rally wrote:Khan4Cats wrote:
I'd be curious to see the balance sheets of the private schools to see just how profitable their 'non-football' athletic departments are. I doubt they are any more profitable than the football playing publics.
If all or almost all FCS schools are losing money playing football, their overall athletic departments are going to be worse off then if they didn't sponsor football. Conversely, if you don't sponsor football, your athletic department if going to be better off than if it did because aren't losing money on it. That's one factor, and there are plenty of others in judging the performance of an athletic department. But the negative financial effect that FCS football has on an athletic department is pretty much undeniable.
Football loses money, yes. But UNI without a football program would be a drastically different kind of school. WSU was sort of a unicorn. Without football, several key donors just go away, the student to athletic department relationship changes significantly for the worse, our standing and exposure within the state declines --- and perhaps our share of tax $ with it. Cutting football would create more problems than it would seem to solve. The Campanile (Bell tower) doesn't make UNI any money either, but that's not a reason to put a wrecking ball to it. It's part of the identity of the university. Football is much the same.