[Quanticles]

I don't get the table of subsidies - according to Google, Eastern Michigan has a $10.73M annual budget, but the table says that they have a $120M subsidy.

For comparison, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has a budget of around $137.5M.

The article is talking about annual student fees but the listed subsidy is apparently for a decade or more of time.

[dalke]

They break it down at http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-sco... and link to the yearly reports, like http://chronicle.s3.amazonaws.com/DI/ncaa_subsidies/eastern-... .

The report shows $8 million in Athletic Student Aid, $4.3 million in 'Coaching Salaries, Benefits, and Bonuses Paid by the University and Related Entities', etc., with a 'total expenses' as $30,081,523 . That's well over your description of a $10.73M annual budget; where did you get your number? Does it include all of the details that go into support sports?

As for subsidies, that same eastern-michigan-fy2014.pdf describes $17,136,12 for direct institutional support and $6,374,741 for indirect support, giving $23 million.

That's for one year. The Huffington piece computes 'Total subsidy income, 2010 - 2014: $120,777,522', which is 5 years. 5 * 23 = $115 million, which is close enough that I won't dig up the numbers across all of the reports.

[Quanticles]

http://www.annarbor.com/news/eastern-michigan-university-fis...

That was their athletic department's official budget for 2014.

HuffPost has a table that implies an annual budget, but the numbers are actually for 5 years, and that is not clearly stated directly on the table. That fact makes all of the other numbers that they provide suspicious.

[dalke]

Yes, and that link goes on to say "The operating budget does not include $7.1 million in scholarships for student athletes, which also are funded by the general fund."

Which agrees with the numbers I quoted.

> and that is not clearly stated directly on the table

Is this the table which ends with "Source: 2010-2014 NCAA Financial Reports" and the link to the methodology which says "detailing athletics spending between 2010 and 2014", and where each university is hyperlinked to a scorecard (like http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-sco... ) which says "Total subsidy income, 2010 - 2014"?

And where the subsidy is given in percentages, so the time period doesn't really make much of a difference? And further linked to the primary documents for each year?

And you are suspicious because .. why? What would have made you not suspicious? Because as far as I can tell, the only reason for your doubt is that you chose a methodology (look at a headline from a Google search), assumed they did the same one, and compared the two without checking to see if it was a meaningful comparison.

[adventured]

Simply put, the article doesn't work very well without deception. It's a HuffPo hit piece on the business of college athletics.

[fisherjeff]

Nope, sorry. There's plenty of data to back it up.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a great data browser, complete with downloadable copies of the schools' financial reports (scroll to the bottom to find it):

http://chronicle.com/interactives/ncaa-subsidies-main