Will COVID-19 be the needle that finally bursts the sports bubble?

You dump the football program, may as well pack up the athletic department.

 

Fred Manfred one the guests on CNN's coronavirus town hall tonight.

 

So, sort of like Arkansas.

 

Yeah, except that they get SEC money.

 

Akron spends around $8 mil a year on its football program. No way it makes a profit.

 

Not according to its EADA report, which says that it breaks even. Yep. In the last fiscal year on record, Zips football spent $8,186,577 and magically brought in -- wait for it -- $8,186,577. What a remarkable coincidence.
The problem here -- as with virtually every other sport and school -- is that the revenue side doesn't reflect institutional subsidies, the fancy way of saying the amount of cash the rest of the school sends to athletics to mask debt.

 

Plus all the fees they slap on students that go to pay for the football program.

And they have a multi-million dollar stadium that will probably never be paid off.

But more importantly, they suck.

 

If there's anything positive in sports that can come from this, it should be the devaluation of football spending. In many cases, it's just not worth it.
The market needs to adjust in coaching salaries everywhere. And it really needs to adjust in these "consultants" and "analysts." You already had 10 full-time assistant coaches per team. And that's not enough? You need another layer of advisors with an additional several hundred thousand bucks of salary combined?
I doubt Akron has analysts. Nick Saban makes more than Akron spent on its entire program. But if you have to whack three entire teams and you won't touch a lousy football program, you've got a problem.

 

I don’t understand schools that spend on football knowing they’ll never win anything. There are no Cinderellas in football. In any given year, there are maybe 10 teams that have a chance to play for a title.

 

They probably don’t. But any MAC payment they would get would be peanuts without football. And that payment helps keep the athletic department afloat