There's a lot of good data here. Haven't looked closely into all of it, but I noted that Ohio's student subsidies DROPPED from the previous year to the latest year of reporting. And Ohio spends less than any other team in the MAC (except Kent St.) on average student fees toward athletics.


I know there is a lot of factors that drive higher expenses for athletics, but the top really has to be coaching salaries. Given the high (and I mean high) college coaching salaries at big schools, the smaller schools are trying to stay on pace, but there's no way. These big schools/coaches are really skewing the playing field with salaries.

EDIT: Fellas, I'm not gonna lie. When you look at numbers like this, it doesn't bode well for mid-major sports. Ohio does a really nice job keeping costs in check, but it still can be tough to defend. As economic situations tighten, it becomes more difficult to justify spending this much on athletics without a great return. Not factored into any of this are the economic impacts of local games, which I'm sure are harder to justify given attendance issues.

Edit: I think what you are saying is that OU makes a profit on tuition, room and board, so the cost of that to scholarship athletes is not a true cost. That's a valid point. However, a counterpoint could be that those 346 scholarship athletes could be 346 full-revenue students. I'm not making that case, I'm just looking at both sides here and how the numbers would look to bean counters.

Edit: I think what you are saying is that OU makes a profit on tuition, room and board, so the cost of that to scholarship athletes is not a true cost. That's a valid point. However, a counterpoint could be that those 346 scholarship athletes could be 346 full-revenue students. I'm not making that case, I'm just looking at both sides here and how the numbers would look to bean counters. [/QUOTE]
The counterpoint really isn't completely valid, though. What percentage of Ohio's students are full-pay? Many of them would be on financial aid, too. In any case, I removed the scholarships from the fees, and the fee portion/student excluding the scholarships looks like:
Wright State $401
Ohio $443
Kent $445
YSU $546
UC $567
Cleveland St $568
BGSU $587
Toledo $680
Miami $723
Akron $896

As I look at the data, it raises lots of questions. First, what portion of the atheletic department budget is for the actual teams, and what portion goes to things that can be used by all students? For example, the IPF is a split use facility. Is only the portion of the IPF budget that is related to it's use by teams included in the Athletic department budget?

Next, let's look at a couple sub-lists. First, Ticket revenue:
UC $7,420,821
Toledo $1,973,602
BGSU $1,941,787
Ohio $1,181,793
Miami $1,143,399
Akron $968,083
Kent $915,201
YSU $504,442
Wright St $320,198
Cleveland St $114,648

It's obvious why UC is at the top, and Wright State and Cleveland State are at the bottom, with YSU next. Among the MAC teams, why are Toldedo and BGSU so much higher than the others? Other than those two, Ohio is doing pretty well, but can Ohio learn something from BG and Toledo? Considering that Ohio leads the conference in attendance, why is the dollar revenue down so close to everyone else?

Next, let's look at the piece of the pie not listed, and call it "revenue from other sources". Those sources could be concessions, licensing revenue, TV revenue, bowls, parking revenue, etc.

UC $24,766,867
Ohio $9,264,723
Kent $8,541,390
Miami $7,678,821
Toledo $7,155,507
Akron $6,317,226
BGSU $3,737,017
YSU $3,578,715
Wright St $3,389,106
Cleveland St $1,286,800

Here Ohio is king of the MAC, and at the other extreme, BG is doing horribly here.

[QUOTE=OUPride]... And at the same time that subsidy money could be put into money for student and/or faculty recruitment. What would move Ohio forward as a university better? ...

Do the math on our "ticket revenue" and see what we made per game. That is a tad troubling. Especially that our ticket revenue is only $213K larger than Akron's ticket revenue.

I think this is the right question. I wish Americans didn't put so much emphasis on sports, but they do. In today's environment, I think that it is probably unfortunately true that the emphasis on Sports would move Ohio forward as a University better. For example, consider the endowment growth at Ohio. It seems indisputable that the growth was much higher in the last decade than previously.

For another data point, here's an exercise someone could undertake, if they have time. Take the US News ranking of colleges, and sort them based on the level of support they have for sports. What is the average ranking of the 65 P5 teams? What is the average ranking of the G5 teams? What is the average ranking of FCS teams? What is the average ranking of teams that have Division I basketball, but not football? What is the average ranking of teams that are not Division I in either sport? I think I can guess that there are some super-elite schools without Division 1 sports that do fine (Ivy league, MIT, U. Chicago, Claremont, etc), but that on the whole P5 schools rank higher than G5 schools, who rank higher than FCS schools, who rank higher than Division 2 schools.

We don't have an answer for it either. Season ticket sales and prices have probably peaked. All we can do is take that 40ppg offense and steamroll the competition. Put our hope on the best team in the country.

Actually, that's no longer true. With the USO reforms under Strickland/Fingerhut, there are now three state revenue streams for public universities. The instructional subsidy stays the same, as it has since the sixties, and is equal for all universities. The biennial capital appropriations bill is usually fairly equitable. OSU gets the most, but not out of line with their student population and overall budget compared to other universities. What's new is the performance based funding. This primarily is based on retention and graduation rates. Right now, only OSU and Miami are benefiting from this.

I'd argue that you're putting the cart before the horse. When the P5 conferences were formed, they were formed among schools that were the flagships, land-grants and AAU type schools. Those schools were destined to be among the top publics 50 or 60 years down the road when college ranking came into vogue. OSU was AAU in 1916. It wasn't a real national power in football until the 30s. I don't think you can separate the two and find a causality occurring.

That's a fair argument, but you can compensate for any bias from that. Instead of looking at the absolute ranking, take the earliest Ranking, and compare that to the current one. Which have moved up most? P5? G5? FCS? Division II? Division III? No sports? Which have moved down?