SB Nation surveyed schools about how much they pay for outside police security and discovered that Alabama doesn’t pay one red cent. No doubt Greg McGarity is jealous. But, pity the poor schools, man:
“[Alabama’s athletic department] is in the event management business,” athletic director Bill Battle said Wednesday at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum in New York City. “We participate in about 400 events a year. We host about 200. Sometimes we have 150,000 people come to Tuscaloosa for a football game to sit in 101,000 seats. That’s a challenge in a lot of different ways, but that’s a great thing.
“But even when you have a successful football program, our [football] business generates about 80 percent of what our mission is,” with that mission defined as being “to develop and graduate student-athletes into good people.”
“If we want to truly accomplish our mission for all 500 of our student-athletes, it takes a lot of money to do that,” Battle said. “Nobody is pocketing a lot of money. Not many [schools] are making ends meet.”
The ones that do are doing so with a vengeance, though.
Get The Picture 
“Sometimes we have 150,000 people come to Tuscaloosa for a football game to sit in 101,000 seats. That’s a challenge…”
They’re going to need a bigger Dreamland
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And I thought it was tight trying to sit down in Neyland Stadium.
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“Nobody is pocketing a lot of money.”
RIGHT. Holy cow, did that guy actually say that with a straight face? Nick Saban is pulling down how many millions of dollars this year? Are they not about to put somewhere in the neighborhood of $500K in into the pocket of their STRENGTH COACH just to keep him from coming to Georgia?! The players aren’t pocketing a lot of money. But they’re the only ones associated with the University of Alabama who aren’t.
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“At Auburn, the campus and city police forces are one.”
Definitely no conflict of interest re. football players arrests there…
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I thought it meant “one” officer.
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Between politicians and Athletic Directors it’s hard to know who can lie better.
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Is there anything over there that isn’t rigged or corrupted for Tide football?
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No.
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As an alum, this is embarrassing. We can pay $500k to Charleston Southern to come play but can’t pay the same to the Tuscaloosa PD to be there to keep order during the game (and all home games). It’s just stupid and short sighted.
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