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NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
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mturn017 Offline
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Post: #41
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 12:34 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 10:05 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 07:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 02:42 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 02:25 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Yes, the notion of a school counting mandatory fees charged to students as "athletic revenue" is absurd. It's equivalent to your example about an owner putting more money in his own business. Not revenue.

So would tuition and fees be revenue to the schools? If so then why not to the athletic department? What about taxpayer funds paid to public schools? Private research grants? Government grants? It’s almost as if comparing the financial structure of a university and thier ancillary activities to a privately owned restaurant is absurd.

Agreed, there are a lot of complexities when it comes to taxpayer-funded organizations.

But to me revenue comes from outsiders, not insiders. A school assessing a mandatory fee on students, insiders, to fund athletics is not revenue, its as someone else said like forcing your employees to kick back a percentage of their salary, or the owner investing in his own business. Likewise, if the state appropriates $100 million to build the school a new basketball gym, that's not revenue either.

Athletic revenue comes from the outside and from voluntary sources - media deals, corporate sponsorships, tickets sold, etc. - including tickets sold to students, if the students are free to buy or not buy, etc. Mandatory fees, no.

I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

I was with you until the bolded part, because to me, that's just your opinion. To me, there is value in knowing what the "real" revenue of an athletic program is, that is, voluntary revenue, not subsidized money forced from students or state appropriations. That value is in knowing whether athletics is supporting itself or is supported by others against their will - that's what a 'mandatory subsidy' is.

Beyond that, I think we all know that many schools - basically all but the top 30 or so P5 teams- rely heavily on mandatory fees. My USF has an athletic budget of about $45 million, and about 45% of that is from mandatory fees from students. That means that our athletic department actually runs a big operating deficit each year, it costs far more than it generates. To me, I like knowing that, because we should be striving to eliminate that. It's wrong so we should have a plan to sunset it.

And I don't think anyone believes what happens on message boards matters. I don't, I know that despite my view, schools are going to keep on socking their students with big fees to pay for the Football Dream. No illusions about that.

Not my opinion, by definition. You are trying to think of these entities as operating on a for profit basis and they are not. If you look at the audited financial statements required by the NCAA, the only way USF has a deficit is if the expenses exceed the revenues (including student fee allocations). This is the way it is and you can write it off as accounting semantics but the accounting is different from for profit entities because the purpose is different.
11-14-2019 02:02 PM
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Post: #42
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 02:02 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 12:34 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 10:05 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 07:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 02:42 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  So would tuition and fees be revenue to the schools? If so then why not to the athletic department? What about taxpayer funds paid to public schools? Private research grants? Government grants? It’s almost as if comparing the financial structure of a university and thier ancillary activities to a privately owned restaurant is absurd.

Agreed, there are a lot of complexities when it comes to taxpayer-funded organizations.

But to me revenue comes from outsiders, not insiders. A school assessing a mandatory fee on students, insiders, to fund athletics is not revenue, its as someone else said like forcing your employees to kick back a percentage of their salary, or the owner investing in his own business. Likewise, if the state appropriates $100 million to build the school a new basketball gym, that's not revenue either.

Athletic revenue comes from the outside and from voluntary sources - media deals, corporate sponsorships, tickets sold, etc. - including tickets sold to students, if the students are free to buy or not buy, etc. Mandatory fees, no.

I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

I was with you until the bolded part, because to me, that's just your opinion. To me, there is value in knowing what the "real" revenue of an athletic program is, that is, voluntary revenue, not subsidized money forced from students or state appropriations. That value is in knowing whether athletics is supporting itself or is supported by others against their will - that's what a 'mandatory subsidy' is.

Beyond that, I think we all know that many schools - basically all but the top 30 or so P5 teams- rely heavily on mandatory fees. My USF has an athletic budget of about $45 million, and about 45% of that is from mandatory fees from students. That means that our athletic department actually runs a big operating deficit each year, it costs far more than it generates. To me, I like knowing that, because we should be striving to eliminate that. It's wrong so we should have a plan to sunset it.

And I don't think anyone believes what happens on message boards matters. I don't, I know that despite my view, schools are going to keep on socking their students with big fees to pay for the Football Dream. No illusions about that.

Not my opinion, by definition. You are trying to think of these entities as operating on a for profit basis and they are not. If you look at the audited financial statements required by the NCAA, the only way USF has a deficit is if the expenses exceed the revenues (including student fee allocations). This is the way it is and you can write it off as accounting semantics but the accounting is different from for profit entities because the purpose is different.

Who says USF is not trying to make a profit?

I do write counting student fees as book-cooking accounting because that is the fairest way to describe it. Soaking your own students with fees is IMO robbing your left hand to pay your right hand. One group of students forced to fund another. Wrong morally too. Saying it is OK by the NCAA is meaningless because the NCAA benefits from the robbery accounting.

Hey, if you prefer your opinion, more power to you.

07-coffee3
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2019 02:18 PM by quo vadis.)
11-14-2019 02:17 PM
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Post: #43
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 12:26 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 11:40 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 10:05 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

The idea of outside income being enough to fund an athletic department or even enough to cover much of the cost of the athletics department is an incredibly new development in the world of intercollegiate athletics.

Building stadiums and arenas as a path to greater revenue that would cover construction costs is very new. If they had been a great investment University of Arkansas rather than the WPA would have built Razorback Stadium and Barnhill Arena. LSU wouldn't have designed a sloped dormitory with a 120 yard long courtyard in the middle.

Incredible lack of self-awareness when Enormous State University athletics were simply an expense for 70 years and then started making some money and then last 25 years has operated solely on outside income then Enormous State University at Capital City announces they want to add football and everyone is like hold up how are you going to pay for it? Duh school will pay for it like ESU main campus did for seven decades. No that's unacceptable, you need to be a profit center or not play at all.

I wonder how true this is. Yes, outside revenues were far less back in the day, but so too were expenses. E.g., in 1995, when Florida played Nebraska for the national championship, Florida's entire athletic budget was $15 million, and they were just about tops in the nation. Baylor, a "power" conference school, had a $7m athletic budget.

I know Florida was drawing 80,000 fans a game in 1995, so it wouldn't surprise me if real revenues - that is, not counting special state appropriations or mandatory fees - were greater than expenses.

People talked about football building libraries at places like Notre Dame and Penn State long before media dollars exploded, etc.

Yes. The subsidies by the G5 schools are massive compared to the subsidies just 20 years ago. So when UAB or Georgia St. or Old Dominion start football, they are not doing what Auburn, UGA or UVA did in the 70s or 80s or 90s. They are subsidizing in a much more massive way and with a much bigger burden on students, many of whom are commuters who don't care about athletics. The legislatures have not just a reason, but an obligation, to question if the subsidies are excessive and the burdens on the students are excessive.
11-14-2019 02:28 PM
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mturn017 Offline
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Post: #44
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 02:17 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:02 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 12:34 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 10:05 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 07:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Agreed, there are a lot of complexities when it comes to taxpayer-funded organizations.

But to me revenue comes from outsiders, not insiders. A school assessing a mandatory fee on students, insiders, to fund athletics is not revenue, its as someone else said like forcing your employees to kick back a percentage of their salary, or the owner investing in his own business. Likewise, if the state appropriates $100 million to build the school a new basketball gym, that's not revenue either.

Athletic revenue comes from the outside and from voluntary sources - media deals, corporate sponsorships, tickets sold, etc. - including tickets sold to students, if the students are free to buy or not buy, etc. Mandatory fees, no.

I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

I was with you until the bolded part, because to me, that's just your opinion. To me, there is value in knowing what the "real" revenue of an athletic program is, that is, voluntary revenue, not subsidized money forced from students or state appropriations. That value is in knowing whether athletics is supporting itself or is supported by others against their will - that's what a 'mandatory subsidy' is.

Beyond that, I think we all know that many schools - basically all but the top 30 or so P5 teams- rely heavily on mandatory fees. My USF has an athletic budget of about $45 million, and about 45% of that is from mandatory fees from students. That means that our athletic department actually runs a big operating deficit each year, it costs far more than it generates. To me, I like knowing that, because we should be striving to eliminate that. It's wrong so we should have a plan to sunset it.

And I don't think anyone believes what happens on message boards matters. I don't, I know that despite my view, schools are going to keep on socking their students with big fees to pay for the Football Dream. No illusions about that.

Not my opinion, by definition. You are trying to think of these entities as operating on a for profit basis and they are not. If you look at the audited financial statements required by the NCAA, the only way USF has a deficit is if the expenses exceed the revenues (including student fee allocations). This is the way it is and you can write it off as accounting semantics but the accounting is different from for profit entities because the purpose is different.

Who says USF is not trying to make a profit?

I do write counting student fees as book-cooking accounting because that is the fairest way to describe it. Soaking your own students with fees is IMO robbing your left hand to pay your right hand. One group of students forced to fund another. Wrong morally too. Saying it is OK by the NCAA is meaningless because the NCAA benefits from the robbery accounting.

Hey, if you prefer your opinion, more power to you.

07-coffee3

There’s no such thing as profit for nonprofit colleges. It’s literally in the name. I’m not making this up and it’s not my opinion. What about FASB? Is their opinion meaningless too?
11-14-2019 02:45 PM
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Post: #45
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 02:45 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:17 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:02 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 12:34 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 10:05 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

I was with you until the bolded part, because to me, that's just your opinion. To me, there is value in knowing what the "real" revenue of an athletic program is, that is, voluntary revenue, not subsidized money forced from students or state appropriations. That value is in knowing whether athletics is supporting itself or is supported by others against their will - that's what a 'mandatory subsidy' is.

Beyond that, I think we all know that many schools - basically all but the top 30 or so P5 teams- rely heavily on mandatory fees. My USF has an athletic budget of about $45 million, and about 45% of that is from mandatory fees from students. That means that our athletic department actually runs a big operating deficit each year, it costs far more than it generates. To me, I like knowing that, because we should be striving to eliminate that. It's wrong so we should have a plan to sunset it.

And I don't think anyone believes what happens on message boards matters. I don't, I know that despite my view, schools are going to keep on socking their students with big fees to pay for the Football Dream. No illusions about that.

Not my opinion, by definition. You are trying to think of these entities as operating on a for profit basis and they are not. If you look at the audited financial statements required by the NCAA, the only way USF has a deficit is if the expenses exceed the revenues (including student fee allocations). This is the way it is and you can write it off as accounting semantics but the accounting is different from for profit entities because the purpose is different.

Who says USF is not trying to make a profit?

I do write counting student fees as book-cooking accounting because that is the fairest way to describe it. Soaking your own students with fees is IMO robbing your left hand to pay your right hand. One group of students forced to fund another. Wrong morally too. Saying it is OK by the NCAA is meaningless because the NCAA benefits from the robbery accounting.

Hey, if you prefer your opinion, more power to you.

07-coffee3

There’s no such thing as profit for nonprofit colleges. It’s literally in the name. I’m not making this up and it’s not my opinion. What about FASB? Is their opinion meaningless too?

You're kidding, right? It's certainly possible for a non-profit entity to have revenues exceed expenses, which in parlance is a "profit". There's even a body of law dedicated to handling these situations:

"Despite how the name sounds, nonprofits can and do sometimes make a profit. Nonprofit corporations, unlike other forms of business, are not designed to make money for owners or shareholders. Instead, nonprofits are formed to serve a government-approved purpose, and are accorded special tax treatment as a result. Whether or not the profit a nonprofit makes is taxed is based on whether the profit was generated from activities that are "related" or "unrelated" to the nonprofit's purpose."

https://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/incorp...rofit.html

Even had you been correct, it would have been an exercise in pedantry. For some reason, you seem to just want to help schools that are soaking their own students to pay for "scholarships" for other students, the athletes, and salaries for coaches cloak that in the false language of not running deficits.
11-14-2019 07:31 PM
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quo vadis Online
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Post: #46
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 02:28 PM)bullet Wrote:  Yes. The subsidies by the G5 schools are massive compared to the subsidies just 20 years ago. So when UAB or Georgia St. or Old Dominion start football, they are not doing what Auburn, UGA or UVA did in the 70s or 80s or 90s. They are subsidizing in a much more massive way and with a much bigger burden on students, many of whom are commuters who don't care about athletics. The legislatures have not just a reason, but an obligation, to question if the subsidies are excessive and the burdens on the students are excessive.

A+ post.

07-coffee3

For example, a school like my USF had a subsidy of $24 million this past year. In 1995 dollars, that is equal to about $14 million, or double Baylor's entire athletic budget that year.
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2019 07:38 PM by quo vadis.)
11-14-2019 07:33 PM
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Post: #47
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 07:33 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:28 PM)bullet Wrote:  Yes. The subsidies by the G5 schools are massive compared to the subsidies just 20 years ago. So when UAB or Georgia St. or Old Dominion start football, they are not doing what Auburn, UGA or UVA did in the 70s or 80s or 90s. They are subsidizing in a much more massive way and with a much bigger burden on students, many of whom are commuters who don't care about athletics. The legislatures have not just a reason, but an obligation, to question if the subsidies are excessive and the burdens on the students are excessive.

A+ post.

07-coffee3

For example, a school like my USF had a subsidy of $24 million this past year. In 1995 dollars, that is equal to about $14 million, or double Baylor's entire athletic budget that year.

A lot of that is why paying the players makes me uncomfortable.
11-14-2019 08:08 PM
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Post: #48
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
Subsidies are everywhere in academia. Financial aid is a form of subsidy, where the many rich students and their families pay full pop, subsidizing those families who don't pay the sticker price. Only in a few ultra-rich schools does the school endowment throw off enough cash to offset those subsidies.

Also, do we expect school orchestras, theatre productions, school museums or student media to turn a profit? Of course not. Those are heavily subsidized, too. They provide important opportunities for those students participating and add to a university's community,

I don't expect schools to make a profit on sports, either.

The point here is that the millions of dollars that colleges invest in sports are in many ways, vital expenditures that provide University visibility, brand presence, positive alumni and community engagement/campus entertainment, prospective student marketing, local game day economic benefits and opportunities for student athletes to do what they love - play their sport at a high level in return for educational and sports benefits.

If the athletics expenditures were not worth it, the schools wouldn't do it.
11-14-2019 11:42 PM
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Post: #49
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 07:31 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:45 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:17 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:02 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 12:34 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  I was with you until the bolded part, because to me, that's just your opinion. To me, there is value in knowing what the "real" revenue of an athletic program is, that is, voluntary revenue, not subsidized money forced from students or state appropriations. That value is in knowing whether athletics is supporting itself or is supported by others against their will - that's what a 'mandatory subsidy' is.

Beyond that, I think we all know that many schools - basically all but the top 30 or so P5 teams- rely heavily on mandatory fees. My USF has an athletic budget of about $45 million, and about 45% of that is from mandatory fees from students. That means that our athletic department actually runs a big operating deficit each year, it costs far more than it generates. To me, I like knowing that, because we should be striving to eliminate that. It's wrong so we should have a plan to sunset it.

And I don't think anyone believes what happens on message boards matters. I don't, I know that despite my view, schools are going to keep on socking their students with big fees to pay for the Football Dream. No illusions about that.

Not my opinion, by definition. You are trying to think of these entities as operating on a for profit basis and they are not. If you look at the audited financial statements required by the NCAA, the only way USF has a deficit is if the expenses exceed the revenues (including student fee allocations). This is the way it is and you can write it off as accounting semantics but the accounting is different from for profit entities because the purpose is different.

Who says USF is not trying to make a profit?

I do write counting student fees as book-cooking accounting because that is the fairest way to describe it. Soaking your own students with fees is IMO robbing your left hand to pay your right hand. One group of students forced to fund another. Wrong morally too. Saying it is OK by the NCAA is meaningless because the NCAA benefits from the robbery accounting.

Hey, if you prefer your opinion, more power to you.

07-coffee3

There’s no such thing as profit for nonprofit colleges. It’s literally in the name. I’m not making this up and it’s not my opinion. What about FASB? Is their opinion meaningless too?

You're kidding, right? It's certainly possible for a non-profit entity to have revenues exceed expenses, which in parlance is a "profit". There's even a body of law dedicated to handling these situations:

"Despite how the name sounds, nonprofits can and do sometimes make a profit. Nonprofit corporations, unlike other forms of business, are not designed to make money for owners or shareholders. Instead, nonprofits are formed to serve a government-approved purpose, and are accorded special tax treatment as a result. Whether or not the profit a nonprofit makes is taxed is based on whether the profit was generated from activities that are "related" or "unrelated" to the nonprofit's purpose."

https://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/incorp...rofit.html

Even had you been correct, it would have been an exercise in pedantry. For some reason, you seem to just want to help schools that are soaking their own students to pay for "scholarships" for other students, the athletes, and salaries for coaches cloak that in the false language of not running deficits.

Commuters don't have to go to a college/university where there is football. There are several campuses out there designed with commuters in mind. I know because I used to go to one and I was a commuter. Plus, there are online options out there also. I would say that the percentage of commuters actually funding athletic departments against their will is very small.
11-15-2019 01:54 AM
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Post: #50
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 11:42 PM)puck swami Wrote:  Subsidies are everywhere in academia. Financial aid is a form of subsidy, where the many rich students and their families pay full pop, subsidizing those families who don't pay the sticker price. Only in a few ultra-rich schools does the school endowment throw off enough cash to offset those subsidies.

Also, do we expect school orchestras, theatre productions, school museums or student media to turn a profit? Of course not. Those are heavily subsidized, too. They provide important opportunities for those students participating and add to a university's community,

I don't expect schools to make a profit on sports, either.

The point here is that the millions of dollars that colleges invest in sports are in many ways, vital expenditures that provide University visibility, brand presence, positive alumni and community engagement/campus entertainment, prospective student marketing, local game day economic benefits and opportunities for student athletes to do what they love - play their sport at a high level in return for educational and sports benefits.

If the athletics expenditures were not worth it, the schools wouldn't do it.

Subsidies *should* exist in academia, because that's what a university is, an academic institution. All of the things you mention - theater, drama, journalism, are academic fields and thus part of the mission of the university. Athletics isn't of course, so cannot be judged by the same standard.

And the subsidies are not comparable - academics are subsidized by the state and directly by tuition. Students pay for the classes they are taking. In contrast, "athletic scholarships" are largely funded by socking the 'regular' students with fees. These students have to pay for themselves, and for the athletes, and for athletic activities that are tangential to the university mission.

So it does make perfect sense to expect athletics to earn a profit, or at least break even. It should not be a burden on 'academia'. As for the alleged benefits of athletics - like branding, positive alumni experiences, entertainment, etc. if all that is true, then the funding model should be voluntary, as students and alumni will gladly pay voluntarily if they value these things.

At some schools they do, but at many they don't, as we see by the way they spend their dollars.
11-15-2019 08:43 AM
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mturn017 Offline
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Post: #51
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 07:31 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:45 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:17 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:02 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 12:34 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  I was with you until the bolded part, because to me, that's just your opinion. To me, there is value in knowing what the "real" revenue of an athletic program is, that is, voluntary revenue, not subsidized money forced from students or state appropriations. That value is in knowing whether athletics is supporting itself or is supported by others against their will - that's what a 'mandatory subsidy' is.

Beyond that, I think we all know that many schools - basically all but the top 30 or so P5 teams- rely heavily on mandatory fees. My USF has an athletic budget of about $45 million, and about 45% of that is from mandatory fees from students. That means that our athletic department actually runs a big operating deficit each year, it costs far more than it generates. To me, I like knowing that, because we should be striving to eliminate that. It's wrong so we should have a plan to sunset it.

And I don't think anyone believes what happens on message boards matters. I don't, I know that despite my view, schools are going to keep on socking their students with big fees to pay for the Football Dream. No illusions about that.

Not my opinion, by definition. You are trying to think of these entities as operating on a for profit basis and they are not. If you look at the audited financial statements required by the NCAA, the only way USF has a deficit is if the expenses exceed the revenues (including student fee allocations). This is the way it is and you can write it off as accounting semantics but the accounting is different from for profit entities because the purpose is different.

Who says USF is not trying to make a profit?

I do write counting student fees as book-cooking accounting because that is the fairest way to describe it. Soaking your own students with fees is IMO robbing your left hand to pay your right hand. One group of students forced to fund another. Wrong morally too. Saying it is OK by the NCAA is meaningless because the NCAA benefits from the robbery accounting.

Hey, if you prefer your opinion, more power to you.

07-coffee3

There’s no such thing as profit for nonprofit colleges. It’s literally in the name. I’m not making this up and it’s not my opinion. What about FASB? Is their opinion meaningless too?

You're kidding, right? It's certainly possible for a non-profit entity to have revenues exceed expenses, which in parlance is a "profit". There's even a body of law dedicated to handling these situations:

"Despite how the name sounds, nonprofits can and do sometimes make a profit. Nonprofit corporations, unlike other forms of business, are not designed to make money for owners or shareholders. Instead, nonprofits are formed to serve a government-approved purpose, and are accorded special tax treatment as a result. Whether or not the profit a nonprofit makes is taxed is based on whether the profit was generated from activities that are "related" or "unrelated" to the nonprofit's purpose."

https://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/incorp...rofit.html

Even had you been correct, it would have been an exercise in pedantry. For some reason, you seem to just want to help schools that are soaking their own students to pay for "scholarships" for other students, the athletes, and salaries for coaches cloak that in the false language of not running deficits.

Oh it's very much an exercise in pedantry but as I said earlier the semantics are for a reason which is demonstrated in the bolded part above. But in accounting parlance "profit" implies a net revenues over expenses that is paid to an owner of a company. In the nonprofit and governmental world of fund accounting "surplus" is probably a better word. Regardless what you call it you're absolutely right that it is possible and the goal of all organizations to have revenues exceed expenses. Otherwise you're not going to be solvent for very long and the lights get turned off. But where you're wrong is that there's no capital or equity structure for nonprofits so all sources of money received is considered revenue. A restaurant owner that has to put his own money into his business to keep it afloat either made a loan or a capital contribution. A charitable foundation grantor that puts his money into the organization has made a gift. That gift is revenue to the organization. Athletic departments are not stand alone entities but arms of their colleges. Most, if not all are allocated some money from either the colleges general fund or fees collected for that purpose. This is included in the revenues of the department's fund ledger. I'm not talking about this from a moral point of view. My personal opinion is that it's college athletics, not professional. It's unreasonable to think that field hockey or tennis or track and field should be self sustaining the same as a colleges drama or robotics teams should not have that expectation. If they do, great. The fact that football and basketball have become big money makers doesn't change this situation. Is there a point that too much is allocated to these endeavors? Sure, absolutely. That's a decision for the presidents and board of directors of each university or college to make. But you said that it was my opinion that the money transfered to athletics is not "revenue" and that to include it is "cooking the books" (your words). It's not just me telling you you're wrong. The NCAA, Dept of Education, Financial Accounting Standards Board and the IRS all disagree with you too.
11-15-2019 09:00 AM
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TodgeRodge Offline
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Post: #52
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 11:42 PM)puck swami Wrote:  Subsidies are everywhere in academia. Financial aid is a form of subsidy, where the many rich students and their families pay full pop, subsidizing those families who don't pay the sticker price. Only in a few ultra-rich schools does the school endowment throw off enough cash to offset those subsidies.

Also, do we expect school orchestras, theatre productions, school museums or student media to turn a profit? Of course not. Those are heavily subsidized, too. They provide important opportunities for those students participating and add to a university's community,

I don't expect schools to make a profit on sports, either.

The point here is that the millions of dollars that colleges invest in sports are in many ways, vital expenditures that provide University visibility, brand presence, positive alumni and community engagement/campus entertainment, prospective student marketing, local game day economic benefits and opportunities for student athletes to do what they love - play their sport at a high level in return for educational and sports benefits.

If the athletics expenditures were not worth it, the schools wouldn't do it.

I have done the math before that used numbers generally in line with at least one major university that showed if that university took the subsidies they spend on athletics and instead spent them hiring new faculty and those new faculty did an amount of research equal to what their current faculty do that new research would equal the athletics subsidy

so if that school (and many like it) took the $20 million they subsidized athletics and instead hired $20 million in new faculty those new faculty would generate about $20 million in research if they did the same average amount of research as their current faculty members

of course along with that the student to faculty ratio would decline because they would have more faculty and the research opportunities for current students would increase.....and the research metrics of that university would increase

all which would be a meaningful ACADEMIC improvement for that university

and as was pointed out just above me bands, orchestras, journalism and other things are ACADEMICS which is the purpose of a university...as is research and teaching which hiring more faculty would improve the research and decrease the number of students per faculty member which generally improves the classroom experience for students
11-15-2019 09:02 AM
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quo vadis Online
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Post: #53
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-15-2019 09:00 AM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 07:31 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:45 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:17 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 02:02 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  Not my opinion, by definition. You are trying to think of these entities as operating on a for profit basis and they are not. If you look at the audited financial statements required by the NCAA, the only way USF has a deficit is if the expenses exceed the revenues (including student fee allocations). This is the way it is and you can write it off as accounting semantics but the accounting is different from for profit entities because the purpose is different.

Who says USF is not trying to make a profit?

I do write counting student fees as book-cooking accounting because that is the fairest way to describe it. Soaking your own students with fees is IMO robbing your left hand to pay your right hand. One group of students forced to fund another. Wrong morally too. Saying it is OK by the NCAA is meaningless because the NCAA benefits from the robbery accounting.

Hey, if you prefer your opinion, more power to you.

07-coffee3

There’s no such thing as profit for nonprofit colleges. It’s literally in the name. I’m not making this up and it’s not my opinion. What about FASB? Is their opinion meaningless too?

You're kidding, right? It's certainly possible for a non-profit entity to have revenues exceed expenses, which in parlance is a "profit". There's even a body of law dedicated to handling these situations:

"Despite how the name sounds, nonprofits can and do sometimes make a profit. Nonprofit corporations, unlike other forms of business, are not designed to make money for owners or shareholders. Instead, nonprofits are formed to serve a government-approved purpose, and are accorded special tax treatment as a result. Whether or not the profit a nonprofit makes is taxed is based on whether the profit was generated from activities that are "related" or "unrelated" to the nonprofit's purpose."

https://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/incorp...rofit.html

Even had you been correct, it would have been an exercise in pedantry. For some reason, you seem to just want to help schools that are soaking their own students to pay for "scholarships" for other students, the athletes, and salaries for coaches cloak that in the false language of not running deficits.

Oh it's very much an exercise in pedantry but as I said earlier the semantics are for a reason which is demonstrated in the bolded part above. But in accounting parlance "profit" implies a net revenues over expenses that is paid to an owner of a company. In the nonprofit and governmental world of fund accounting "surplus" is probably a better word. Regardless what you call it you're absolutely right that it is possible and the goal of all organizations to have revenues exceed expenses. Otherwise you're not going to be solvent for very long and the lights get turned off. But where you're wrong is that there's no capital or equity structure for nonprofits so all sources of money received is considered revenue. A restaurant owner that has to put his own money into his business to keep it afloat either made a loan or a capital contribution. A charitable foundation grantor that puts his money into the organization has made a gift. That gift is revenue to the organization. Athletic departments are not stand alone entities but arms of their colleges. Most, if not all are allocated some money from either the colleges general fund or fees collected for that purpose. This is included in the revenues of the department's fund ledger. I'm not talking about this from a moral point of view. My personal opinion is that it's college athletics, not professional. It's unreasonable to think that field hockey or tennis or track and field should be self sustaining the same as a colleges drama or robotics teams should not have that expectation. If they do, great. The fact that football and basketball have become big money makers doesn't change this situation. Is there a point that too much is allocated to these endeavors? Sure, absolutely. That's a decision for the presidents and board of directors of each university or college to make. But you said that it was my opinion that the money transfered to athletics is not "revenue" and that to include it is "cooking the books" (your words). It's not just me telling you you're wrong. The NCAA, Dept of Education, Financial Accounting Standards Board and the IRS all disagree with you too.

You failed even at a pedantic level, as clearly, non-profit colleges can earn a profit. The link I provided shows that. It's funny that you now want to resort to being willing to use other language, like 'surplus', once that pedantry backfired. As for your example of a non-profit board member who makes a donation to his charity is making a gift, which should properly be called revenue for the charity- I agree, that is correct. But also not relevant, because that board member voluntarily made the gift. I've agreed all along that when students choose to buy tickets to athletics, that is valid revenue too, because it is voluntary. Mandatory fees, no, for the same reason. Not voluntary.

As for your claim that I'm just fundamentally wrong in saying mandatory student fees are not revenue, it makes no sense, because I'm well aware that the NCAA, Department of Education, FASB, and IRS all consider the money sucked out of students in mandatory fees to be athletic revenue.

My claim is just that they are wrong to do so. They aid and abet the covering up of athletic deficits by calling mandatory fees compelled from members of the university community as athletic revenue.

So I am fully aware of how things *are*, my point is that they should *change* because how things are isn't right.

And I disagree with your comparison of college athletics teams to robotics or drama productions, because the latter are academic activities, hence central to the mission of the university, while athletic activities are not. And even if we agreed that they all should be regarded as the same, wake me up when the hockey and softball players are assessed a special $1000 a year mandatory fee to pay for scholarships for the robotics and drama club members.
11-15-2019 09:29 AM
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Foreverandever Offline
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Post: #54
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
Hmmmm.

So everything but athletics and excercise is important for students?

Navy has sports for a reason. An education is more that just the books part of it, which is only information. You can't argue against athletics and then bring up band concerts, drama performances, and school newspapers as being ok.

Which goes back to the fact that trying to seperate out one part of a whole entity is problematic at best.

Sorry for the interruption, please continue the argument about subsidies and accounting practices which is nonetheless interesting for all of the issues in trying to properly place its value.
11-15-2019 12:04 PM
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Post: #55
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-15-2019 12:04 PM)Foreverandever Wrote:  Hmmmm.

So everything but athletics and excercise is important for students?

That's a pretty bizarre interpretation of the "athletics is not a core function of the university" argument.

Going back to Aristotle, a classical education has included physical fitness, so courses in physical fitness, exercise, etc. are core to the university educational mission. But that's handled by physical education and nutrition sciences, majors that are open to all students. Intramural and club sports open to all students fit under that as well. Funding of a running track and a gymnasium/fitness center? A-OK, mission-central stuff.

But of course classes in physical education and nutrition science and flag football games pitting the Beta dorm vs the Alpha dorm have zero to do million-dollar coaching salaries and dedicated mandatory fees stuck on the tuition bills of real students to pay for basketball scholarships for recruited athletes. And the latter has zero to do with the educational function of the university. If the entire NCAA intercollegiate athletic edifice disappeared tomorrow, the physical education aspect of the university mission wouldn't suffer one iota. Not even the slightest blip downward.
(This post was last modified: 11-15-2019 12:20 PM by quo vadis.)
11-15-2019 12:16 PM
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Post: #56
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-14-2019 02:28 PM)bullet Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 12:26 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-14-2019 11:40 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  
(11-13-2019 10:05 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

The idea of outside income being enough to fund an athletic department or even enough to cover much of the cost of the athletics department is an incredibly new development in the world of intercollegiate athletics.

Building stadiums and arenas as a path to greater revenue that would cover construction costs is very new. If they had been a great investment University of Arkansas rather than the WPA would have built Razorback Stadium and Barnhill Arena. LSU wouldn't have designed a sloped dormitory with a 120 yard long courtyard in the middle.

Incredible lack of self-awareness when Enormous State University athletics were simply an expense for 70 years and then started making some money and then last 25 years has operated solely on outside income then Enormous State University at Capital City announces they want to add football and everyone is like hold up how are you going to pay for it? Duh school will pay for it like ESU main campus did for seven decades. No that's unacceptable, you need to be a profit center or not play at all.

I wonder how true this is. Yes, outside revenues were far less back in the day, but so too were expenses. E.g., in 1995, when Florida played Nebraska for the national championship, Florida's entire athletic budget was $15 million, and they were just about tops in the nation. Baylor, a "power" conference school, had a $7m athletic budget.

I know Florida was drawing 80,000 fans a game in 1995, so it wouldn't surprise me if real revenues - that is, not counting special state appropriations or mandatory fees - were greater than expenses.

People talked about football building libraries at places like Notre Dame and Penn State long before media dollars exploded, etc.

Yes. The subsidies by the G5 schools are massive compared to the subsidies just 20 years ago. So when UAB or Georgia St. or Old Dominion start football, they are not doing what Auburn, UGA or UVA did in the 70s or 80s or 90s. They are subsidizing in a much more massive way and with a much bigger burden on students, many of whom are commuters who don't care about athletics. The legislatures have not just a reason, but an obligation, to question if the subsidies are excessive and the burdens on the students are excessive.

First of all you should all thank Enter Sandman for the thorough and labor intensive work in putting this together. With Equity in Athletics you have to look up the numbers for each school separately to get these totals. Then doing it for all of the FBS is a labor of love.

While this isn't a perfect method for arriving at Gross Total Revenue it is the most uniformed one from year to year.

Now as to Bullet's remarks it should be noted that the biggest unintended distinction between what we call the G5 and the P5 is that no P5 school has a subsidy exceeding 19% and every G5 school has a subsidy greater than 25%. Folks look for reasons there is a divide, and while that fact is not a reason per se, it is nonetheless a relative dividing point. I think last year there were only a handful of P5 schools that exceeded 10% in subsidies.

Most P5 subsidies are lingering student fees which represent no more than 2% of athletic department revenues and IMO those should be eliminated since statistically they aren't even a limitation on those schools' Total Revenue.

In the G5 there are more than a few schools whose athletic departments are subsidized by as much as 50%. Those are not only burdening the students for the luxury of offering football, but they are burdening the taxpayers of their states as well. That should receive the scrutiny of each school's state legislature.

Education should come first. if athletics are self sustaining then that's fine. If not, it's naturally impeding the first priority.
11-15-2019 12:35 PM
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Post: #57
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
Wow JR!!! Thank you very much, Enter Sandman!!

Allow me to explain what Enter Sandman did: he looked up all of this data institution (team) by institution. That is the only way you can get this information from the Department of Education. That is truly a labor of love.

With USA Today, it would have been a very simple "copy & paste" because of all the institutions are there. Not so with the Department of Education where you get the data for one institution at a time.
(This post was last modified: 11-15-2019 02:24 PM by DawgNBama.)
11-15-2019 02:18 PM
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Post: #58
RE: NCAA FBS Division Athletic Department Revenues
(11-15-2019 02:18 PM)DawgNBama Wrote:  Wow JR!!! Thank you very much, Enter Sandman!!

Allow me to explain what Enter Sandman did: he looked up all of this data institution (team) by institution. That is the only way you can get this information from the Department of Education. That is truly a labor of love.

With USA Today, it would have been a very simple "copy & paste" because of all the institutions are there. Not so with the Department of Education where you get the data for one institution at a time.
USAToday never lists the privates. You have to go to Equity in Athletics to get that information. And even then what USA Today lists isn't from tax records. But yes, it's a cut and paste from USAToday and an arduous task otherwise.
11-15-2019 02:29 PM
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