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Old 05-09-2012, 12:37 PM   #51
lcjjdnh
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Originally Posted by cartman View Post
The flaw in that argument is that a lot of schools (Texas is a big example) have a separate legal entity for their athletic department. There is no taxpayer money used for UT athletics.

Again, the fact those two schools make money tells us nothing about whether other schools benefit from playing football.

Plus, what about the taxes that don't get collected because they're a tax-exempt organization? The taxes that don't get collected because people can write-off large chunks of their "donations" to the athletic department that give them the right to buy tickets?


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Old 05-09-2012, 12:39 PM   #52
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Taxes not collected are not the same things as tax dollars spent.
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:40 PM   #53
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Taxes not collected are not the same things as tax dollars spent.

Also, you posted before I edited, but, again, the fact Texas and Michigan makes money tells us nothing about the best policy for society overall. Many schools don't, but feel like they need to spend money to "keep up".
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:42 PM   #54
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Dola, the CBO has stated that they don't think tax revenues would be affected by changing the tax exempt status of college athletics.

Congressional report: College-sports tax may not help feds - USATODAY.com

Quote:
The CBO report concluded that removing the major tax preferences would be unlikely to significantly alter the nature of the programs or garner much tax revenue, even if the sports programs were classified for tax purposes as being engaged in unrelated commercial activity.
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:44 PM   #55
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Fundamentally, this is the discussion to be had imo.

Should underage kids be allowed to participate in the activity? And this is both a legal debate and a public/private debate.

Legally, we may see a day where under 18 kids cannot participate in organized football. And as much as I'm a football fan, with 2 sons that have also played, I don't know that I'd have a super big problem with it. To ban adults from playing organized football...silly to even contemplate.


Doesn't this ignore reality, though?

Pro, college, and high school football are tremendously popular and worth biillions of dollars annually. How can you have a professional football league without having young adults who know how to play it? It's not as simple as "go play basketball and baseball until you turn 18, then you can strap on a helmet." There are specific skills and talents to be developed that make the athletes at the college/pro level worth watching. They don't magically appear when someone who's never played the sport before turns 18.

I just don't see how that is ever an option. Even if you want to try to eliminate/minimize hitting by turning high school and earlier football into flag football until you turn 18, that just increases the chances of injury when an 18+ year old is exposed to hits for the first time and doesn't know how to take or give one properly.

This whole "debate" is silly to me on any number of levels.
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:45 PM   #56
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Dola, the CBO has stated that they don't think tax revenues would be affected by changing the tax exempt status of college athletics.

Congressional report: College-sports tax may not help feds - USATODAY.com

Important part you left out:

Quote:
"As long as athletic departments remained a part of the larger nonprofit or public university, schools would have considerable opportunity to shift revenue, costs, or both between their taxed and untaxed sectors, rendering efforts to tax that unrelated income largely ineffective," the report concluded.
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:52 PM   #57
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That was if the athletic departments were taxed, which they are not.
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:52 PM   #58
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Doesn't this ignore reality, though?

Pro, college, and high school football are tremendously popular and worth biillions of dollars annually. How can you have a professional football league without having young adults who know how to play it? It's not as simple as "go play basketball and baseball until you turn 18, then you can strap on a helmet." There are specific skills and talents to be developed that make the athletes at the college/pro level worth watching. They don't magically appear when someone who's never played the sport before turns 18.

I just don't see how that is ever an option. Even if you want to try to eliminate/minimize hitting by turning high school and earlier football into flag football until you turn 18, that just increases the chances of injury when an 18+ year old is exposed to hits for the first time and doesn't know how to take or give one properly.

This whole "debate" is silly to me on any number of levels.

Well, I guess this goes toward a larger debate: does society actually benefit from having "great" football players? And I don't mean that as an argument about the value of sports in society, but rather am questioning whether it really matters what sports people are good at. In the old days people loved baseball; today, football is the sport of choice. Is the marginal value-added of having improved football players really all that great of a benefit to society? If we banned football, people would fill their time with other sports or other forms of entertainment. Would society as a whole really be all that worse off?
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:54 PM   #59
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That was if the athletic departments were taxed, which they are not.

I get that. My point was that the reason cited for minimal revenue gains was that colleges would use accounting tricks to get around it. If that's the baseline for tax policy decisions, we wouldn't close a lot of loopholes.

Nor, given it has nothing to do with how schools account for their money, does it address the tax-exempt status of donations.
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:56 PM   #60
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Are you kidding me? You have offered no substantive response other than that Michigan and Texas make a lot of money, which tells us little, if anything, about this policy debate.
Sure I did. I refuted your points. But ultimately, Ksyrup has it right.
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Doesn't this ignore reality, though?
Yup. This whole silly discussion pretty much has to ignore how the real world works to go anywhere.
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:58 PM   #61
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Doesn't this ignore reality, though?

Pro, college, and high school football are tremendously popular and worth biillions of dollars annually. How can you have a professional football league without having young adults who know how to play it? It's not as simple as "go play basketball and baseball until you turn 18, then you can strap on a helmet." There are specific skills and talents to be developed that make the athletes at the college/pro level worth watching. They don't magically appear when someone who's never played the sport before turns 18.

On the legal side, I could actually see it happening. I think it will take years of publicity campaigns to do it but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens in say, 10 years. Could be sooner if medical research proves it to be more hazardous than we all "think" the risks are today.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...there is a desire by a great many people to control what others do & how they live in society. And they believe its all for others' own good too. As if there should not be stupid people & smart people...just all people who are all equally smart & equally tempered. I'm getting off on a tangent here but thats where I think this gets its momentum from.
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Old 05-09-2012, 12:58 PM   #62
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If we banned football, a lot of people making a lot of money would no longer have that money. They don't have an automatic in with the next entertainment activities on the list of popularity. So they aren't going to be interested in seeing football go away. Again, this isn't a realistic discussion because it's not going anywhere. There are very few instances of people in power doing the right thing and giving up money/power for the good of the general public. And this certainly will not be on the short list.
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:02 PM   #63
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There was a previous time that college football was under the threat of the ban hammer. There were changes made to the game, and it was allowed to continue. That is the most likely scenario in this case as well.

When A President Threatened to Abolish Football in the United States « Symon Sez
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:02 PM   #64
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If we banned football, a lot of people making a lot of money would no longer have that money. They don't have an automatic in with the next entertainment activities on the list of popularity. So they aren't going to be interested in seeing football go away. Again, this isn't a realistic discussion because it's not going anywhere. There are very few instances of people in power doing the right thing and giving up money/power for the good of the general public. And this certainly will not be on the short list.

If that's the theory, there's no point in having any policy debates at all. About anything.

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Old 05-09-2012, 01:03 PM   #65
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The truly 1-and-dones only go to college because it's a means to an end - getting to the NBA - not because they really have anything to gain from the college basketball experience.

Doesnt everyone go to college as a means to an end?
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:06 PM   #66
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Sure I did. I refuted your points.

I'll assume the absence of a response to any of the points I made beneath the introduction you quoted speaks for itself.
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:32 PM   #67
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On the legal side, I could actually see it happening. I think it will take years of publicity campaigns to do it but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens in say, 10 years. Could be sooner if medical research proves it to be more hazardous than we all "think" the risks are today.

Especially considering medical research in the last 5 years have shown us that concussions do far more damage to our brains that we first thought. And football players suffer a ton of concussions.

I think this retired football player lawsuit in addition to some killing themselves and making sure they don't shoot through their heads on purpose - so science can analyize their brains may result in a groundswell of change too.

But the BIGGER reason high school football may end is that these medical research may result in insurance premiums that are charged to high schools with football programs may be so ridiculously high that most school districts won't be able to afford them.
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:34 PM   #68
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This whole "debate" is silly to me on any number of levels.

+1
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:34 PM   #69
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If that's the theory, there's no point in having any policy debates at all. About anything.

I don't think it's theory. It's fact.
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:35 PM   #70
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Meanwhile, back in the real world ...

ESPN and ACC Extend Exclusive, Multi-Platform Agreement through 2026-27 - The Official Athletic Site of the Atlantic Coast Conference
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:37 PM   #71
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Especially considering medical research in the last 5 years have shown us that concussions do far more damage to our brains that we first thought. And football players suffer a ton of concussions.

I think this retired football player lawsuit in addition to some killing themselves and making sure they don't shoot through their heads on purpose - so science can analyize their brains may result in a groundswell of change too.

But the BIGGER reason high school football may end is that these medical research may result in insurance premiums that are charged to high schools with football programs may be so ridiculously high that most school districts won't be able to afford them.

Why is this any different from the societal costs we continue to willingly bear as a result of drinking and smoking?
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:49 PM   #72
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I'll assume the absence of a response to any of the points I made beneath the introduction you quoted speaks for itself.
You assume correctly. It says "over the course of this thread, it has become clear to me that this dude isn't equipped to handle how the real world works, so it's not worth my time to try to educate him any further."
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:50 PM   #73
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lolz
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:52 PM   #74
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Why is this any different from the societal costs we continue to willingly bear as a result of drinking and smoking?

I didn't realize that our high schools had to pay insurance for drinking and smoking by students . Well, I guess they get around it by banning it...
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Old 05-09-2012, 01:53 PM   #75
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100-round bare knuckle boxing matches used to be a pretty big business, I think any institution can go away, especially when a younger generation has a consensus and the older generations die off. But realistically, it takes a public backlash/popularity decline to kill off an institution, rather than congress waking up one day and just banning it. And I could see the former happen in football. If we have a death on the field at the Thanksgiving game next year, a couple more hall of famers kill themselves (perhaps after murdering their families), and then a paralysis injury on the opening kickoff of the following season, football's going to be a lot less fun for a lot of people who are going to stop spending money on it and paying attention to it.

Edit: (Or, kind of similarity, I could see joint congressional/league safety precautions that kill the game's popularity.)

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Old 05-09-2012, 02:13 PM   #76
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You assume correctly. It says "over the course of this thread, it has become clear to me that this dude isn't equipped to handle how the real world works, so it's not worth my time to try to educate him any further."

The education you want to provide isn't worth it--even it's free. I get it. College football is unlikely to be banned. Brilliant analysis. Nowhere in this thread have I disputed that.

The debate topic, though, is whether college football should be banned.

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Old 05-09-2012, 02:16 PM   #77
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100-round bare knuckle boxing matches used to be a pretty big business, I think any institution can go away, especially when a younger generation has a consensus and the older generations die off. But realistically, it takes a public backlash/popularity decline to kill off an institution, rather than congress waking up one day and just banning it. And I could see the former happen in football. If we have a death on the field at the Thanksgiving game next year, a couple more hall of famers kill themselves (perhaps after murdering their families), and then a paralysis injury on the opening kickoff of the following season, football's going to be a lot less fun for a lot of people who are going to stop spending money on it and paying attention to it.

Edit: (Or, kind of similarity, I could see joint congressional/league safety precautions that kill the game's popularity.)

It could be a long term thing as well - as people find out more and more about what football can do to your brain, they may not let their kids play pee-wee and high school football. Without that talent pipe, how is the same quality of players in the higher levels of the game going to continue?
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:17 PM   #78
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Doesnt everyone go to college as a means to an end?

Nah. There are some that go to college to major in Liberal Arts.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:17 PM   #79
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The education you want to provide isn't worth it--even it's free. I get it. College football is unlikely to be banned. Brilliant analysis. Nowhere in this thread have I disputed that.

The debate topic, though, is whether college football should be banned.
...which, as others have pointed out as well, is just silly. But hey, if participating in some imaginary intellectual masturbation is your thing, have at it. Ultimately, it's likely a pretty harmless outlet that's better than the alternatives.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:23 PM   #80
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if participating in some imaginary intellectual masturbation is your thing, have at it.

We're on on an internet message board where we discuss sports and politics. Imaginary intellectual masturbation is ALL our thing.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:25 PM   #81
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I skeptical of benefits that can't be quantified. Is there any proof whatsoever that the tens of millions spent by Rutgers is a positive? The admin says it is, but they can't offer any proof.

What kind of proof are you looking for? Number of applicants since 2006...up. Average SAT/GPA of incoming students...up. Donations to the football program...up. Donations to the athletic department as a whole...up. The football program was making money pre-expansion, and will in all likelihood make money when the stadium is paid off. Rutgers problem...in addition to woefully inadequate funding...is that we have one of the largest athletic departments in the country in terms of scholarship sports (I think something like 24 programs) without anywhere near the infrastructure to support it. All but about three of those are mega losers when it comes to money. And that's after eliminating 6 or so programs a few years back.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:26 PM   #82
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I didn't realize that our high schools had to pay insurance for drinking and smoking by students . Well, I guess they get around it by banning it...

Where do high schools get the money to fund school activities?
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:27 PM   #83
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People should be free to make money engaging in a business if they can. I'm not going to read an article about basketball, but I assume a good bit of the argument is devoted to "poor kids aren't mature enough to handle the money." That's life. I'm going to guess that the 19-year old GED who opens a restaurant could probably benefit from having a few years of experience under his belt, not to mention some courses in how to run a business. He needs neither to form a company and go into business. I'm not sure I really see a difference here.
But colleges are in the business of preparing both students and athletes. Why is preparing someone for a crap degree in some dept with no real practical job applications more important than training an athlete to eventually go pro? The system is currently setup to have colleges help train some athletes (baseball, basketball, soccer, football, ...) to eventually have pro or Olympic careers. In return, esp in football and basketball, most universities are fairly compensated in the form of additional revenue.

If schools choose to use that extra revenue to subsidize their water polo, track and field or tennis teams - then so be it. But getting mad at the revenue generating sports doesn't solve the issue of non-revenue generating sports costing universities a ton of money (whether or not football pays the bill).

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Most D1 athletic departments lose money, some lose quite a lot of money. For example, the latest numbers show Rutgers subsidizing the athletic department with nearly 30 million dollars. The big boys, ie tOSU, Texas, USC, break even, but most schools funnel millions from their general fund into athletic departments.

rutgers-football-fails-profit-test-as-students-pay-1-000.html

edit: And in this economic environment departments are most definitely under the gun if they don't bring in enrollment.
Again, this is because football/basketball are asked to support all the other sports. Cutting football for most D1 athletics dept would be akin to having a company with 5 product lines: one nets out $10K profit a month in revenue while 4 each lose 3K - and deciding to cut the first product line because the company is losing $2K a month.

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I'm not arguing that football should be banned, but just that, especially in an era of declining public funding for academics, it's crazy for millions to be siphoned off for support of athletics. It's especially crazy when you step down to mid-major conferences. Miami(OH) subsidizes athletics with almost 20 millions dollars. My alma mater, Morehead State, which doesn't even have scholarship football, spends almost 10 million on athletics.
It seems, then, that your problem isn't with football or basketball - but Title IX and non-revenue generating sports like track, tennis, golf, gymnastics and others. The optimal revenue generating system for universities would be to have only football, men's basketball and *maybe* baseball or women's basketball (in certain regions/teams).

Just look at Rutger's track team. The have 70 total athletes and 20+ road scheduled events. If you add in scholarships+room and board+coaches+hotels+travel costs and meals, I bet the track and field team costs Rutgers atleast $1 mil a year with no real revenue brought in. You cut track and field, you save some big bucks.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:32 PM   #84
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Where do high schools get the money to fund school activities?

Then the question is do you think society should bear ridiculously high insurance costs just so kids can play football in high school. I doubt many folks will want their property taxes going up for that.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:35 PM   #85
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It seems, then, that your problem isn't with football or basketball - but Title IX and non-revenue generating sports like track, tennis, golf, gymnastics and others. The optimal revenue generating system for universities would be to have only football, men's basketball and *maybe* baseball or women's basketball (in certain regions/teams).

Just look at Rutger's track team. The have 70 total athletes and 20+ road scheduled events. If you add in scholarships+room and board+coaches+hotels+travel costs and meals, I bet the track and field team costs Rutgers atleast $1 mil a year with no real revenue brought in. You cut track and field, you save some big bucks.

Since you're piggybacking on the point I just brought up, let me add some additional color.

When the school cut those additional programs, people flipped their shit. Protests, outcry from legislators, threats to pull donations (crew was one of the affected sports, we can stereotype for a second about the general mindset of those parents), etc. All because they were downgraded to club status (all current scholarships were honored). How bad would it be now if those cuts weren't made? The school saved $10 million over the last five years because of it.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:38 PM   #86
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We should just put all of our kids in bubbles.

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Old 05-09-2012, 02:44 PM   #87
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It could be a long term thing as well - as people find out more and more about what football can do to your brain, they may not let their kids play pee-wee and high school football. Without that talent pipe, how is the same quality of players in the higher levels of the game going to continue?
That may well be true, but a few things do come to mind...

1. At the highest levels of college football, there's already a higher-than-expected distribution of guys from less-educated families. It's a overall demographic that, I suspect, won't lessen the talent pool as quickly as one might think.

2. If the *entire* pool is lessened, how much will that even matter to college football fans? Sure, 25 years from now, 60somethings like us will bemoan how much faster The Honey Badger was than Deion Sanders III is, but I would suspect that the talent decline would be gradual enough not to detract from the overall success of the sport.

3. (really more of a 2a) For those who follow it more as an NFL pipeline, the same holds true: even if the players aren't as good as they used to be, they're the best available.

All that said, ultimately, I suspect that the money is enough that the game will remain attractive to enough of a critical mass of potential players to maintain the current level of play for a very long time.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:45 PM   #88
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Yeah, Logan hit this on the head above. It seems to me there are two camps:

1. Football is too dangerous and should be banned for safety reasons.
- OK, first we need to look at banning hockey, lacrosse, rugby, MMA, boxing and a host of other sports that have the ability to cause serious injury as well. But, until society decides that banning a sport is something they want to do - there's no reason to prevent universities from participating.

2. Football and sports cost universities too much money - money that could be better spent on education.
- Then focus on maximizing University revenue. Repeal title IX and cut every sport at each university that doesn't atleast break even in a 5-10 year window. That would ensure that no money goes into athletics that could potentially be gained from tuition or other funding sources meant for student education.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:46 PM   #89
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Where do high schools get the money to fund school activities?

From taxpayers ... and that'll get even tougher in districts where you're talking about HS football being the single most interesting thing about the school system (other than taxpayer subsidized daycare).

edit to add: Like I said, there's so much absurdity in discussing any of this, it seems pretty ridiculous to spend much time on any single point.
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Old 05-09-2012, 02:54 PM   #90
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We're on on an internet message board where we discuss sports and politics. Imaginary intellectual masturbation is ALL our thing.
I giggled.
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Old 05-09-2012, 03:31 PM   #91
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Yeah, Logan hit this on the head above. It seems to me there are two camps:

1. Football is too dangerous and should be banned for safety reasons.
- OK, first we need to look at banning hockey, lacrosse, rugby, MMA, boxing and a host of other sports that have the ability to cause serious injury as well. But, until society decides that banning a sport is something they want to do - there's no reason to prevent universities from participating.

2. Football and sports cost universities too much money - money that could be better spent on education.
- Then focus on maximizing University revenue. Repeal title IX and cut every sport at each university that doesn't atleast break even in a 5-10 year window. That would ensure that no money goes into athletics that could potentially be gained from tuition or other funding sources meant for student education.

2 can be solved much easier. Codify what counts as athletic expenses and revenues and then require schools to balance the budget of the athletic department with no other subsidies. They can choose to get to balanced by cutting whatever they wish as long as they eventually get to a balanced budget.
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Old 05-09-2012, 03:34 PM   #92
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Then the question is do you think society should bear ridiculously high insurance costs just so kids can play football in high school. I doubt many folks will want their property taxes going up for that.

This. People can still play football, but should public schools pay for it?
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Old 05-09-2012, 03:36 PM   #93
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Then the question is do you think society should bear ridiculously high insurance costs just so kids can play football in high school. I doubt many folks will want their property taxes going up for that.

And that's directly relevant to my question of why this is any different with respect to the health issues caused by drinking and smoking (not to mention direct injuries caused by drinking and driving). You've come back to the exact point I was trying to make. What makes banning football because of the societal costs any more of an alternative than banning alcohol and smoking? They are all costing us a great deal.
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Old 05-09-2012, 03:37 PM   #94
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This. People can still play football, but should public schools pay for it?

a) It's probably better use of the money than many of the alternatives

and

b) How much money will be lost when taxpayers cast a dim view of those who seen as taking away the sport?
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Old 05-09-2012, 03:38 PM   #95
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What kind of proof are you looking for? Number of applicants since 2006...up. Average SAT/GPA of incoming students...up. Donations to the football program...up. Donations to the athletic department as a whole...up. The football program was making money pre-expansion, and will in all likelihood make money when the stadium is paid off. Rutgers problem...in addition to woefully inadequate funding...is that we have one of the largest athletic departments in the country in terms of scholarship sports (I think something like 24 programs) without anywhere near the infrastructure to support it. All but about three of those are mega losers when it comes to money. And that's after eliminating 6 or so programs a few years back.

If they make the max of your estimate, 2 mil, it will take fifteen years just to break even for last year's deficit. They aren't going to turn a net profit in athletics for decades at best.

It's very hard to find causation for applicants and test scores. I'm at a D3 school with mid-level athletics for our size. Our applicants and test scores are up over the same period, but that isn't due to football. Donations to the athletic department may be up, but not nearly enough to cover the debt.
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Old 05-09-2012, 03:41 PM   #96
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But colleges are in the business of preparing both students and athletes. Why is preparing someone for a crap degree in some dept with no real practical job applications more important than training an athlete to eventually go pro? The system is currently setup to have colleges help train some athletes (baseball, basketball, soccer, football, ...) to eventually have pro or Olympic careers. In return, esp in football and basketball, most universities are fairly compensated in the form of additional revenue.

If schools choose to use that extra revenue to subsidize their water polo, track and field or tennis teams - then so be it. But getting mad at the revenue generating sports doesn't solve the issue of non-revenue generating sports costing universities a ton of money (whether or not football pays the bill).

I'm not sure we're on the same page here at all. I'm not arguing to ban college basketball, nor have I said I'm "mad" at revenue-generating sports. For me, this is about justifying why someone should be forced to go to college (practically speaking; spare me the "they can go to Europe for a year" thing) instead of going straight into the profession of their choosing. With football, I udnerstand the argument for it. With basketball, that argument doesn't work. It is only thrown out there as a way to keep both college and pro basketball as money-making endeavors.

So, college basketball can exist. It just should be permitted to exist with a group of less talented players than it has now. Which, in turn, will make it a less attractive entertainment option because the caliber of star player will be dramatically lessened. Which, in turn, will not make it as profitable for schools, TV networks, shoe and clothing companies, and advertisers. Which, in turn, is why they have conspired to force kids to attend for at least a year, so that everyone can continue to make lots of money.
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Old 05-09-2012, 03:44 PM   #97
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And that's directly relevant to my question of why this is any different with respect to the health issues caused by drinking and smoking (not to mention direct injuries caused by drinking and driving). You've come back to the exact point I was trying to make. What makes banning football because of the societal costs any more of an alternative than banning alcohol and smoking? They are all costing us a great deal.

It's harder to see the alcohol and smoking costs because they're kind of abstract and impact us all in complex ways. For a city or county, the insurance costs could be a number right in front of them that they have to account for in that year's budget. "OK, football is going to cost us $2 million this year..........how may police officers jobs will that cost?"

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Old 05-09-2012, 03:46 PM   #98
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I personally don't think it should be banned. Even at the high school level. There are a lot of benefits it provides particularly to teenagers that outweight the risks. With the studies done on childhood obesity and how that translates later in life, I think a small risk of injury is worth having kids actively engaged in physical activity. I know that I was in the greatest shape of my life playing football and learned a lot about strength training and fitness as a whole. Not to skills such as discipline and teamwork.

College is a different animal though. There do seem to be a lot of benefits it provides to the school and local community. The creepy fanatics would be a bigger reason to me than the injury news at this time. But they'd just shift their obsessions on to other areas in life.

With that said they should absolutely be paid market value for their services. It is a job and their labor brings in millions of dollars. It should be treated like any other job, especially one that has physical risks.
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Old 05-09-2012, 03:47 PM   #99
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If they make the max of your estimate, 2 mil, it will take fifteen years just to break even for last year's deficit. They aren't going to turn a net profit in athletics for decades at best.

It's very hard to find causation for applicants and test scores. I'm at a D3 school with mid-level athletics for our size. Our applicants and test scores are up over the same period, but that isn't due to football. Donations to the athletic department may be up, but not nearly enough to cover the debt.

First of all, that savings just from those 6 sports. Knock off another 10 sports and how much does that save? The women's basketball program alone loses something like $3MM a year.

But again, the "deficit" figure from last year includes something like $8MM in principal and interest on bond payments for what is, and will continue to be, an asset of the university. The football program doesn't get the benefit of that "credited" back once its paid off free and clear.

If the school decided to cut everything but football and women's soccer, the athletic department would be profitable by all accounts.
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Old 05-09-2012, 04:06 PM   #100
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And that's directly relevant to my question of why this is any different with respect to the health issues caused by drinking and smoking (not to mention direct injuries caused by drinking and driving). You've come back to the exact point I was trying to make. What makes banning football because of the societal costs any more of an alternative than banning alcohol and smoking? They are all costing us a great deal.

They are paid for by different taxes for one. And football money would be coming from the property tax money given to schools, whereas alcohol and smoking insurance costs would be coming from the federal treasury (I assume).
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