Michael Crow said that ASU "eliminated" the debt owed to it by its athletic department—listed by Sportico at more than $300 million—as a key element of its restructuring. Not entirely clear whether the debt was entirely forgiven or dealt with in another manner: "What's happened...— Chris Karpman (@ChrisKarpman) May 24, 2024
And with this, the era of absorbing Athletic Departments back into the main school funding has begun. I'm sure the students of ASU like to know their tuition just went to forgiving athletic debt.
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In all fairness, it's Friday night so they're all drunk right now. They won't care.
It's Arizona - it's still Friday afternoon
Fixed it for you
Sorta surprised this happening, but also not.
The thing is, if universities are selling an experience (as opposed to just an education) to consumers, then it sort of makes sense to admit that athletics and fandom are part of the overall product you are selling, rather than some add on.
Or maybe this is just a way to cook the books 🤷♂️
I think university presidents and boards of big public universities have long undervalued the impact and exposure that big time college athletics bring. VT admissions skyrocketed after Mike Vick. I think many of them are finally realizing that sports and academia can coexist and need each other in a lot of ways - sports sell the student experience and are huge for advertising the school and brand.
It's interesting - Matt Brown has a really good piece on this. The TL;DR is that it takes a lot of investment, organizational success, and luck for a university to transform athletic success into sustained academic success. If the goal is to improve academics or boost admissions, there are much more effective (and often cheaper) options.
Looks like we know how they keep those ticket prices down.
Exactly. Now we know why their football tickets didn't have to go up as much.
Better to load it into tuition, and push it towards someone else's balance sheet.
Just posted the below in the settlement thread., but seems more appropriate here. Arizona State should be ashamed, and students should be asking for $300M in tuition forgiveness/refunds.
Not that this wasn't an issue already, given inflated coaching salaries etc., but how annoyed is the general student population going to be now that their is another $20M line item to cover, and they are responsible for a (sometimes large) chunk of the budget regardless of if they partake in watching sports at school or not.
I get that it's revenue sharing, but a fair amount of the athletic departments are supported by student fees and not profitable on revenue alone. They were yesterday and they will be the future, but seems like you need to get the general student population out of directly supporting the athletic department, when is getting more and more clear that the affiliation is in name only.
Not to mention VT's football enhancement fund coming from the general school budget/endowment.
It's okay. They'll just demand the taxpayers pay for it so their loans can be "forgiven" too.
Some of them will, yes. Taxpayers are already funding the public university too
A college education is an investment and people need to realize that, but I don't think that investment and the "collegiate" experience should mean paying for other stuff that has nothing to do with your education.
But we have gotten beyond the point where amenities matter just as much as the degree to attract students so it's a double edged sword.
I've decided to forgive my morgatge debt. Is that how this works?
Yes. Same as business and auto loans. It's science.
I guess ASU tuition just went toward covering the buyout for ol Herm. "Hello! You play to
win the gameget paid!"Not a great look for a public institution with a relatively small endowment.
Does this mean they will join the ACC soon?
I mean they nailed the audition here.
There is a pen15 joke in there somewhere.
Maybe they'll erect a monument in commemoration?
The academic side really rose to the occasion to fill that hole in the athletics budget
Time out....We have to pay players, because Athletic departments make billions-it's only fair. So this story is total bullshit.
Athletic departments are insolvent because of negative net revenue sports and poor economic practices.
That will be a critical dilemma moving forward, especially if Title IX requires equal pay regardless of revenues generated.
The whole thing is definitely a huge threat to Title IX and the progress made there. How long before schools just start cutting non-revenue sports just to fund football and basketball? Really a threat to all non-revenue sports which obviously has a huge impact on women's sports offered at the collegiate level.
When schools pay athletes directly as employees, and all of the taxes, insurance, hiring laws, etc etc etc that goes with that, individual salaries are going to be a hell of a lot lower than people think. A lot. When spread across all sports, you are talking about very modest G league at best type salaries here. These bogus million dollar NIL deals will be a thing of the past- which is a good thing for everyone. IF- a huge IF- there is some type of salary governance here, this could bring back some semblance of sanity, competitive balance, above board payments, etc.
yea. It's interesting because Title IX is based on education, which is why scholarships must be equal. Notably, the amount of support for each sport otherwise doesn't have to be equal. It's really unknown how Title IX affects NIL.
It will be even more of a clusterf- as time passes until Congress establishes guidelines. They're the only entity that can really establish a legal-based framework moving forward that can solidify whether the players are employees, whether Title IX applies, etc.
My guess is that there will be a bifurcation of rules, separating revenue generating sports at high levels (e.g., P4 football, Major conference MBB and WBB, maybe baseball and softball) from nonrevenue sports. Athletic departments will be tasked with having two separate departments, each having their own balance sheet. Despite the urgency, I doubt Congress does anything in the near future.
"Athletic departments are insolvent"- Yep for a number of reasons. Thus I never brought into the lie that VT was sitting on this big war chest of money off the backs of slave labor nonsense. Use real data, use real numbers.
Further to your point, top level Athletic departments are NOT insolvent due to football players and basketball players. Instead, football players and basketball players provide a great value that is utilized to cover the Ath. Dept. expenses unrelated to their sport (or tangentially related, such as coach salaries and locker room extravaganzas). They are also a major influence for donations to the Ath. Dept.
It's also true that football players and basketball players are not compensated for the value they bring.
But, your point about the actual value of these contributions is very valid. The value is not as great as NIL collectives are paying, as that value is greatly inflated by the desires of individual fans to pay players to see their team win.