Thanks for sharing that link, D.A.
Excellent article. It didn't even get into football's economic impact on the community. For example, let's look at Ohio's average attendance of 25,500. Let's be generous and say that half are students who are already on campus.
So 12,500 are locals or out of towners that may not have come into Athens for the game.
Let's trim that down to 10,000 for argument's sake and easier math.
10,000 people probably at least buy a meal and a beverage in Athens who otherwise wouldn't have done so without a football game ($15-$20?) -- $150,000-$200,000
A quarter of those 10,000 people also might buy a t-shirt/souvenir (2,500 x $15-$20) -- $37,500-$50,000
Of that 10,000, let's say there are families/groups of four that have come into town for the game -- 2,500 "groups". How many of those groups get a hotel room for the night? Let's say 10% of them do (250 groups x $100-$150 hotel) -- $25,000-$37,500
Of those that stay in Athens hotels, they buy more meals (1,000 people x $50-$75) -- $50,000-$75,000
Filling up at Dale's Sohio? Let's say 250 cars fill up in Athens to head back after the game/weekend (250 x $30-$40) -- $7,500-$10,000
So a total spend on Athens businesses for one game might range from $270,000-$372,500. Multiply that by four Saturday home games -- $1,080,000-$1,490,000.
That doesn't even account for the three weekday home games, parking, ticket sales, parking ticket revenue, payments to staff/vendors/organizations working the games.
Take football away and you lose all of that which is fed back into the community. And putting at least an extra $1M to $1.5M into the Athens community in the fall is a big deal. It's a shame that the Birmingham community will feel a similar economic loss.