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Comment by jasonwatkinspdx | Hacker News Reader

The owner of the convenience store near me played football for Stanford on a full ride. He's had to walk with a cane, or a walker on a bad day, since his 30s. It's an impediment to his job today, as he struggles to get around restocking throughout the day.

College football makes obscene amounts of money, while at the same time discarding a ton of young athletes with permanently broken bodies. The TBI stuff in particular is deeply disturbing. I heard a heartbreaking interview with a family where 3 generations are entering dementia simultaneously because the younger 2 both played college ball.

Coaches, schools, broadcasters... true fortunes being made by this industry every single day. But somehow giving the dang kids a slice of that ruins the authenticity of the league. What a pile of nonsense.

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Schools are not making fortunes off of college football. With few exceptions football programs do not pay for themselves with their revenue. I haven't looked into it but I doubt any football program paid for the stadium they use so I wouldn't be surprised if there truly was no such thing as a profitable college football program.

Where did you hear this? The first Google result shows that many schools are making fortunes off of their football programs (also it's kind of common sense based on the fact that men's football coaches get paid millions and other sports coaches get paid normal amounts)

From the linked opinion piece below [1]:

A recent N.C.A.A. study determined that only about 20 of the 1,000 or so college sports programs in the nation were profitable.

The 30 largest universities in the country each routinely generate annual revenues exceeding $100 million from sports, but according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, most of those revenues are spent covering operating expenses for the school’s athletic programs and paying tuition for their student-athletes. The majority of Division I colleges in the N.C.A.A. operate at a loss.

There is lots of money in college athletics. That money is not going to institutions to generate revenue for the institution at large. That money goes back to the athletic department and almost every college athletic program receives revenue in the form of student fees.

Here’s a quote from another piece [2]:

By far, the largest student fee is the last – the intercollegiate athletic fee – which can be upwards of 80% of the total fee amount at many institutions not in Power Five conferences.

Conventional wisdom says that intercollegiate athletics is a boon to colleges and universities; that it’s wildly profitable; attracts new students; enhances fundraising; and, boosts the university’s profile. Yet these are myths, often perpetuated by the media – and by the universities themselves.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/opinion/pay-college-athle...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2014/12/12/who-actually-fu...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/why-students-foot-the-...

So that's a little different argument, and more complex. Profit/loss is a weird thing in a non-profit.

College Football (in the Power 5, and top tier group of 5) itself is very profitable. But the money is quickly spent on the program and to fund the program and the department as a whole.

Also, some stats there include Div II, III, etc. Programs without big TV deals, licensing revenue etc. do not make money from their athletic departments. Not a shocker or really what any of this is referring to.

But for the major programs, the money from licensing, TV rights, conference revenue sharing, etc. covers the basics for women's programs and less popular sports. Then it gets dumped along with booster $ into the CFB football facilities arms race, ever growing coaching salaries, and multimillion dollar buyouts of contracts.

This isn't totally unique to not-for-profit Universities either. Executive perks in non-profits are another way to make the year-end balance out. Government programs, and corporate departments dump cash at the end of their fiscal years to avoid losing the budget the next year.

My claim was about most college sports programs and that the universities don’t profit from sports programs. Div II and Div III programs are relevant to my claim. When there is profit it gets dumped back into the athletic department. The university as a whole does not benefit in most cases. Given the mandatory fees that students pay to athletic departments, the stadiums built by taxpayer funds the argument that college sports generates lots of money for the university as a whole is wrong.

Consider this. Take away the most profitable college sports program. Will that college be forced to increase tuition to cover the loss of money for non-athletic related expenses? The answer is no.

This article suggests at least some are making quite a bit of money: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2018/09/11/college-f...

What is that article missing if your assertion is true?

My statement was, with few exceptions....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/why-students-foot-the-...

Texas A&M has over $220 million a year in revenue. Highly profitable.

Yes. Hence the with few exceptions part of my comment. Also profit is revenue - expenses. A $220 million revenue doesn’t say anything about it’s profitability.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/why-students-foot-the-...

Evert P5 school is very profitable with their TV deals. Lesser conferences should also fair very well with TV deals.

In terms of sheer numbers of schools, I guess your definition of "few exceptions" hold true. Should the majority of commuter schools, like say California State University, Sacramento, subsidize heavily in athletics? Of course not. However, your UCLA's, Michigans, and Texas A&Ms make insane amount of money, and often give money back to their university.

Those D1 schools generate insane amounts of revenue from college and that revenue, in general, goes back to the athletic programs. The university as a whole does use money from those programs to fund education. Those programs don’t pay for their stadiums. They are subsidized by student fees. And those programs that do generate great revenue (but usually not great profit) are still a minority even amongst only D1 schools.

You don’t even check your own math when you make that claim about student fees and stadiums. Stadiums costs nearly a billion to even renovate these days. Assuming a athletic fee of $2k per year at even the largest universities of 40k students. $80 million is a tiny drop in the bucket for a billion.

Since you refuse to even do a small amount of research into this, stadiums and capital expenditures are vastly funded by alumni donations. Unofficially that is the biggest metric for athletic director success.

I never claimed student fees pay for stadiums. I think you did not understand what I wrote. I claim that stadiums are built by taxpayers (at public institutions) and that expenditure is not part of the calculation of the alleged profitability of sports programs. Built by taxpayers in the form of bonding bills usually. As I understand these things.

https://www.ibtimes.com/college-football-public-universities...

The definition and notions of "profitable" in college athletics is intentionally elusive and varies wildly. Both sides abuse this obfuscation to their advantage, and the articles you link to, besides being archaic, are some of the worst abuses I've seen on this topic.

Each state, university, have different requirements on what is reported as subsidies. For example, discounting an out of state athlete's tuition may or may not be a subsidy. In some schools, all of the apparel sold with a school logo is athletics money, while in others, a percentage. And of course, private universities like Stanford, Northwestern, and the Ivys report very little.

The articles also strawman the entire argument by using student fees to fund athletics. True, some schools abuse the hell out of them. Some Division III schools have ungodly amounts of athletic fees, and the students will never see their return. However, success in athletics, and football in particular, add to the brand of the school. Anti-athletics faculty love to huff and puff about how this isn't true, but common sense and studies in business schools routinely dispute this. Boston College reported a 3x increase in enrollment the year after Doug Flutie threw his touchdown. University of Alabama's enrollment has gone way up while the acceptance rate has gone way down in Nick Saban's tenure. Even if you never attend a game of any sort in school, you will gain in the perceived value of your degree.

> I haven't looked into it but I doubt any football program paid for the stadium they use

This tells me all I need to know about your bias on this.

How does that last quote of mine show my bias? I’ve cited in other posts numerous articles talking about the lack of profitability of most college athletics. I then stated an opinion of mine and indicated that it was merely an opinion. It’s my perception that athletic programs don’t pay for the stadiums they use. Those stadiums use taxpayer money. I know this to true at FSU and at the University of Minnesota. I’m not an expert on this topic and I gave an opinion on an aspect of this issue that I admittedly didn’t have lots of information.

Do you not have opinions, impressions, thought, ideas about things you haven’t studied? Of course you do. In my case I was intellectually honest enough to let the reader distinguish between those thoughts of mine I had ready evidence for and those that I don’t.

As to your third paragraph please keep in mind my usage of with rare exceptions. Of course you can cite counter examples to the general trend of college football being a drain on resources. Also note that I’ve cited evidence to back up my beliefs and you have not. You’ve even made a reference to common sense. There are far too many examples of where intuition and common sense are wrong for this to be a legitimate basis for a strong belief.

You might want to look into it.

I did and couldn’t find any information. I do know at lest 2 major D1 programs have had their stadiums built with taxpayer money and the accounting of those programs’ profitability does not take into account the building of their stadiums. Have you looked into the issue? Do you know of any studies that show college sports programs paying for their stadiums?

I didn’t say the schools were profiting (although some are). The NCAA itself has built up $700 million in assets. Broadcasters make a ton of money off of college sports. Coaches make a ton of money.

There are a lot of people who make a lot of money off of college sports. None of them are players.

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