sports?

It sure would make for a more interesting discussion if you'd actually respond to any of my questions, rather than just tossing out another one of your own. Anyways, I'm all for the scholar-athlete ideal provided there's balance between the two. Many sports on campus seem to do a reasonable job of that; off the top of my head, that would include track, tennis, lacrosse, soccer, wrestling, crew, baseball, etc. But the "big money" sports (football & basketball) are a complete farce on the scholastic side -- ask anyone at an athletic powerhouse who has had a class with or taught these students if you don't believe me. The fact that these sports subsidize all the rest is not a compelling argument for their continued existence. If we desire to have student athletics on campus we should be prepared to finance it in the same way that we do research and teaching, through tuition and government aid -- not by running exploitative minor-leagues-in-disguise for the NFL and NBA.

The solution to that is to actually enforce the academic requirements. Clemson actually tried this in the mid-2000s with an academic review committee called (AARC) who would tell the coaches if they didn’t think a potential recruit could succeed on his own academically and disallow them from recruiting him. This all blew up when a top wide receiver prospect who we weren’t allowed to recruit turned around and signed with UNC, who was supposed to be a higher rated academic school. Years later we found out how much academic fraud was happening there and it made more sense.

IMO that stuff should be heavily policed to the point that doing so jeopardizes accreditation.

Fans of the school will turn out to watch walkons playing as long as the field is level with all of the other teams.

One of the reasons Dabo was hired is because he understood that Clemson’s administration didn’t want to go back to the win-at-all-cost mentality of the 80s and he was actually the staff member under Tommy Bowden who attended all of those AARC reviews.

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