For those of you who get a little ticked when I comment about folks’ general lack of grasping Econ 101 concepts when it comes to college athletics, take heart — you’re not any worse off than those who get paid to run athletic departments.
If you find yourself losing your place in Schwarz’ analysis, here’s the money graf:
The answers to these questions are hard to know with any precision because what matters is not what the current athletes would have done, but what future athletes will do. And so while neither EMU nor I can know the correct answer, I know that what EMU’s accounting has assumed is wrong – the P&L statements implicitly assume ALL tuition paid by all participants in these sports will be unchanged if the sports go away, i.e., all of the athletes, full, partial, or no scholarship, will continue to attend EMU. There’s no way that’s correct. Nevertheless, the numbers show $0 tuition/room/board/book revenue that would be lost from these four sports. Indeed, the NCAA’s accounting methodology provides no way to include this revenue, so this is a systemic failure within the entire industry. This is one example of how schools all make their Hollywood blockbusters look like money losers.
And the payoff…
This very much seems, based on the numbers, like “cutting for the sake of cutting” – for the athletic department to look like it is doing its part. And futile gestures have some value sometimes – like getting a technical foul and giving up a point or two to change the dynamic of a game. But does EMU really have $300K to burn up in a show of solidarity with other departments? I’d imagine those departments will feel even worse next year when another $300K needs to be cut because, gosh, our revenue went down when all those swimmers and wrestlers stopped paying tuition.
Bottom line? Most of you could do at least a good a job as an athletic director than guys like this do.
Get The Picture 
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