This. Everyone should have division 3 rules. That would force the NFL to start a farm system. People would still go to see their college play ball.Quote:
Athletics in the world of Higher Ed are out of control.
The argument is that losses are made up from donations. But, since dollars are fungible, donation money that was used to pay for athletics was not available to pay for educational activities or a new library which could have reduced the burden on tax payers. The counter argument is that the donations would not have been made absent athletics. The counter, counter argument is that we don't know that is true because it hasn't been tried.Quote:
Its insane that any tax dollars go to prop up sports at any major college. Needs to be a law preventing this.
JP1037 said:
Its insane that any tax dollars go to prop up sports at any major college. Needs to be a law preventing this.
It's not that simple. Strong football programs have been shown to increase applications, decrease yield, and ultimately increase enrollment at universities, and, because that is the case, the state has a vested interest in the state programs having strong football programs in order to increase the enrollment of the instate universities. That enrollment aspect is important in order to prevent brain drain (i.e. relatively high performing high school students going out of state for college) and to attract high performers (i.e. bringing high performing high school students to the state for college).JP1037 said:
Its insane that any tax dollars go to prop up sports at any major college. Needs to be a law preventing this.
The brain drain conversation is in regard to state schools and not private ones, and that was noted in the comment and that is also implied as part of the overarching point of discussing that topic in the context as FBS athletics since there are relatively few private schools in the FBS. For that reason, someone saying [that it was different for insert private institution here] doesn't really impact that greater issue or discussion.CorsicanaBear said:
If nobody was going millions in the hole for athletics there would be no comparisons to make, so no brain drain.
The entire Ivy League (first and foremost a football conference, and the dominant conference in the 1st half of the 20th century) downgraded athletics decades ago and suffered no brain drain. The University of Chicago, the original Monsters of the Midway, the people who built the first nuclear reactor in a squash court, abolished football in 1939 (three years prior to the reactor). I don't think there has been a brain drain at UC.
What if the money spent on athletics were, instead, spent on academic pursuits? Would that be just as useful?
I am not a proponent of abolishing college sports. But as far as I can tell, the way they are run today, the ONLY beneficiary is ESPN who pay less than it costs to operate the sports to carry them for a profit on TV. Well, that's not quite true. The NFL benefits from not having to run a Minor league, "sports administrators" and coaches earn millions of dollars, and college presidents get to act like professional sports franchise owners, flying to games in private jets and sitting in luxury boxes to watch games.
Meanwhile we are asked to dig deep to support the program.
See discussion about about the fungibility of dollars.Quote:
Texas A&M doesn't use any state or institutional money for athletics.
What would make state schools more susceptible to brain drain than private schools?Quote:
The brain drain conversation is in regard to state schools
The state has a responsibility to educate the public at the HS and JH level. Sports are an important part of that education IMO. If I had my way we would figure out the average budget needed to run an athletic program per city and make each program deal with the same dollar amount. Anything above and beyond that comes from donors and ticket sales only.EasyE said:JP1037 said:
Its insane that any tax dollars go to prop up sports at any major college. Needs to be a law preventing this.
What about High School or Junior high?
CorsicanaBear said:This. Everyone should have division 3 rules. That would force the NFL to start a farm system. People would still go to see their college play ball.Quote:
Athletics in the world of Higher Ed are out of control.
Okay so this is going to need to be cleaned up:CorsicanaBear said:What would make state schools more susceptible to brain drain than private schools?Quote:
The brain drain conversation is in regard to state schools
What happened when private schools quit big time sports and concentrated on academics? Why would state schools be different? In fact the advantages should all be in state school's favor. When a private school needs a building or research equipment or whatever, it needs to either raise tuition, borrow money or beg donors for the cash. When a public school needs money the legislature just raises taxes.
The advantage should be doubly true for Texas schools that are beneficiaries of the Permanent University Fund. And triply true for UT that not only has access to tax dollars, the PUF and has an endowment reported in 2019 to be in excess of $31 billion.
It would seem to me that if students could get the education they desire in a private setting that the tax payers do not fund, the state (and its taxpayers) would be better off. The State (the general citizenry and taxpayers) does not have a vested interest in keeping students in State schools, the employees of the public colleges do.Quote:
states have a vested interest in getting those high performing students to attend state colleges in order to prevent those students from going to private colleges.
TellMeYouLoveMe said:
Colleges are in the business of education young people.
And they are doing a poor job of it. We are woefully misallocating opportunity in this country by cheating young people out of higher education.
This may have been true in the 60's 70's 80' and 90's.Aberzombie1892 said:It's not that simple. Strong football programs have been shown to increase applications, decrease yield, and ultimately increase enrollment at universities, and, because that is the case, the state has a vested interest in the state programs having strong football programs in order to increase the enrollment of the instate universities. That enrollment aspect is important in order to prevent brain drain (i.e. relatively high performing high school students going out of state for college) and to attract high performers (i.e. bringing high performing high school students to the state for college).JP1037 said:
Its insane that any tax dollars go to prop up sports at any major college. Needs to be a law preventing this.
It's still that way for many state schools since they cannot compete on the academics front with schools like the Ivy League, the University of California system, Cal Tech, USC, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, WashU, UVA, UNC, Michigan, Texas, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, etc. which all are leaders in the academics categories, so many state schools that fall outside of that bunch have to differentiate themselves in the minds of high schoolers somehow, and strong athletics is one of the pathways to get there.Thee University said:This may have been true in the 60's 70's 80' and 90's.Aberzombie1892 said:It's not that simple. Strong football programs have been shown to increase applications, decrease yield, and ultimately increase enrollment at universities, and, because that is the case, the state has a vested interest in the state programs having strong football programs in order to increase the enrollment of the instate universities. That enrollment aspect is important in order to prevent brain drain (i.e. relatively high performing high school students going out of state for college) and to attract high performers (i.e. bringing high performing high school students to the state for college).JP1037 said:
Its insane that any tax dollars go to prop up sports at any major college. Needs to be a law preventing this.
We've got a whole new legion of skinny jeans wearing, backpack toting, coffee drinking pansies on campus and applying to schools.
We are witnessing the decline of college athletics. Get ready for teams of pasty, semi-athletic white boys who are 4A and 5A heroes stepping up to wear the old college colors.
That's like placing ads about how to apply for welfare on Indeed and Monster. Why should government programs need to compete?Quote:
state schools that fall outside of that bunch have to differentiate themselves in the minds of high schoolers somehow
