re: The Big Ten’s revenue distributions will top $52 million per school next year

quote:

---

Profits from basketball and football pays for all the other sports, academic scholarships and research.

---

Small point - but nothing from athletics typically pays for research. It's a completely separate pot. Academic researchers in the sciences (and increasingly the social sciences) spend a lot of time writing grant proposals to fund their research through federal agencies and private foundations.

I deeply love college sports. But if athletic departments were forced to justify their expenses the way academic departments are, all but a handful would've been cut a long time ago.