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Originally Posted by albionmoonlight
I grew up in an area without major HS sports, so I'm curious what the bottom line is.
I understand the incentives for major cheating at the big college and professional levels. Those programs generate a ton of money and booster support, so there's a huge incentive to cheat and win and keep the money coming in.
But do HS sports generate that much money? I always kind of figured that they either cost money or broke even with ticket sales and ads in the stadium and whatnot. And I guess you'll get a donation drive to build a new fieldhouse or whatever. But, in general, HS sports isn't where the money is.
Am I just wrong about that? Are these super dirty schools actually generating revenue by winning that would dry up if they started losing?
Or is it just a pride thing and not really about the money?
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More the pride, in terms of why the money is available.
More of a mixture for the coaches involved I believe.
There's around 10% of HS football HCs in Georgia that have cracked the $100k mark for official salary. In some markets the under the table money + benefits (new car leases are popular, lots of free food) exceeds the salary.
To be fair, there's also the "keep up or get fired" aspect of it.
I believe there's almost certainly more dirty behavior taking place at also-rans that have brief flurries of success (think Ole Miss kinda stuff) than at the perennial powers.
There's also some stuff that's harder to quantify involved IMO. The impact of successful athletics on some of these schools / towns cannot be overstated. It's the only reason anyone would consider moving to them / their district, the only thing the town/school really has to hang their hat on. Easy enough to label that as simply "pride" but it's also important for their survival / development / growth in some cases.
As for the profit / loss, you're accurate in one sense, a lot of the athletic departments are break even propositions at best. But taken individually, winning football programs can fund the entire athletic department and often do. I remember the first time I heard about a $1 million a year booster club ... and that was back in the 90s. And it wasn't Valdosta.