In Reply to: Why does it *have* to extricate itself? posted by UCLAFirst on January 29, 2024 at 23:31:18
My first point is to address your premise: why should football be responsible to pay all the bills? I exclude hoop because it really doesn’t support the entire athletic program. Only a minuscule amount of programs turn a significant profit. It’s really all about football. What is the rationale for making football pay for everything else? I work at a big institution that has numerous revenue generating units. Business is cyclical. Consequently, one year CRE generates outsized profits, some years they lose $$, but prop trading kills it, some years its energy, some years it’s lev fin, etc. Ultimately, every area has to pull its weight or significant cuts are a coming. If you have a group that kills it and still loses money, that node is doomed. The LSU lady tigers did as well as possible, they won the Natty, and their revenue was more than 2x less than they paid their coaches (not the players). Your line item for 1 expense is twice as much as the total revenue your enterprise generated. That is just nucking futs.
Football has to extricate itself because within the next decade the football team is going to pay its players. How can you pay the womens hoop team when they, in a best case scenario, already operate 8mm in the red? Economically, how is that sustainable? First the expenses for football are gonna explode, so less profit to fund the other programs. Secondly, if you have to pay all the athletes, because of title IX, where is that $$ gonna come from, and once again why should football be responsible to fund that ad infinitum?
Consequently, football needs to figure out how to get out from Title IX so it isn’t funding everything else. Why in the world should football use all its revenue to fund a consistent money suck when the program will never turn a profit? We aren’t talking about a few shekels for softball. We are talking about a program, in a best case scenario, that loses 8mm.