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Comment by joe5150 | Hacker News Reader

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joe5150·

Also being dropped are MS and PhD programs in math.

https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/62ea2c4f-99bd-431d-9e97-7199...

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The institution is facing a $40+ million deficit. It isn’t clear if athletic programs will be affected.

WVU is about to become the world's first vocational school with a D-1 football program.

I suspect they could put a big dent in their $40 million deficit simply by wiping out their football program.

The head coach gets paid $4 million per year. Extrapolate that to the lackeys and you could probably wipe out almost half of the deficit.

Aren't most of these athletic programs actually earning money for the universities? At least if they are well-run, which probably isn't the case here.

Most of the men's football and basketball programs revenue covers the cost for all the other sports and typically have some leftover for the university.

It's bifurcated. The programs in conferences with big TV deals earn money, smaller schools are probably spending money on athletics.

Athletics is revenue positive for WVU:

> WVU produced $102,684,423 in revenue, which was a decrease from the $110.5 million produced by the department the previous year. However, it was still more than enough to cover the program’s $91,807,281 in expenses.

https://wvmetronews.com/2019/08/12/west-virginia-ranked-37th...

Football isn't broken out here, but it generally subsidizes other sports, so if you wipe out the football program, you aren't going to help the deficit.

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