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Message: [QUOTE="TheFarmFan, post: 3191272, member: 9403"] Not sure if this has been discussed here or before, but [URL='https://www.courant.com/sports/hc-sp-uconn-sports-athletic-department-finances-revenue-expenses-20190117-2wdp5gimnvhlliwykl6npcmy7u-story.html']this article from the Courant earlier this year[/URL] indicated that, in fact, football was not helping UConn and is not, in fact, a "revenue" sport. Or, at least, it's much more a deficit sport than a revenue sport, to the tune of an $8.7m deficit in 2018 alone. That's staggering. The second biggest loser? The other supposed "revenue" sport, men's basketball, at $5m. WBB came in third at a $3m deficit. (But at least they win championships!) As it is, at most two of the AAC schools are in a bus-drive distance of UConn (Temple and Navy), so away games mean hauling every single athlete on an airplane, and presumably it also requires extra nights at hotels. So I wonder if assumptions about the importance of "revenue sports" are faulty, at least at UConn? My sense is that the costs associated with football are enormous for any school, given the number of players, the costs of travel, the maintenance of stadiums, and the very small number of home games (seriously, think about this: you need a very costly football stadium for 6-7 total games per year, and the best you can do with it the rest of the year is soccer, [I]maybe[/I]). My views on this may be idiosyncratic for a hard-core college sports fan, but I also think football is a long-term loser, given CTE and the costs associated with staffing and supporting the sport. This may hurt UConn in the short term, but I do think it's the long-term road to sustainability, because college athletics across the board are not sustainable as presently configured. Right now most of college sports are supported by a combination of huge university subsidies and bloated media rights package, neither of which will last for much longer. University subsidies will not be sustainable as costs in higher ed continue to rise and the appetite for $70k costs of attendance continues to wane and universities realize they need to do serious belt-tightening across the board. And media revenue is built on a decaying foundation of pre-cord-cutting bloated $100+ per month cable packages that generated insane revenues for ESPN and the other sports networks and that, in turn, led to huge media rights packages. Folks are cutting cords right and left, and millennials are not going to pay $100 per month just to stream sports. Trust me, I am one, and Sling at $30 per month is more than enough for me, thankyouverymuch. I am almost certain the next round of media deals will be smaller than the current ones, because they're just not sustainable. [/QUOTE]

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