I may be in a minority on here about this, but I think the fee is too high for students. Alums need to do more to reduce the deficits in athletics. Just saying. This article at least tries to make a case for the subsidies by quoting some university people.

As I've said before, the percentage of MAC schools' athletic budgets coming from student fees is the biggest vulnerability of the athletic programs. It's very sensitive politically whether we support this use of student fees or not. Is it a house of cards? Time will tell. Meanwhile, we all need to step up private giving if we can.

This is pretty damning: "Asked how much athletics played a part in choosing a MAC school, 73 percent of respondents said it was unimportant or extremely unimportant."

It doesn't seem like a sustainable path unless interest increases, costs stabilize and/or donations rise considerably.

I've said it elsewhere but it bears repeating that we as a fan base donate well under $1 million annually to athletics. If you love it, support it.

That is a very interesting question. A few years back I saw those figures and a significant portion of the unrestricted "giving" went to operations of the obc. Sport specific giving does't give you seat benefits. I'll see if I can find that chart.

I did though just find this from the 2014-2015 annual report. The obc raised $587,000 during the period that that report covers according to the report.

I can't shoot the messenger on this one, Vedder raises some good points. The MAC will NEVER win an arm's race with the Power 5's of the world. The student fees will always be a necessity and in today's world will probably only continue to increase questioning the viability of sustaining such increases.

I also question the UT Athletic Director O'Brien's comments that sports are a quite popular "social" aspect on campus. Overall student attendance(lack of) through-out the MAC speaks otherwise.

I assume you are excluding the millions of dollars donated to build the IPF and millions more in giving towards the Academic Center in your calculation that annual giving to athletics is "well under" $1 mil?

They are still bought by donations by fans to athletics. The large donations by lead givers and others are support for athletics regardless if you count them as such or not. Doesn't make any sense to do otherwise.

And as I recall, some of future expenses are raised as part of the project,

Ok, so edit your original post to state A donation to build a new building, even if it is something you and faculty senate might not think is a good cause, is still a donation to athletics.

If you want to make an argument that we don't donate enough to help alleviate the burden of student fees, fine. State that too large of a % of our donor's money is going to capital projects. Our donors are averaging "well OVER" $1 million towards Ohio athletics annually.

In the case of the IPF ,virtually all of the money to build it came from private donations.

But,according to an article in The Post a while back,the IPF is used, percentage wise,primarily by other then varsity teams,including ROTC and the 110.

If they are used primarily by other then varsity teams,I don't know why would anyone have a problem with the University handling maintenance costs.

By old days I mean that the state changed the law as to how much money you had to actually have in hand before moving forward with a building project. As someone already stated, the indoor facility is truly a multi-purpose facility run by student life which benefits all students and the community.

It's more than the administration and faculty opinion on athletics. The student opinion is very important. I remember a few years back Schaus made a presentation to the Student Senate on student fees. The response by the student body was they were concerned about the subsidy level but thought there is hope in the future of reducing the subsidy percentage which Ohio has done by not increasing the budget, while adding revenues and more students to reduce the per student subsidy. At EMU the student senate voted for a resolution to drop football. Its the administration that is standing in the way from making a move on it. One recession and football could be done at a school in a bad financial position.

No doubt sports help market the institution. The question is just whether a public academic institution should be making this level of investment in a single type of marketing, not to mention how effective that marketing actually is. How do we know if we are getting a sufficient return on our marketing investment? Would other marketing tools be equally or more effective at a lesser cost?

Sports appeal to a certain subset of the population. Playing on ESPN is great, but it doesn't reach everyone (or even most of the people) that the university should be marketing itself to. And even then, while sports fans are likely to be more aware of the Ohio brand, in most cases they'll still view us as a secondary program compared to the more established, power conference schools.

At the end of the day, we all love Ohio athletics. But Ohio athletics, as currently constituted, isn't anywhere near being financially self-supporting without significant, compulsory subsidies from the student population. So pretty much everyone here is free-riding, to some extent, on the fees that the institution's current students are subjected to.

Reasonable minds can differ on the acceptability of that, but to suggest that anyone who questions the sustainability or appropriateness of OU's current athletic funding model doesn't "get it" is pretty close-minded.