This is a big misconception. In reality, only a small percentage of football programs are profitable [0]. Even from your link, you can see that many of the programs break even or lose money.

0. http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-fo...

The sports finance landscape changes too dramatically for you to link 3 or 4 year old articles as present-day fact. Even GPs link is two years old and there have been big revenue jumps since then. I wish we had clearer numbers for college football programs alone for present day revenue numbers with current TV deals. Is there a recent link with just football program revenue vs expenditures? I can't find one.

To be fair, the programs that are more profitable also have more money pumped into them, and those that are less profitable have less money put into them. So yes, many of them are unprofitable, but it also seems like the less profitable ones have much smaller costs. Of course, the school's budgets at those schools might be smaller too, but...

They profit off the labor of unpaid student athletes.

You make a very good point, but these students also generally get scholarships to college, which is not an insignificant form of compensation at all - especially given how much having a college degree matters for future lifetime earnings.

The graduation rate for those athletes tends to be quite low overall though, so not all of them get that benefit.

That's their own fault. If you're given a free/mostly free ride you should take advantage of it.

It's not free if they're working for it. And that work may impede said studies: http://uk.businessinsider.com/college-student-athletes-spend...

plus the concussions.

What figures do you have? How do you count those who leave early to compete professionally?

256 players get drafted every year. There are 124 DI football teams with a max of 85 scholarships per year. If every player made it to their senior year, and the draft only took seniors, and every class was the same size, a player would have < 10% chance of getting drafted. That's a lot of "ifs" just make it to the pro level, and that does NOT get you paid!

That says nothing of the odds of actually making a roster in year one, and says even less of sticking around the league long enough for those big paydays to set you up after retirement.

Basically, if you're playing the odds, the expected value of a college football scholarship isn't bolstered much by the professional payday. Nearly all the value is in that college degree (paid for by scholarship). So graduating with a degree that you can turn into a career is the best play BY FAR.

That takes us to graduation rates. These seem to be fudged a bit since, well, it's in the programs' interests to hide poor performance. You can do your own digging. Lots of articles about this, and it's not terribly great. The NCAA has their bookeeping, the football programs have theirs, and most expert agree that neither counts accurately. Best case, graduation rates are in line with general student graduation rates. Worst case, not even close.

Lower than students of similar economic backgrounds who spend a similar number of hours working after you correct for field of study?

But the parent point was that the coaches/programs paid for themselves, but if you have to figure in 100 scholarships at $10-50k/yr that's $10-50M ignoring the cost of the stadium. I don't see most (>50%) Div1 teams making back that kind of money from their Alumni.

The best argument I can see is that this is an outreach program for minority and under-privileged youth. The problem with that is the brain-damage that football causes.

Not when these athletes are tied to their performance and can lose their scholarships, also not when they are forced to study easy classes to keep playing instead of studying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/opinion/nocera-football-an...

Separate (and valid) issue from the core issue the parent pointed out.

College football programs are often very big profit centers. They typically pay for the other sports programs as well. That's why football coaches are paid the way they are.

College players should obviously be compensated in some manner as well. All that will do is reduce the profitability (or increase ticket prices a lot higher to offset, which may not be possible); it's unlikely to eliminate the business being quite profitable given the scale & ticket prices.

Compensation is a vector.

I've always thought that the "profit center"/"cost center" distinction doesn't make a lot of sense.

The instant example is a pretty good illustration---a crappy university president can do a lot more damage to a university than a crappy football coach (e.g. by making decisions that cause the failure of big chunks of the institution and massive financial losses), so judging the impact of hiring a better president vs a better football coach by whether they're responsible primarily for things with a plus sign or a minus sign on them in the accounting books seems... pointless?

(Plus, since the president is the football coach's boss, why would we account football revenue to the coach and not the president?)

realistically, they are profit centers for the football programs. Little if any of that money makes it back to the school.

For their math to work you have to assume that NONE of the donors who donate to sports would donate to anything else...I find that to be a fairly unlikely assumption.

> Little if any of that money makes it back to the school.

That's incorrect. Most major football programs transfer a large percentage of their revenue above operating expenses, back to the university. Texas for example, which is typically one of the top five college football businesses (and nearly a pro level business), transfers about half of its revenue after expenses (ie profit) back to the university.

The top teams do a whole lot better than smaller schools though. For considering policy the aggregate is more interesting than the schools with the best numbers.

Look at the spending that the schools other than UM and MSU put towards athletics:

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/08/michigan_college...

It's not about donors. Div I schools can make hundreds of millions of dollars from media rights.