I wonder if Ohio State would have the same financial equation if they didn't have all the money from people that actually attended MAC schools and never took a class in Columbus. How many OU Alums do you see prior to the OU/OSU game wearing scarlet and gray? The answer is plenty and it is disgusting. Mindless jerkoffs. Same goes for BG/Toledo/Akron/Miami/ETC.

My guess is you would see a greatly flattened pyramid if we were just able to keep the money in-house instead of flowing up 33 to C-bus.

I give Ohio State credit. They really did a great job on the num-skulls who grew up in Ohio. The propaganda you got since birth was not only effective, it was long lasting.

I have said for many many many years that this is our biggest shortcoming, and will have the greatest impact (negative) on Ohio Athletics for years to come. We simply must find a way to keep that money in house. 

Glad I took the time to read the whole article.  This video at the bottom is unbelievable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxNJJgs08Xg&feature=player_embedded

How many times can they write the same story?

We need a Russ Family type gift ($90-100 million) for an athletic endowment.  That would shut up a lot of people for a long time.

I think a more accurate metric I would like to see is what is the spend per student. It looks like the MAC schools get targeted because they fund Athletics through student fees. Is there much difference whether it comes from student fees or tuition? When Wofford visited Ohio a few years ago, I wondered how a school of 1,500 can fund an athletic budget of $11.6M? That per student cost has to be quite more than what MAC students are paying.

Ohio State also gets the benefit of the Big Ten tax which gets levied on every cable and satellite TV subscriber in the state. 

Ted, you make a great point about cost per student, and you can parse the numbers a lot to make it look better, but any argument is unlikely to resonate much with critics. The average person hears about skyrocketing tuition at state schools in Ohio and wonder why the money is spent on athletics. Half the readers of the Plain Dealer think there's only one FBS university in the state. Cleveland State plays hoops in front of 1,500 people as the only D1 program in the most populous county in the state, but if Ohio State or a "real" team (like UNC) comes to town, it's a sellout. If every FBS school that isn't scarlet, grey and corrupt lost their FBS status or their entire athletics program, it would mean nothing to most sports fans in the state. The pressure is not going to ease unless costs go down, attendance and interest increase, and/or revenues increase. It's up to those of us who care most to change those things. The calvary is not coming, and even if it did, in the form of regional fans and corporate support, we're in the poorest and most sparsely populated region of the state. Our best chance of increasing fan interest is through alumni and student support.

The MAC schools simply cannot continue on long-term with such a high percentage of their athletic budgets coming from subsidies.  It's not politically viable. 

That's best video I've seen since they faked the moon landing.

Slightly off topic, but I agree with the Love about tO$U propaganda effectively brainwashing the entire state (and the country too).  I don't know how many people I have had to tell that I did NOT go to tO$U as soon as they heard I went to Ohio.

I also remember when we made our first bowl appearance in 38 years this guy wandered into my office wondering why a FCS school was appearing in a FBS bowl.  He also thought that Ohio was a private school.  This fellow was from East Liverpool so it wasn't like he'd come to Ohio from somewhere else and just didn't know the score.

I fault the University for some of this.  When my wife was younger she went to visit a college fair at her high school in Delaware County.  She had never heard of Ohio and there was nobody there representing the school at the fair.  All she knew of was the relentless O$U, O$U, O$U that she got from friends, neighbors and her high school counselor.  She eventually wound up going to a small private college in West Virginia.  Years later when she visited Ohio with me she was amazed at the school and its size and the variety of its programs.  She told me she would have been there in a New York minute if she had even known the place existed.

At least here in Texas they share the wealth.  UT, A&M, Texas Tech and Houston are all quality programs.  Its too bad that the media has allowed tO$U to hog the limelight in Ohio for so many years.

I disagree with that. I spend a fair amount of time in Texas, and A&M certainly gets its share of publicity. Certainly UT is the gorilla in the room--just  as you said--but I don't think it compares with the OSU situation in Ohio. The casual fan in Ohio believes OSU is the only team in the state that is at college football's highest level.

I agree about A&M, the Aggies v Longhorns relationship is more like Michigan State and Michigan than O$U and any of the other 7 OH schools. Aggie Alumni are some of the most commited alums you'll ever see, they'd rather die than jump on the Longhorn bandwagon. MAC schools alums? not so much.

One other difference is geography. All 7 OH schools are within 140 miles of cbus, but in TX you have schools like UTEP, a MAC level school,  that's over 600 miles from Austin. That's the same distance from OU to the U of Missouri.

With that being said, UT is very  very large in TX.

Rather than dwell constantly on what Ohio and the MAC aren't I think it's time for someone to promote what it is and what THAT is is unique.  As the PD points out the state of Ohio leads the country in D1 programs.  Why isn't this a selling point on it's own?  Why isn't there a rotating trophy among the Ohio members of the MAC for "Program of the Year or something?  Why don't we make a bigger deal about the in-state rivalries within the MAC instead of the once a year chance for some MAC team to knock off A&M?

The MAC hoop tourney in Cleveland is one great opportunity to showcase this aspect.  Another might be an annual football showdown with, say, 2 games of Ohio MAC teams facing each other in PB Stadium or Cleveland Stadium?  Yeah, they each lose a home game but the atmosphere could be worth it over time.

On the point of student fees paying for athletics, everybody gets to pay for something they don't want at every stage of their life "for the greater good".  McDavis is adamant on this point and I think he's right.  You and I are subsidizing private businesses though local tax incentives, questionable priorities in public education through school levies, out of control budgets and entitlements through federal income and payroll taxes, etc.  Students might as well get used to the idea because our country is built on the concept.