Dan Lee wrote:
 
> Not at all for most Division I schools.  Most schools with football and
>  basketball use those programs to fund the rest of their athletic
>  programs.  How else do you explain NCAA Synchronized Swimming, Cross
>  Country or Rowing?  There's absolutely no way that those programs can ever
>  hope to make a profit, break even, or come anywhere near breaking even.
>  As I sit here and consider the schools in the CCHA, for instance, the
> football
>  and basketball programs at Ohio State, Miami, Michigan, Michigan State,
> Notre
>  Dame, and maybe Bowling Green create enough revenue that if nobody went
>  to hockey games, the team would continue to exist.  Heck, at Ohio State,
>  they don't even seem to want anybody to go, with their 500 seat arena.
 
This is one of the most frequently repeated falsehoods in college athletics.
 On the list given, only Michigan, Notre Dame and maybe Ohio State make ANY
money at football.  For Miami and Bowling Green, football is absolutely a
money loser.  Synchronized swimming, rowing, cross-country may not bring in
the kind of revenue that football does, but they don't have the kind of
expenses it does either.  85 scholarships, huge travel squads, astronomical
equipment and facilites costs, etc,  would eat up a lot of the football
revenue even before the large, bureaucratic and usually unaccountable
athletic departments wash a whole lot more down the drain.  Essentially, you
have to be NikeU (Michigan) or the Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation before
you can stay ahead of these costs.  Probably fewer than ten Division 1A
schools (and pretty much no one below that) make money at football.
 
Basketball isn't as bad, but not the rosy picture usually presented.  I'd bet
that at least one of the schools you listed probably loses money there as
well, along with about half of Div 1.
 
Only creative bookeeping and subsidies from the rest of the University keep
athletic departments afloat.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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