The solution is to divorce academic institutions from the sports business.

This deprives no one their ability to make money & also gives student athletes the ability to either get an education or hone their skills.

Most of these high paid coaches and rules violations involve football and basketball anyway...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/lets-start-paying...

On the other hand, coaches get to demand pay that is somewhat linked to the value they provide to the school, and they don't even have to risk career-ending and life-changing injuries (and incur almost certain subtle brain damage) in the process.

Oh, and as is common in our society, the people with the high-paid, safe job are mostly white, and there are many people of color in the exploited job (especially in the sports that make real money). Oh, and they're basically all men.

The "real" money will always be in the pros. Get the kids to the pros quicker, if they want.

Athletic departments as a whole aren't profitable because the ridiculous amounts of profits earned by basketball and football can't subsidize the losses incurred by supporting the other sports.

But really, I think the issue here is that you're arguing at cross purposes. There's a strong argument to be made that the whole idea of the state running a profit-making sports team through its universities is flawed and borderline immoral. And I tend to agree.

But that says nothing about the economics of the situation, or the "fairness" of paying the coaching staff a market wage, or even the fact that these absurd salaries are, in fact, driven by a very liquid and efficient market.

http://budget.universityofcalifornia.edu/files/2011/11/2012-...

Of the 119 FBS football teams, 68 (57.1 percent) finished the year in the black.

Of the 119 FBS schools playing men's basketball, 67 teams made a profit. One of those same 119 schools made money in women's basketball in 2008.

FBS football teams recorded a median net profit of $1.95 million. Men's basketball at the same schools produced a median profit of $518,000. No other sport at the FBS schools, measured by median values, showed a program in the black.

so yeah, profit centers.

I'm going to sound like an economist that refuses to pick up a $20 bill (if it's real, somebody else would've picked it up), but there's, for example, profit opportunity in on-campus food catering. So a bunch of private contractors sign up with university to operate their own facility, hire their own staff, and give the university a cut of the earnings or licensing fee.

Why has no for-profit corporation stepped up to build up a stadium, hire coaches and players, license the university name and then enjoy the profits?

Do you have a source on that? I couldn't figure out a way to research it myself, but it seems illogical that the cost of financing the facilities would not hit he P&L of the athletics association.

Why has no for-profit corporation stepped up to build up a stadium, hire coaches and players, license the university name and then enjoy the profits?

The same reason many Universities still own on campus housing in most cases. Likely because Universities will not let them. Also, it is likely that the NCAA would oppose it.

It seems that most universities believe there is some value in it for students considering that many schools are happy to run athletic departments at a net loss. The Ivy League for example has a strong tradition of fostering athletic competition and those schools often have larger athletic departments than most large state universities.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2004/09/surprise-winning...

However, the coach's salary is typically paid out of the athletic revenue stream, not directly from state funds, which makes it a bit of a moot point.

(Note: To the best of my knowledge (which isn't much) this holds for Univ. of TN, Univ. of AL, and Univ. of WI. It's probably different at many other schools.)

Of course, all that having been said, the popular sports entirely fund all of the less popular, but still very meaningful athletic programs. There's also a _lot_ to be said for the secondary effects of having a popular sports team on the overall prestige and income of a university.

scholarships are counted at the full tuition rate

its obvious that the marginal cost of educating 80 some football players isn't 0, but its not obvious that its the full tuition rate

a sizeable chunk of students are offered some sort of financial package to attend a university,

some non zero percentage of football players come from low income situations such that it is unlikely they would be paying full tuition sans the scholarship

also a dispropotionate number of scholarship athletes are from out of state, if they disappear its unlikely that the replacement 80 some students would be paying as much out of state tuition

However, alumni donations are often strongly correlated to the performance of the sports teams (at universities with traditions of popular sports teams, anyway). Donations are a non-trivial part of a university's income stream.

Also, a prestigious sports team can definitely boost undergraduate enrollment. It's effective advertising, as several people have pointed out.

From an academic standpoint, I've seen the bad side of popular sports teams (_Heavy_ pressure on professors and TA's to give star players high grades despite a complete lack of attendance.). I personally feel like most (particularly in the southeast US) of the large schools with popular sports teams have absolutely awful undergraduate programs. That's partly just a function of being a large university, though.

There are certainly negatives along with the positives.

A quick look for historical data failed, but if you can find the data, the big shift should have occurred with the class matriculating in 1994±1.

Correlation is not causation, but it's not implausible that notability in athletics can have sympathetic effects for funding and student quality.

If only there were a daily 'Science' section in the newspaper to go alongside 'Sports'....

However, I know some very smart people who did actually choose their undergraduate program based partly on the football team.

Expensive marketing.

when you buy a pop out of the machine, what fraction of what your paying for is raw material + production cost and what percentage is so the can pay for superbowl ads so the next time you're thirsty their brand is the first the pops into your head?

In my case I said no to a top 10 engineering undergraduate school offering some scholarship and yes to the University of Alabama which was my grandad/dad's alma mater and thus our football team, an in-state school with cheaper tuition offering a lot of scholarship, and not Auburn University which had a slightly better engineering program rank but were UofA rivals. Had a _great_ uni experience and would make the same choice every time.

Had no trouble getting a job in a large company as a kernel developer straight from uni. Sure maybe doing MIT or Stanford I could have been a HVT for ~Google or I would have been in an impromptu startup by junior year.. but those student ticket prices!!!

Roll Tide. Still fly back a few times per season to go to games.

A guy I graduated with plays in the NBA, and makes somewhere around 6 million a year, which is about the league average. He'll probably be retired in a few more years but he'll still have had a good 10-12 years of making an extremely high salary.

Sports Illustrated estimated in 2009 that 78 percent of NFL players are bankrupt or facing serious financial stress within two years of ending their playing careers and that 60 percent of NBA players are broke within five years of retiring from the game.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-04-22/Pro-a...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2013/05/13/the-magic...

Nevada is completely appropriate, though.

Now a coach on the other hand...