Will USC go after Franklin

[ValentinoRossi]

As a guy who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on college tuition for his kids, I do find the college football arms race to be offensive. Those schools with $75 million football buildings and $50 million football dorms are slapping their regular students in the face, when tuition costs keep rising and rising beyond comprehension. I'm obviously in the minority, since blowback is minimal, and I realize that most of those dollars come from private donors, but the whole state of college sports is out of whack.

It's even more obscene to realize that those over-indulgent facilities are used to recruit prima donna players who don't go to class much, so that they can eventually earn millions playing in the NFL, and get a free education and a stipend on top of it. I mean, any rational person has to look at the whole set-up and either get mad as hell or burst out laughing. It's insane.

At big football schools the athletic departments operate with completely separate budgets and funding than the rest of the university, so tuition dollars aren’t being siphoned off to fund athletics. And they make money or at least break even. Now if you think that donations to the general fund are reduced because people donate to athletics instead, you might have a point. But I suspect most people that give money only to athletics would not be donating to the general fund anyway if colleges didn’t have athletic departments.

It doesn’t seem too bad to me if you think of big time college sports as just another form of marketing. What is the value to the school’s brand for all the exposure athletics provides?

 

[Slick Manager of Champs]

As a guy who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on college tuition for his kids, I do find the college football arms race to be offensive. Those schools with $75 million football buildings and $50 million football dorms are slapping their regular students in the face, when tuition costs keep rising and rising beyond comprehension. I'm obviously in the minority, since blowback is minimal, and I realize that most of those dollars come from private donors, but the whole state of college sports is out of whack.

It's even more obscene to realize that those over-indulgent facilities are used to recruit prima donna players who don't go to class much, so that they can eventually earn millions playing in the NFL, and get a free education and a stipend on top of it. I mean, any rational person has to look at the whole set-up and either get mad as hell or burst out laughing. It's insane.

true, but it is the "front porch" for these diploma mills. Think of it as money spent on advertising the brand. No one would have heard of Alabama north of the mason dixon line if not for their football investment.

 

[pittdoc57]

I understand that, but they use their exposure to attract regular out of state students that pay full freight in order to balance the academic budget. It's arcane logic. They don't need to advertise to their own in-state kids.

 

[MarshallGoldberg]

At big football schools the athletic departments operate with completely separate budgets and funding than the rest of the university, so tuition dollars aren’t being siphoned off to fund athletics

Pitt still subsidizes/loses money on athletics, as does every program in the MAC, Sun Belt, etc. The system does work for Florida though, sure.