An even more egregious fail is the FB locker room project - we've been trying to raise 500k for THREE YEARS and still have only 150k.  As much as we like to brag about the progress we've made in recent years, we still have an alumni base that is almost completely disengaged from Ohio Athletics.  Sad but true…and probably won't change.

 

It could be inappropriate, or it could be fine. In the end it kind of depends on who ends up using it. If it is used solely by football and baseball, then student fees shouldn't pay for maintenance of it. If it is used a lot for things like intermural sports, then it isn't unreasonable for student fees to pay part of the expenses.

One solution to the whole problem discussed here would be to eliminate all university funding for sports, and make the sports all pay for themselves, either through ticket sales, or direct contributions. Football, basketball, and volleyball all are revenue sports, and thus would continue to exist, though perhaps with somewhat lesser facilities, and all the non-revenue sports would vanish.The odd thing is that I suspect that's exactly the opposite of what some would want to accomplish. I sense that some don't object at all to the non-revenue sports, like wrestling, swimming, track, field hockey, etc, but do object to football. When they see student fees going to athletics, they presume it is for football, but fail to consider just how much the non-revenue sports cost to operate, and consider that all expenses must come from other sources (i.e. fees, university contributions).

I think it depends on how you account for them. I believe that all of the losses blamed on Football are caused by the Title IX requirement that football subsidize an equal number of women's athletes. If those that hate football win in the end, I think they will be surprised to see that without football, all the women's sports will vanish, or alternately that minor sports will continue to exist, but student fees devoted to sports will increase, not decrease, as an equal number of men's non-revenue sports are added to remain equal to the number of women athletes.

It would be interesting to find some schools with no varsity football program, and see how much in the way of University contributions goes to sports, and how much in the way of student fees.

I  have to admit that I've never seen anything rational or fair about Title IX, which requires money from revenue-producing sports to be diverted to support sports of the opposite gender. In a situation such as Ohio, the result is that nearly all of the universities contributions to athletics have to go to women's sports, and meanwhile men's sports like swimming and track have to be discontinued.  In the end the question becomes, is it more fair to divert the money produced by football to pay for women's sports, or to use it to benefit the players themselves, the ones who put themselves at risk of injury? Given the unionization efforts, I would say that the players themselves don't see the current situation as fair at all.

I see a lot of developments coming to a head. First you have the unionization. Next you have the anti-fee arguments. Finally you have the head-injury liability issues. I tend to think that the result of all these will be that over the next decade or so, somehow football spun off and officially separated from Universities. This will permit the revenue produced by football to flow directly back to the team and players, who will actually be employees, and will get more and different benefits.

If that happens, I would guess that fees to support athletics will probably rise modestly, and there will be a shift in the sports played, with a resurgence of men's sports like swimming, track, and wrestling, since the men's football will no longer count towards Title IX.

I personally have no strong feelings about what "should" happen. I just watch with amusement because I suspect that those trying hardest to change things will end up succeeding, and finding that the result that they achieve is not what they hoped for at all, and has side effects they didn't expect.

By the way, Alan, mostly I was a swimmer. Yes, it's a minor sport. We generated no revenue, and all the money spent on our sport came from other sources. No swimmer would deny that. I also have participated in club sports, by the way, where we got no money, and had to constantly be engaged in fund raising to pay for our travel expenses. Maybe that's how all sports should be run. It certainly was "fair", and no one would dispute that.

LC, Football may be a revenue generating spot, but it is a money losing sport! Heck every Sport is a revenue sport when you charge admission. The question then is are they profitable.

Football is not and very likely never will be a profit making venture at Ohio. I would like to see football generate much more money than it does so that it would be able to be self funding, but other than Boone Pickens switching to supporting Ohio likes he does another OSU, it looks hopeless. Failure to finish off the financing needs of the IPF was the clincher for me.

As for all the Title IX stuff, women's sports should be supported just like the men's programs . None of either men or women's sports make a profit, and all the partial shollies in other sports bring a fair number of good students to Ohio. Check out the GPA's of some if those teams. Proud to have them.

In your first scenario, the school would never start out with only one sport unless it was an all male school. As long as there are women on campus, there is a women's athletic team of some kind. I remember a story from my NCAA Rules and Compliance professor (who happened to be the Director of Compliance at UC) about women's athletic coaches just going around to random students asking them if they wanted to be on a crew team, rugby team, field hockey team, etc. This was obviously at a larger school.

Once again, you're focusing on the accounting of the situation. It really comes down to how the athletic department chooses to spend it. I think it's pretty obvious that more money is both generated and used on men's athletic programs, but not at the expense of Title IX and the rules I posted above. It simply provides the same amount of opportunities for women and men, regardless of money spent. If you think about it, how can a women's athletic team stack up to football? It can't. No amount of women's teams will ever add up to the expenses of a football team. However, the scholarships, modes of transportation, recruiting and facilities can all be equalized.

Think of it as an argument between football spending and basketball spending. Ohio chooses to spend money on both relatively equally to the situation they are in, correct? Other schools, say TCU for example, would rather put more of their eggs into the football basket than basketball. It's essentially the same with Title IX. Ohio spends more money on football and basketball because it brings in more money than any women's sport. They are still providing the same opportunities to each athlete, however.

The real argument lies with television rights from ESPN and the like. Title IX could essentially jump all over that for televising more men's than women's games, although I'm not positive of the legalities of that.

As far as your second scenario, that's a whole other conversation in itself. It's also another reason why I don't think we'll ever see college athletes get paid. Aside from the worker's comp portion and all the other stuff, Title IX is still there.

I don't know if it would necessarily cut those women's sports, but just add those missing men's sports to make up the difference. Really, the only sport that women don't have a comparison sport to is football. The 85 scholarship limit is such a monster compared to other sports. What has the next highest number of participants? Baseball? Track and field (if they participate in every event)?

The money spent would actually decrease IMO, but like you stated they aren't revenue generating sports, so the bottom line revenues would go down too. The thing about football just isn't the 85 scholarships. That's everything that includes one football player, 85 times (meals, tutors, gear, medical, etc.)Then it's all the equipment, which would include costs for non-scholarship players. Then there's payouts to FCS schools for coming to Athens. I don't know if that kind of money would necessarily be spent in other sports the same way.

I don't have current numbers, but using these numbers posted here a couple years ago, Ohio had football expenses of 6.8 million dollars, a loss on football of $920k, and the total atheletic department Budget was about $22 million. That means that about $15m is spent on non-football sports. If one takes a wild guess that the total number of all athletes of all genders is about 500, of which 125 play football, then the number of athletes not in football might be 375. That means that the expenses per non-football athlete would be about $15m/375=$40k each.  Meanwhile the amount spent on football players would be $7m/125=$56,000. Replacing football players with athletes in other sports would reduce the expenditures by $16,000*125, or $2 million. Unfortunately it would also reduce the revenue by $5.9 million, so the athletic department would need additional money from the University in the amount of $3.9m a year, or some sports would have to be cut, which in my mind is the more likely scenario.

There are a broad range of topics here that I always enjoy debating but haven't had time to tackle until now, so let me take a couple of stabs:

1. Regarding the young man's Post editorial: If I took the time to list all the goods and services I view as non-essential to my existence that I support through all the various fees and taxes I pay in life, I would never leave my house.  While I respect his right to his opinion, I rarely spend time worrying about the things in my life that only pertain to 2.5-3% of my out of pocket expense.  Football will always carry the burden of these discussions due to the size of the roster, and the size of the physical plants that support the enterprise.  Having myself chosen not to have children, imagine how much more I could have donated to OHIO if only those who have children had to carry 100% of the cost of their K-12 education, and I could have taken an educational voucher as a donation to the institution of my choosing.  But I didn't have to buy my house and pay the property taxes that come with that privilege to support those public schools, just as the student didn't have to choose to attend OHIO.  I hope the Board and the President will continue to support ICA and allocate Student Fees in their support, as they did when I was a student.  The irony is that when I was a student in the 80's, state institutional support was much higher, making tuition far more affordable and the student fee a much greater percentage of my total cost to attend.  DAMN, I SHOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY PISSED RELATIVE TO THIS GENERATION'S PISSEDNESS!  What a dumbass I was back then.  Is there such a thing as retroactive pissedness?!  But I digress.
2. MPF/The Walter Gift and Student Fees to Run It: The Walter Gift for the MPF was never designated exclusively for the benefit of the Football program just as the Walter Gift for the renovations of the Convo was not for the exclusive benefit of the Men's Basketball Program.  The Fieldhouse was always intended as a multi-purpose facility that would primarily but not exclusively benefit athletics.  It was always intended to benefit the student body, and that is why it is being overseen as such.  And recall, the only reason it has a four lane track is due to the insistence of student leaders that it have such.  Is it appropriate that it is exclusively being maintained by the student fee?  Refer back to point one above.
3. OUr Donor Hole: I don't believe I would be betraying the confidence of a former development officer if I shared some insight that was passed along to me that can explain our particular void of donor support for ICA.  If you deep dive our potential donor base, there is a precise, 25 year void of significant donors in an age range of people that were in their undergrad years between Alden and Glidden.  It also exists to a lesser extent in the general fundraising efforts.  As we all know, those were the dark years for OHIO Football, and I am certain many of you know OHIO grads from that era that make significant financial contributions to the evil empire.  This 25 year void of engagement of people with high donor potential in their peak contributing years can be traced directly back to when we saw little institutional support for ICA, and our present fundraising efforts are having to play catch up to fill that generational void.

The committee that oversaw this thing recommended a track but it was cut because the belief was that they couldn't raise the funds.  The facility as now configured is about 85% of the cost of the one the committee wanted.

What amazes me is how "important" the opinion of student senate execs is when it fits the university's interests and how trivial that opinion is when it doesn't.