Well, for some schools it might be.
A newly released NCAA report shows that just 14 of the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision schools made money from campus athletics in the 2009 fiscal year, down from 25 the year before.
I don’t know about you, but I suspect that raising money to pay college athletes from state revenues or increased student athletic fees isn’t an idea which time has come.
Get The Picture 
Similar to the Playoff debate, people who support paying players don’t want to consider the long-term consequences of their position.
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Or the financial realities of the situation. Sure you can make the numbers work if you are only paying the top football players but no way that survives a myriad of legal challenges. So you are stuck with paying every scholarship student athlete.
So simplistic: 85 + 13 (football and basketball) x 2 (Title IX) = ~200 Per School
200 x 7.25 (Fed minimum wage) x 20 (hours per week) x 24 (6 months/year) = ~ 700,000 per school
700,000 x 120 (BCS schools) = 84 Million
All those numbers are a bare minimum, and would assume that an extra $3500 makes any difference to the athletes it would be aimed at. Reality is you would need 2-3x that. So yeah, a school like Georgia could pay their scholarship athletes, the vast majority of other schools could not.
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I think to give them some ‘walking around money’ is ok… they can’t have jobs after all.. but in terms of paying them, I have to agree with Prov.. bad, bad idea.
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What a red herring!
“If you start splitting that up between 30 or 40 sports, you start losing money.”
I’m not shedding a tear if Western Carolina University loses its cross country, golf, softball, tennis, track & field teams.
Some college sports teams just don’t have economic justification. So their justification has to be centered around mushy things like student life or community participation.
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I’m not shedding a tear if Western Carolina University loses its cross country, golf, softball, tennis, track & field teams.
I bet the kids and parents of those kids who are on scholarship to play said sports would be shedding a few tears if they were cut. I’m not a big fan of the sports you mention either but I wouldn’t complain in the least if one of my kids were on scholarship for one of those sports.
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What about the parents of kids who aren’t on a scholly and are paying student fees to support non revenue sports?
So some kid is pretty good at playing golf, I have to pay fees to support his hobby and college education?
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Yes and this is why:
First they came for the golfers, and I didn’t speak up because the country clubs of America are already too crowded and have too many assistant golf pros as part of overhead;
Then they came for the synchronized swimmers, and I didn’t speak up because who cares about swimmers unless they are speed swimmers;
Next they came for the hammer throwers but left them alone because they were too big and I didn’t speak up because that made sense to me;
So they decided to go for the cross-country runners, and I didn’t speak up because they are small and wiry;
Then they came for me, a fairweather (10.5+ wins/year and at least the Mendoza Line v. Florida) college football fan, and U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch wasn’t there to speak up for me because he had already moved my team’s cheese by redistributing it to the great State of Utah…
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What about the parents of kids who aren’t on a scholly and are paying student fees to support non revenue sports?
I may be wrong but do student fees not benefit all students in some way?
So some kid is pretty good at playing golf, I have to pay fees to support his hobby and college education?
For a kid to get a scholarship for golf he/she is better than “pretty good” and it’s more than a hobby. And really how much are you contributing directly to his/her education? Are there not other students contributing to your education? How much do you contribute to a football players education?
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If there are only 14 FBS schools showing a profit- how does anyone expect schools to pay kids? This isn’t our government ….FBS schools can’t spend more than they make can they ? Senator where does UGA stack up against the 14 that stayed profitable? I’ve looked but can only find 2008-2009 from the Orlando Sentinel. And finally, how does Tennessee make it into the list of 14 profitable schools? Is there anyone that has left the Vol program that isn’t still drawing a paycheck?
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Two things here.
1.) This study covers the revenue and expenses for the TOTAL athletic departments of each university
2.) UGA typically has one of the most profitable athletic departments in the nation.
I think many of the top SEC athletic programs make money.
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+1
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1) Since when are “campus athletics” supposed to bring in money? The study seems to include gym classes, intramural sports, etc., not just competition between schools.
2) Are football players responsible for supporting all other college athletics? That seems pretty unfair to me. The ‘study’ lumps football, which brings in substantial amounts of money, in with other sports & ‘activities’ which have negative cash flow. The study said schools without football did worse.
3) Of course paying the players even a small stipend is deemed impossible. All the money they earn is syphoned off by others, for other purposes. If cfb players were to walk-off in unison and not return until some form of payment is realized, you can be assured funds to pay them would be ‘discovered’ damn quick.
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A free college education sounds like paying the Athletes to me. Anybody paid for a college education lately?. Plus I think a degree from UGA is better than having a little money in the bank.
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