Athletics Dollars

[Artemis Windsong]

Where the college tuition dollars go:


Athletics

www.facebook.com/Upworthy/videos/1124480170926173/?fref=nf

[billisonboard]

40 of 50 highest paid employees in each state are football or basketball college coaches 

[MJ2.0]

oh I know, and it boils my blood. God forbid a university encourage academics when we should all be worshipping FOOTBALL!!!!!

I went to Rutgers. My senior year I was in nice-ish on-campus apartments... and so were some freshmen or sophomore football players. Apparently they thought Wednesday nights would be great party nights and that the rest of us didn't need to study or sleep or anything. The football and basketball teams (men's of course, even though they sucked whale ass) had a separate dining area in the dining hall... gorgeous. I wonder how many of my tuition dollars went toward that. I also had the displeasure of being asked (along with some other girls) to be the company of some football players the athletic department was trying to poach... go out to dinner with all of them and just act like we were having a great time (while getting paid for it) - basically prostitution-adjacent. Just ew.

I know there are some college athletes that rightly earned and used their scholarships and went on to do great things. But the slack-jawed football/basketball imbeciles and their overpaid coaches cast a rather large shadow over my perspective of division 1 athletics.

[Miss Tequila]

I don't know about all schools but football is a big money maker at Penn State

[The Captain]

Are they institutions of learning, or boot camps for professional sports?

[NancysSummerSip]

Nov 5, 2015 12:29:28 GMT -5 Miss Tequila said:

I don't know about all schools but football is a big money maker at Penn State

I'm a Penn State grad, and there's no getting away from football being one-half step below God at Penn State. I'm not trying to belittle God or religion when I say this. But at PSU, athletics was, and probably still is, a highly-organized means of printing money to support more sports. The whole Jerry Sandusky debacle and fallout aside (I was there several decades ago, when none of that was known and the football program railroaded everything else on campus), it's what the school boosters and supporters look to when they want to showcase what's great about the place.
Because when you think about it: what gets a university more TV time - their academic accomplishments or their football team's record? Scientific discoveries and major academic papers are awesome, but they don't fill 90,000+ seats at Beaver Stadium on any given fall Saturday, nor does ESPN show up with a crew to interview the people behind the computer screens and test tubes.

I'm not suggesting I like or agree with it. But having attended a school with an historic football program and a coach whose name is one for the ages, I can say that even now, sports bring in the super bucks. And the athletes themselves are a pampered and coddled bunch. For two years, I lived in the same dorm area where the football players lived. You could not speak to them if you were a mere mortal, nor sit at a dining hall table with them. They had their space and the rest of us simply did not invade that space. As for their academic achievements, well - let's just say that a whole lot of tutoring got them by.

[billisonboard]

Not a great piece but does provide some info:
Jim Moran says only 20 colleges make a profit from sports

[djAdvocate]

lame

[zibazinski]

I know that UF football is a huge financial boost to Gainesville. The entire community from hotels to restaurants benefit from it. Because of the team, even in the "off" years, the school attracts some of the best and brightest. DS was one of them. A lot of his class were the top few per cent of their high schools. Even the jocks weren't total morons. Yes, they mostly had easy majors and took forever to graduate and I'm sure the professors wished everything totally focused on academics but it brought valuable dollars and even more valuable brains to the school.

[Shooby]

I wouldn't say all the dollars go to athletics. A lot of colleges are starting to look like pampered hotels.   Today's students aren't going to live in cramped dorms with little amenties anymore. We just toured a college and they have housekeeping services to clean the dorms. And, a lot of them now include refrigerators, microwaves, air conditioning, etc. No more roughing it for our little soft darlings.

[zibazinski]

I know but then again, our kids have it better than we did too.

[Shooby]

Nov 6, 2015 8:47:51 GMT -5 zibazinski said:

I know but then again, our kids have it better than we did too.

  Not so sure about that. I had it pretty good as a kid. I had great parents and lived a childhood before electronics when you were allowed to roam your town all summer long with your other friends. I had a great time as a kid going to the creek, riding bikes literally EVERYWHERE and playing the in the woods, etc. So, I don't really think kids have it better.