Let's spend another mil on a second punchcard park...I know thats why I chose Ohio University!

You have another Amen from me. I thought the park could actually be put to use if integrated into game day activities. I brought this suggestion up to those in the Athletics Department. Apparently, that was their thinking as well. But the ruling from the university is that the park can't be used as a park because it's really a work of art.

If this is the case, it's time to admit the effort on the park was mailed in. Have a design contest by current students (most of whom don't know what a punch card is anyway), winner gets $1,000 in free tuition. Rent out a Bobcat for a few days and you can get the park level. Then plant some trees and plants. For a nominal sum, you'll have a usable space that people can actually get value from. You'd probably save money on mowing and maintenance as well.

It's not so much they skim over it, as they are skeptical about how big a benefit it actually is.  It's never been documented as far as I am aware.  For example, do you really think that a sizeable number of students decide to attend OU because they get to watch MAC football?  Because they saw our listless performance against Marshall in the Pizza Bowl?

Now sure, athletics can have some benefit at the high end (think the Georgetown win), although even there I suspect that that game would have actually made a significant difference in the minds of less than a 100 potential students.  And I would agree that for some students having a Division I athletics program is important.  But on the whole, the marketing value of our athletics program has been vastly overstated.  I mean, Ohio athletics have generally been fairly lousy for the better part of 40 years, but yet we all decided to attend nevertheless.

Football doesn't lose money because it supports non-revenue producing sports.  Football loses money because it spends more than it generates.  You can streamline the athletic department all you want, football does not generate enough revenue to support itself at Ohio University.  No sport does.  They all lose money, both individually and collectively. 

So we force all 20K+ students to each pay $500 per year to subsidize athletics, simply to provide fewer than 1/3rd of those students a few hours of entertainment?  And what about the previous 40 years when the football was anything but quality?

Hey, I'm willing to take one for the team, if that's what it takes to get rid of it...

You'd better back up there, the tuition waiver may not cost an actual dime, however the books cost real money, room and board (most athletes live off campus) are straight cash payments to the athletes with many of them on out of state waivers.  These cash payments are upwards of $15,000 dollars or more to each out of state scholarship athlete.  Not to mention the other benefits the University gives to scholarship athletes that the NCAA allows.  Scholarships are REAL MONEY!

I think many of you are missing a VERY important point...most of the "cost" of Athletics is in scholarships (tuition and fees).  This is really "funny" money to the University in that it is just a switch from one pocket to another.  The classes the athletes are in and all costs related to them would be there with or without sports.  When you look at the "real" costs for the football and basketball program to the University (CASH outlays), they are much lower.  These would include the direct costs of the programs (salaries, travel and equipment plus overhead) plus the cost of room and board which is money "lost" to the University's Auxilliary because athletes are in the rooms and eating the food that...in theory...could be used by "other" students.

JCW are you saying that when an athlete lives off campus, the money for his or her tuition is paid to a local apartment owner?  If that's the case, a great deal of money could be saved by having the athletes live in dorms.

I wasn't insinuating that this was improper or out of line with what other institutions may be doing.  In tough economic times, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the money in house rather than sending it to apartment owners and WalMart?

There is a huge difference between the Big 10 athletics funding model and ours.  75% of our athletics budget comes from institutional (i.e. non-athletics generated) funds.  That is the 4th highest percentage out of all public FBS institutions.  The only schools more dependent on institutional funds on a percentage basis are EMU, Florida International, and Buffalo.  In fact, MAC teams make up 10 of the top 21 most subsidized athletic departments in all of FBS:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/19/subsidy

Now you might say, well the BCS conference schools all have significantly higher athletics budgets, so maybe they actually spend more institutional funds, even though it makes up a smaller percentage of their athletics budget.  But that would be wrong as well.  Only one BCS program - Rutgers - uses more institutional dollars to support athletics that Ohio does. 

Our funding model for athletics is thus radically different than the vast majority of FBS institutions.  Hardly anyone else in FBS does things the way we do.  And that's because unlike the vast majority of athletic programs, ours only sustains enough interest to generate a paltry sum of revenue.  In other words, most schools can justify increased athletics spending because there is significant demand for their programs.  We don't have that.  It hurts to admit it, but comparatively speaking very few people really care about or support Ohio athletics, by any measure (season ticket base, merchandise revenues, alumni donations, television packages, etc.). 

So why is that?  Part of the reason undoubtedly is a lack of tradition, especially in football.  But a bigger part of it is the fact that Ohio University is situated in an extremely small town smack dab in the middle one of the poorest regions in the entire country, in a state where college athletics are dominated by an institution 90 miles up the road.  Unlike a Butler, Xavier, Memphis, Louisville, TCU, or Dayton, we don't have significant business interests or a large alumni base in town to call upon for donations.  Unlike Boise State, we aren't the only show in a state without a BCS level college or professional sports team.  Rather, we compete with 6 professional teams (not inlcuding the semi-professional Suckeyes), 7 other FBS programs (2 of which went to BCS bowls last year), and 5 more Division I basketball programs just in the state of Ohio alone. 

We all want to believe in the potential of Ohio athletics.  And if all the stars magically align some day, maybe we have an outside chance of achieving those dreams.  But the fact of the matter is that every other Division I program in the country also harbors the belief that it too can be the next big thing.  Almost none of us will.  Yet, few of those schools divert anywhere near the amount of institutional money from academics that we do in order to pursue that pipe dream, especially when compared to how little revenue and interest our athletics programs actually generate. 

Again, this is simply not a sustainable model under any rational analysis.  For someone who prides himself on "real world" business sensibilities, you should be able to recognize that.

Edit: In short, throwing even more institutional funds at athletics is not the answer.  Rather, we must tap new lines of outside funding.  If athletics is a priority for this administration, it must push hard for private donations to athletics, perhaps even at the expense of donations to other university accounts.  Without a significant increase in outside donations, eventually the axe will fall on athletics, it is just a matter of time.

The numbers say 5 MAC schools are collecting a greater institutional fee than Ohio and its common place for a non-BCS school to subsidize its athletic budget by 10 million or more with fees. The numbers on Ohio also show that the athletic department pulled in 5 million dollars of revenue that would really not be possible without the MAC level football team and that is also about the size of the football budget. Then another million dollars at least is pumped into the local economy each football and basketball season which I'd imagine is greater than any MAC school. Those numbers are also a couple of years old and I'd estimate under schaus the athletic department is pulling in 6 milliion of revenue against expenses today. 

Tim Burke and BobcatJH,

My point in the post was not that I think my own personal preferences and/or moral values should decide what the university spends money on.  My point was that academic units of the university constantly attack athletics for questionable spending.  But when you scrutinize how money is spent, most departments and units of the university spend at least some money on questionable programs and pursuits.  Why don't they turn the spotlight on themselves for once?      

Burke, I shouldn't have singled out Communications.  As I say, in a large bureaucracy like a university, it's almost inevitable that just about every department/unit is going to have some head scratchers as far as allocation of resources. 

And re:  the Sexecology program, my understanding from reading the announcements is that it is artistic presentations communicating the idea that there is an analogous relationship between human sexuality and human relationships with the earth itself.  I didn't see anything about "safe sex practices"...If it does cover safe sex, that's quite ironic that the university would bring in someone who openly boasts of having had sex with well over 1,000 men to lecture on safe sex.  

We can talk about this more by PM if you want to.