Robert Svec wrote:
 
> Your statement that there are only three programs that year in and year out
> make considerable profit from football: michigan, Notre Dame and Florida is
> dead wrong.  Anyone who has even an elementary knowledge of college football
> would not make such an outrageous claim.  Have you ever heard of Nebraska,
> The Rose Bowl Champions Ohio State,  Florida State, Alabama, Auburn,
> Tennessee, Penn State, Texas, Washington, Colorado or for that matter the
> Big Ten, the Big 12, the Southeast Conference or the PAC Ten?   Please
> provide your source of information that year in and year out only michigan,
> Notre Dame and Florida make considerable profit from football.
 
I'll agree with you, I think Dan is wrong that there are only three
programs that make money on football; I'll go as high as about eight.
It's tough to say, though, because athletic departments are
extraordinarily reticent about allowing an honest accounting to be taken
of their financing.  They don't even like to divulge their budgets, and
when they do they make it very difficult to track down items that have
been moved off budget.  Some examples include the tutoring services
provided to athletes; does the athletic department pay for this, or does
it come from some other part of the university?  Does the athletic
department pay a fair market rent for that expensive stadium it plays
in?  At many schhols, the answer to these kinds of questions are as
difficult to find as the actual expenditures of the National
Reconnaisance Office (the guys in charge of spy satellites).
 
This secrecy makes one suspicious to begin with.  There have also been a
number of individuals that have tried to dig up what they could and put
it together with known costs and revenues.  The answers they come up
with have been pretty negative vis-avis sports in general and football
in particular.  The one I've had the easiest time finding is a book by
Murray Sperber entitled "College Sports, Inc".  It's very informative;
its major weakness at this point is that it was published eight years
ago.  For the most part, though, things have actually gotten worse for
football finances in the intervening years.  I believe that Andrew
Zimbalist (author of "Baseball and Billions") has done a study of the
finances of big time college sports, but I have neither read it nor do I
know its title.
 
Most interestingly, Walter Byers, the longtime Executive Director of the
NCAA has written memoirs that are quite scathing on a number of issues
regarding college sports.  The money involved is only one of them.  The
title has escaped me, but it makes interesting reading.
 
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