Trey W.
Hall-of-Famer
Offline
Just doing a little reading shows since the 1920’s Football has colleges money making sport, mens basketball typically second, some baseball teams third and typically everything else loses money.
www.bannersociety.com
Football’s real contribution was well over $100 million of LSU’s $145 million in total athletic money. But even going by LSU’s accounting, football made $55 million in profit. Men’s basketball and baseball, together, added a little less than $1 million. Everything else lost money, but thanks to football, the department still made about $8 million.
The situation is similar at schools that don’t have blue-blood football teams. Take Kansas, probably the school with the widest gap between its men’s basketball team (consistently in the top five) and football team (one of FBS’ worst). In 2018, the hoops team brought in $16 million in ticket sales, compared to $4 million for football. But football had $34 million in total revenue, compared to $19 million for hoops, because Kansas was honest and credited most of its Big 12 media money to the football column.
Football has been college sports’ golden goose since the 1800s
Since the beginning, football has been the key to every other college sport’s survival.
www.bannersociety.comFootball’s real contribution was well over $100 million of LSU’s $145 million in total athletic money. But even going by LSU’s accounting, football made $55 million in profit. Men’s basketball and baseball, together, added a little less than $1 million. Everything else lost money, but thanks to football, the department still made about $8 million.
The situation is similar at schools that don’t have blue-blood football teams. Take Kansas, probably the school with the widest gap between its men’s basketball team (consistently in the top five) and football team (one of FBS’ worst). In 2018, the hoops team brought in $16 million in ticket sales, compared to $4 million for football. But football had $34 million in total revenue, compared to $19 million for hoops, because Kansas was honest and credited most of its Big 12 media money to the football column.