Sports programs at university pay for themselves. They pay for themselves because people buy tickets to games, which they do to see exceptional athletes.
I don't see why this even matters (besides the fact that it's not really true except for the biggest sports at some of the biggest sport schools).
The debate is over whether it's fair that some students get the benefits that come with being an Ivy League grad without having the academic prowess to otherwise be admitted. Whether or not they are able to cover their costs is immaterial to that discussion.
I actually heard someone else make a similar argument for children of big donors, i.e. that schools rely on those big donors for their missions. And I'm like "You're just arguing that you're cool with nearly all forms of corruption and bribery as long as the money is put to a good use."
In both athletics and the kids of rich donors cases, I'd be happy to defend that being a bad trade-off. The networking value of the rich kids going to the same university as me far outweighs the slight increase in average academic prowess of the university (emphasis on slight: remember, these are students who ranked below every other student in the merit-based application pool).
Athletics is a smaller effect size than the rich kids, but at the end of the day by providing very valuable labor to the university for approximately free, they completely pay for the sports programs (some of which the merit-admitted enjoyed, such as having a very large gym open 24 hours a day), in addition to feeding money back into the university, subsidizing everyone else's education. Couple that with the fact that these students are disproportionately NOT taking up seats in the most competitive programs, and it's still a net positive for the student body.
Which is perhaps exploitative of the student athletes, who should receive more of a cut of that the revenue they produce.
> they completely pay for the sports programs (some of which the merit-admitted enjoyed, such as having a very large gym open 24 hours a day)
Is that universal though? Not all schools’ sports programs do as well, and isn’t it a wasteful distraction for colleges to be spending tens of millions on stadiums and scoreboards instead of academics? It just seems like another example of excess infecting an institution of learning.
Obviously campus sports is an age old tradition. But the amount of excess just feels like a phenomenon orthogonal to its original role. If schools are going to be lavishly investing in school sports, why not also school music scenes, school art galleries, school esports, school drag car racing, basically taking any competitive, prestige-driven, money-making aspect of society and stuffing it into an academic setting? And then optimizing for admittees who can fulfill those lucrative roles?
Source: look at databases like https://www.sportico.com/business/commerce/2021/college-spor...
However, athletic programs are still given tremendous emphasis by schools because success in sports is effective in attracting donors. Whatever administrators say, college athletics is not at all about building character. It's about drawing money.
Then spin them out as a sports club, owned by the university. Don't waste the athlete's times with classes, and don't waste class space with athletes that can't cut it.
(The reason that doesn't happen is because the athletes will actually start asking for a share of the billions of dollars earned by the club.)