“When was the last time a school with a top football or basketball program had a Nobel prize winner? Has it ever happened? And aren’t the top academic schools in the U.S. the ones with terrible sports teams — or even no sports teams at all?”
It might surpise you that there are a number of schools with sound sports programs that have produced Nobel laureates. And depending on who you might think has a top team depends on how they draw talent, not the level of play. So remember that if they cull the herd to just a few corrals, then that’s where all the cows will be and they won’t be allowed to overstock the corral. And remember, you cutting the funding of making other corrals by funds depreciation.
Such universities that have produced Nobel laureates are Harvard, Ohio State, UC Berkley, Stanford, UCLA, Purdue, UO Washington, UO Texas, UO Wisconsin, UO Pennsylvania, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, USC...and many more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation
But if you remove the sports programs that are essential to the schools that produce academic leaders also, you are crippling their keeping their doors open and causing many to lose the opportunity to get an education and be responsible for Nobel capacity to an arbitrary determination. You’re daming the river and the first areas tha will go dry are the creeks tht also produce salmon.
wy69
Your list of schools kind of reinforces my point. If UC Berkeley and Harvard, for example, are producing Nobel laureates, then you have a hard time making the case that Ohio State (for example) only produces them because it has a boatload of revenue from its Division I sports program. I would say it’s the exact opposite, and that OSU would have produced Nobel laureates even if it had a Division III sports program.