Bob Svec wrote:
 
> I love hockey but I'm also a football fan...being an Ohio State grad makes
> that almost an imperative.   I won't discuss other schools but I have seen
> data on the OSU program.  It is data in the pre-Schott period so the figures
> for hockey are much lower than in 1998-99.  For what it is worth here are
> some of the revenue and expense data:
 
[long list snipped]
 
Always be wary of the expense column; athletic departments are very good at
shifting things off of their budget and onto someone else's.  This list is
almost worthless for trying to make an assessment of the contribution made by
the football team.  The expense half of the ledger isn't broken down by sport,
so any analysis is impossible.  The expense categories are also so broad that
it's impossible to tell what's actually included in them.  For instance, I don't
see any listing for liability insurance; considering the injury-filled nature of
football, this is a major budget item.  A number of schools merely rely on the
university's overall policies, meaning that a significant budget expense is
someone else's problem.
 
Or, the physical plant assessment for the whole athletic department is
$733,000.  I find it hard to believe that this really covers the costs of
running all of these facilities.  I do the accounting for a company that, among
other things, runs three parking ramps in Minneapolis.  Even though work has to
less aesthetic than OSU's facilites, we spend more than half of this just on
annual repairs, for just three small facilties.  I really doubt that the listed
figure even pays for routine maintenance, let alone all of the other things that
go into physical plant.  Or, maybe they define things differently than we do,
and this should be part of another category, but how can you tell?
 
These are just a couple of things I can come up with off the top of my head.
The most thorough study of sports econmics that I've seen, _Keeping Score_ by
Richard Sheehan, a professor of business econ and finance at Notre Dame,
estimated that less than 35 schools made money from football.  Even this comes
with a couple of caveats.  Athletic department finances tend to be secretive,
and are often based on accounting standards that don't make a lot of sense
(Sheehan's claims, p. 263).  Sheehan adds a couple more that are appropriate for
the context of his study (based, as it is in large part, on theoretical resale
value); he counts debt service in a way that isn't entirely approriate for an
institution like a university, and he includes state approprations, which I
would exclude as income.  With these changes, you can probably knock more
schools off of the profitable list, and leave a number of others netting so
little that it makes no practical difference in the question of who is
supporting other athletic programs.  And, yes, Larry, he does include donations
in his calculations.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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