What is that avenue? Your post describes power shifted to an un-elected official who alone determines whether or not a fee is "in the best interest" of the students.

Good news from the report for those with a daughter beginning college in Athens in the fall: state universities will be allowed to continue to participate in the tuition-guarantee program, which holds tuition for undergraduate students at the same rate for four years.

Bad news from the report for those with a 10-year-old son planning to attend college in 8 years: state universities participating in the tuition-guarantee program can increase tuition 8% next year.

Yeah, I've not sat down and tried to work the numbers, but the Year to Year tuition increase (as well as room and board increases), on the 4 year guarantee, I'm just not sure it's a real deal, and at the increase we've seen lately, tuition would be doubling within 10 years. That's outrageous at today's prices.

I've warned before that this was coming. Virginia already instituted caps on the maximum percentage of an AD's budget that can come from subsidies or student fees. The Ohio D1 schools last year took $168M in subsidies. The Plain Dealer ran a multi day series on it. This was only a matter of time.

Might that be the point?

And the thing that gives impacts every Ohio FBS school except Ohio State? And that doesn't make you think, "Hmmmmmm...." the least little bit?

Why do would they care?????? How competitive are any of us with Ohio State WITH the subsidies? It's not like they need to do this to maintain their hegemony over the state. OSU isn't dumb. They'll fight the battles they need to fight, but they're not going to go to war with all the other Ohio publics over something they don't need to worry about.

Look past the conspiracy theory to the simplest answer, and that will usually be correct. The simplest answer is that athletic subsidies have become a concern around the country and many feel that it's good public policy to address the issue.

Sure, Ohio State would fight something that negatively affected it. As for your hypothetical donation law, that's likely unconstitutional. Why stop at athletics. Let's expropriate Ohio State's entire endowment (specific wishes and legal rights of the donors who created it be damned) and spread the wealth.

My point is that other state schools subsidizing their athletic departments doesn't negatively affect OSU one bit. Big bad evil empire does not need to limit MAC subsidies to protect their athletic department because MAC schools are not a threat. It's not their fight, so why fight it? Hell, you want to scare OSU, let the MAC+UC schools take that $168M in athletic subsidies and turn it into full-tuition scholarships for Ohio residents with a 30+ ACT score. That would get some attention in Columbus. They're probably quite happy with the rest of the state pouring it into an athletic sinkhole rather than into something that might actually compete with them.

And my point is that osu is helped if the other schools can't subsidize their programs with this particular revenue stream....precisely because it's a revenue stream that osu doesn't need!

Even if the on-field product isn't competitive, you apparently agree that the off-field product is--which is why those academic scholarships would be such a threat to osu.

Are you saying that Ohio University--or any other MAC school--would have the exact same public profile if there were no football team representing the school on Saturdays? Because if you're not taking that position, I don't know how you can assert that osu isn't helped when every other public school's athletic department loses a revenue stream that osu won't lose.

How is OSU helped? For them to be helped by hurting the MAC schools' athletic departments, you have to start from the proposition that MAC schools' athletic departments are a threat to them. They're not. I don't think they care one way or another how this plays out, but they're not the driving force behind it because it doesn't affect them.

As for being competitive off the field, every year the other state publics fall further and further behind Ohio State in freshmen class profiles, endowment, research dollars, faculty profiles etc (don't believe me read this report, specifically go down to PAGE 20: https://mup.asu.edu/sites/default/files/mup-2015-top-amer... ) while at the same time, athletic subsidies at the other Ohio publics have gone through the roof. So how have these athletic subsidies helped us (or any other Ohio public) compete with OSU off the field versus putting that money directly into something (like recruiting better students and faculty) that directly competes with them off-field rather than hoping that the illusory "advertising effect" of athletics will have a magical subsidiary effect on the university as a whole?

I'm not saying that Ohio should abolish all subsidies, but for arguments sake it it did and split that $18M equally into recruiting faculty and students, every year Ohio would be able to create 5 fully endowed full Professorships and award 225 full-tuition, 4-year merit scholarships.

And, I don't advocate NO football team. One, however, can look at the University of California system where the campuses at Davis, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Barbara are world class, AAU-member universities with very low level athletic profiles. They don't seem to need FBS football to be top public universities. On the other side of the coin, you can look at schools like Alabama, Clemson, Auburn or LSU which are thoroughly mediocre universities despite being state flagships with big time football.

I'm not saying it doesn't add anything. I'm saying it doesn't add what a lot of people think it adds, and there is an argument to be made that if the justification for athletic subsidies is the peripheral effect that athletics has on the university as a whole then you're better off just investing the subsidy money in the academic side.

As for OSU, who the hell is propping their athletic department up? It's one of the 7 or 8 cfb bluebloods, has a cultural lock on the entire state barring the Cincy metro area and generates a multi-million dollar profit every year. It's the 800lb gorilla, and the state or anyone else doesn't need to go out of their way to prop it up. It is what it is whether the Ohio MAC schools are pumping 30M a year, 15M a year or nothing into their athletic departments.

I'm not saying OSU is some benign entity that doesn't fight for its interests and use the pathetic fanboy feelings state legislators have for its football team as a tool. It does precisely that. I'm just saying that this particular move on the part of the state is being driven by legitimate public policy concerns rather than some big conspiracy by OSU because they feel threatened by the football programs at Ohio or Kent or Miami. I know it stings the pride to consider it, but OSU really could care less what happens in Ohio's AD.

Even if it's not a conscious conspiracy, the proposal is formed in an environment that is going to be biased in the favor of osu--because it's the "800lb gorilla in the room". The proposed solution to the problem impacts seven of the eight FBS schools in Ohio, and leaves osu untouched, even though it's the one school that could afford athletic funding cuts at current spending levels.

You can't tell me osu doesn't care about what happens at the university level at Ohio or Kent or Miami--and when you start saying "it's ok to cut those schools' athletic funding but not osu's," it's a giant signal that opens the door to other cuts made...so long as osu's revenues are preserved. It's the broken windows theory applied to higher education spending. And it's no secret that osu has always wanted to be the official flagship university for the state, with all the other universities regional campuses.

People care too much about college football. I'm guilty myself. And when you start giving Ohio State's football program what effectively amounts to state-sanctioned special status, you set a norm that is going to carry over into other aspects of the university.

Why is the decision to scrutinize how "student fees" are spent so much more palatable than one scrutinizing how donations to a university are spent? Why does the state have to come in and say, "non-osu schools, you aren't allowed to fund your athletics with a major revenue stream"? Why not just let the students themselves decide whether they'll subsidize MAC/Cincy football, by voting with their feet?