[Hasu]

> What I heard was that college football tends to pay for all of the other sports at a school.

Yeah, at the most successful football schools. That's a minority among schools that have football programs. [1] [2]

>If anything sports creates a lot of opportunities for students that otherwise could be done due to budgets.

No, sports diverts scholarship funds from scholars to athletes, and the athletes rarely take full advantage of the academics in college, going for easy classes and easy majors. It actually destroys a lot of opportunities, particularly at schools that are losing money on their sports programs.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/05/05/does-foot...

[2] http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Ar...

[mason240]

>Yeah, at the most successful football schools.

And it's the successful (at pulliung NCAA TV money) football schools that have coaches with million dollar contracts.

It's a nice bait and switch you constructed. A "trick play" if you will.

[XorNot]

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--xeKPpMFq...

Feel free to search that image from other sources too.

And the data backing it.

And yes, this is not the same as it being paid for by academics...but then you have to deal with the fact that most top-tier sports departments also fail to break even, and it's extremely murky if they contribute anything back to academics at all - whereas it's pretty visible that they are allocated money out of the academic takings. [http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-fo...]

EDIT: All of which again, would probably be worth turning a blind eye to if it were a good thing for the players...except it isn't. Because they don't get paid.

[Hasu]

I didn't say anything about coaches with million dollar contracts. I was responding only to the claim that football pays for the rest of the sports, which, other than men's basketball, are pretty much universally unprofitable.

If only a few schools' football programs fund the other sports, and all schools have a lot of sports, it only follows that most schools are losing money on sports, no matter how much money they pay their coaches.

That said, many unsuccessful football programs still have coaches with multimillion dollar contracts, so you're still wrong.

>It's a nice bait and switch you constructed. A "trick play" if you will.

This added nothing to the discussion and wasn't even a fair accusation, since I wasn't arguing anything like what you suggested I was. If I were being uncharitable, I would accuse you of intentionally misunderstanding my argument for the chance to be snide.

[briandear]

Where do those scholarship dollars come from? It must be all te donations the sociology department attracts.

[Hasu]

Scholarship money comes from a lot of places, but usually from wealthy alumni.

It definitely doesn't come from sports at most American universities.

There's something for the argument that sports attracts students who will become wealthy alumni and donate after graduation, but AFAIK, there's no data proving it, and some that contradicts that notion.