Myth!
“..The majority of universities in the nation’s top athletic conferences lost money through their sports programs to the tune of approximately $16 million each. ....”
“....But that still doesn’t mean all these institutions are making money from athletics. According to the NCAA, among the 65 autonomy schools in Division I, only 25 recorded a positive net generated revenue in 2019.....”
https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/2020/11/20/do-college-sports-make-money/
https://www.al.com/sports/2014/08/ncaa_study_finds_all_but_20_fb.html
I can post more examples!
The bottom-line question is:
“Is taxpayer financed entertainment more important than taxpayer financed education?”
Obviously you think entertainment is!
And at the high school level?????
Where this is headed! .... particularly since the taxpayer is a bottomless well!
The next shoe to fall will be the unionization of graduate students. They’ll demand “comparable wages”
rather than their current “way-below-minimum-wage” wages scale. (Remember we are not counting tuition waivers as income!)
Rocketing up higher education costs even further!
So, it is truly all about the Benjamins! And the attitude is: “ I want mine now! Screw everyone else!”.
Well, the two colleges I'm familiar with, Michigan and Michigan State, are both in the black according to your article, with Michigan netting $170 million and Michigan State netting $140 million.
Great comment, exactly correct, most colleges demonstrably lose money on sports, even on football, and often more on football than the other much cheaper sports, and that is seen in spite of the typical dishonest accounting involved.
Colleges may need to operate their own version of some types of sports for the sake of students who need to be active and competitive, but they need to be frugal and do not need to run farm teams for professional sports.