And rest assured there was plenty of scholarship money provided....it's not a "football" scholarship but they get these kids money
Or maybe if the football team didn’t have to support the entire athletic department they would be much more profitable?
Are you advocating for less support toward the other sports? The other poster appeared to call for football breaking away from UF. Either scenario is a loss in my mind.
Inevitably that will be what has to happen unless some new $22M revenue source magically appears (and more when the players organize and collectively bargain a new deal). The infrastructure debt service remains the same. Where else will they be able to begin to balance the athletic budget? Most likely more and more subsidies are going to have to come from the academic side of the house. I wonder how SEC teams that are used to running an athletic program surplus will deal with that?
I'm not saying it's ever going to happen. Money and greed drives everything these days. Just saying, that if the university ever went that route, they would have an audience.
I'm not referring to individual games, but the overall viewership. It probably has a lot to do with the overwhelming advantage in #'s of college teams vs. NFL teams, though.
The NCAA and its members got themselves into this pickle by being greedy. Unfortunately the big dogs are locked in because they have so much athletic infrastructure debt to support. Even if UF kept its full in-person support at the same price, the UAA would likely go bankrupt without the whopping TV deal. Its kinda sad, but they've painted themselves into a corner with all of the athletic facilities that have been built in the last 5-7 years.
I almost wouldn't call it greed. These larger programs spend a lot of money keeping the fan base happy. They have to go this route we are on to sustain the beast. It's the fan base that wants championships and that takes investment. Foley catches a lot of fan hate for resisting the facilities race. But looking back he was just doing what those same fans are saying what needs to be done now. Which is cutting back and returning to a scaled down amateur football.
I can accept that and I assume you can accept what we have in big time college football is just the NFL without all the same systems and constraints.
There are many sports programs across our nation that don’t have a top 30 or so football program to float their athletic program. I’m just wondering how that became footballs problem for the top universities. Title 9 does help a lot of adult athletes continue to play games instead of studying to become adults but from a business aspect, I can’t wrap my head around taking one guys money to support another.
It’s not really taking one guys money to pay another. Our entire athletic dept is one guy. The football team is nothing without the schools NIL.
THAT! That I agree with. The hand wringing about grades and pay for play is way overblown. But the portal is going to kill the thing we love. They need to fix the issues with the portal so a kid gets some money and makes his decision for 4 years like you would with a rookie contract
But the football team is nothing without the school and the other sports come with that. Separate football from the school, the other teams might fail to keep float, but so will the football team.
Separate the football team from title nine and the cash flow is just fine to have plenty to pay the players.