WOW! That's a lot of money being spent in Southeastern Ohio.

"No. 5 - Ohio University

Total expenses: $32,621,410

Ticket revenue: $1,181,793

Contributions: $2,084,887

Subsidy from student fees or other non-athletic school sources: $20,090,007. This subsidy, which accounts for 62 percent of athletic expenses, amounts to $736 a year per student on campus."

These numbers don't add up. Taking Ohio as an example, they spend $32,621,410 on sports. This money comes from:
Fees: $20,090,007
Tickets: $1,181,793
Contributions: $2,084,887

That leaves $9,264,723 unaccounted for. Where does this money come from? Some ot it is presumably from money games. Another part is probably TV revenue. Perhaps another source is concession revenue? Still I can't believe those three account to >$9 million.

Listing the ten schools based on fee/student, it is:
Wright State $611
Kent $701
Ohio $736
Cleveland St $796
UC $870
YSU $991
BGSU $1011
Toledo $1167
Akron $1269
Miami $1332

Ah, yes, Cleveland.com's annual "No other state school but OSU should have an intercollegiate athletics program" story. Tiresome.

Per the current OHIO Admissions prospective student brochure: Estimated Total Annual Expense per student per year- $24,508

*That includes tuition, room and meal plan, but excludes any books/supplies/transportation/all other elective related costs.

Student Fee Directed to ICA- $736, precisely 3% of cost of attendance

Of the $736, the most significant line item cost in that fee is tuition, room and board for scholarship athletes, all of which are revenue streams to the University.

I never lose sleep over this expense, as I likely paid as much if not more as a percentage to subsidize ICA in my era due to more sports/student athletes in the '80's and the very limited offsetting revenues compared to the modern era

By extension, nor do I find this onerous, especially when most here complain about the increasing ticket cost and related seat licenses for paying customers.

If you find it onerous, then either put up, shut up or lobby the Trustees to get OHIO to drop ICA.

And here is a good challenge match to all you Bobcat fans: if you value OHIO Athletics as much as or more than you did when you were a student, then why don't you try to spend at least $736 per year on supporting the programs, if not more.

Students don't have a choice in paying this fee aside from attending a college that doesn't have a larger fee/subsidy, which as you can see is not easy, so shouldn't you choose to selectively spend at least as much as they do?

This is the right answer. 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? 18M a year hoping for the magical Flutie Effect to grace our campus for two or three years or 18M a year into scholarships and endowed faculty chairs?

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.


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.

The endowment growth happened to be timing of a few large gifts to the university that occurred during the last campaign. Growth from sports correlation is tied to having a big national player. UC has had its fair share in basketball over the years and a lot of Top 25 rankings. Michael Vick at Virginia Tech and Randy Moss at Marshall. Ohio can have guys drafted in the 3rd, 2nd or 1st round even but it won't be notable unless the guy was talked about on ESPN all week.

Best team in the "country"? Are you feeling o.k.?

That change in funding formula was made right after OSU had firmly established itself as a competitive admissions school. They wouldn't have allowed it in the 80's I'm sure.

Land grants and the significant players at the time. Most G5 developed later in football, moving up as enrollments increased. Ohio in 1985 had the most under developed football program in the MAC.

Interesting but hard to do. I think the USN rankings for a long time were just the top 50 schools with the rest grouped into tiers 2 through 4 and the schools listed alphabetically within a tier. Within the last 15 years or so, you could look to see if any G5 or low P5 school has had a marked improvement that coincided with sustained football or basketball success.

At the end of the day though, if one justifies athletic subsidies based on some hoped for effect on the academic side of the university, I think it's a highly dubious argument since we're debating whether only a few schools have seen any fundamental Flutie Effect and for overwhelming number of schools it's been a clear money pit. It's a much more intellectually honest position to just say, I want big time sports at my school and I don't care what it costs to fund them rather than attempting to justify it based on some highly debatable (and even then for only a handful of schools) argument that those athletic departments somehow move the academic side forward.

In any event, there are two pretty good Flutie Effect cases to watch in the next couple of years in Nevada and Loyola.