Strawmen are notoriously poor kickers.

Neither do the bulk of athletes

Neither do ANY college athletes. Not even entire programs. You've obviously never looked at the budget of a university.

No your ignorance is incredible. My point was exactly that all that revenue mostly amounts to a net loss! Revenue that costs the company more than itself is not a good plan.

"Food is included when you pay your way on loans as well." I'm not even sure how to give this a semi-reasonable interpretation.

I was talking about ikes.

It's still a billion-dollar industry whose content creators are getting a ridiculously small slice of the revenue. Whether it's the schools or ESPN or whatever, someone should be writing these kids a check that's commensurate with the value of the product they're creating.

And I'm totally on board with schools dropping big-ticket athletics and shifting the whole thing into a pro minor league system, but as long as the schools are in the game, let's not pretend a sham degree is some kind of reasonable compensation.

The degrees are much less shams than most people think. I've had a lot of these kids in a real classroom, and I would say they in general are better students than the average (the average is pretty bad - university attrition rates are much higher than most people think). For the most part they are at least disciplined and applied. It's mainly a few who think they are stars (think Nate Robinson) that are a problem. A backup player who isn't a decent student is not offering much to the program; he's potentially a bad number academically and he's not doing much on the field.

As for the slice the players get, we can actually estimate it. The high end for revenue is around 100 million (speaking in rough figures) and maybe 50 programs bring in more than 50 million. Here I am including donations to the athletic programs, ticket sales, etc. Branding and media, which are what is probably most directly attributable to the players, generally make up at most 10%, 5-10 million. Suppose we consider a full athletic scholarship to be 40-60K annually in cost and we suppose the university gives around 100 a year (universities give more scholarships than that, but most are partial). That's a ball park of 5 million a year. In fact that's a bit of a low estimate, the numbers come out to around %10 of total revenue. Whether that's a reasonable slice or not, I'm not sure, but it's not obviously low (I'd be curious to hear serious arguments about whether it's high or low). Alabama fans are going to buy tickets anyway. Alabama boosters are going to make donations anyway. It doesn't much matter who the players are as long as the team wins. That's why they pay Saban as much as they pay all those athletes. In general the big programs spend more on coaches than they do on players. That reflects where the talent driving the system is. It also points to who is to blame if you think the athletes are underpaid.

Collective bargaining in the nba and NFL run close to a 50-50 split (don't recall exact numbers). That seems like a reasonable starting point. You could maybe argue the cooler name is slightly more valuable than pro franchises, but its got to be pretty close.

And you're still ignoring the degree to which donations and applications are linked to athletic performance.

1. Johnny Manziel says hi.
2. Even if players were 100% anonymous, they are pretty damn important in determining whether a team wins or not. Hard to believe that might be a controversial statement.

10% to the content creators doesn't seem remotely fair, to say nothing of the fact that they aren't allowed to sign autographs or do product endorsements.

The coaches are the principal "content creators". And Jameis Winston.

Lol no. We can actually test these things by comparing them to pro leagues. In the NFL, the average head coach makes 4.6m/yr, which would make him around the ninth or tenth highest paid player on a given NFL roster. This despite the fact that coaching salaries are a free market and players have both min contact requirements and an overall cap, which combine to depress the salaries of top and middle tier players.

Michigan football took in 91 million dollars in revenue in 2014.
Michigan basketball took in 14 million dollars in revenue in 2014.

That's over 1 million dollars for each scholarship athlete per year. That number is expected to grow.

Counting each scholarship as a non-resident cost, using uppergrad numbers only, comes out to 58k per year. Football scholarships total out to 85. Basketball scholarships total out to 13. So that means those guys generate 1,071,428 in revenue per year and get 'paid' 5.4% of the revenue. On top of that, they are not allowed to use their own status to make money on their own. That doesn't cost the school anything.

At every point of this I used nothing but the best possible assumptions for your argument. It's completely cluster-****ed. The starters on each team easily generate more than 1 million of value. Elite stars probably generate more than 10 million. Talk less **** about me educating myself (I've actually looked at the budget for a college sport) and work on yourself.

Michigan football had a net profit of 65 million dollars in 2014.
Michigan basketball had a net profit of 3.5 million dollars in 2010. That's the best number I can find quickly, but that number has increased.

Unsurprising given how informed you are. Maybe your point is true in the **** schools with **** athletic programs that you've apparently worked with, but most educated people know the difference between revenue and profit, so who knows from how far down the totem pole your institution is.

We're not talking about the NFL. We're talking about the NCAA. It's fundamentally different. Whether UGA's tailback is Chubb or whoever doesn't make a rat's ass difference for the ticket buyer or the donor, as long as there is a body that can suit up every year, or whenever the starter gets hurt.

In those Forbes articles I couldn't find anything that even approximately justifies the claims about profits. The revenue numbers are consistent with those I cited in earlier posts. It's ridiculous to attribute that revenue to individual players. Absolutely absurd. Part of the revenue comes from merchandising, which at the college level is mostly independent of the individual players. Ticket sales are as well. People are paying to see their team play. "Elite stars probably generate more than 10 million". Who is such an elite star? Exceptions don't make for good policy in any case.

It's also quite laughable to equate revenue with value generated.

Both of the state schools I've worked with won a football national championship in the last three decades. Also both were better than Michigan academically.

What, you think LSU fans root for Les ****ing Miles? Nobody roots for players in the pros either, with a few exceptions. They follow their teams. And they only care about winning. They actively root for players on their team to get ****ed over in contract negotiations because it helps the team win. Cowboys fans aren't jumping ship to Philly bc Murray signed there, they're rooting for Joe Randle or whoever else lines up in the backfield next fall, who's name they've probably never heard of before.

Fans are the same at both levels. They don't care who lines up at tailback, AS LONG AS HE'S GOOD. If he's good they'll learn his name and buy his jersey and maybe donate a little extra after the team wins the peach bowl. If he sucks, and the team sucks, they'll sell fewer jerseys, maybe cancel their season tickets or drop their donation, and a million high schoolers won't see the school's name on their tv every Saturday and maybe choose to apply somewhere else.

Without the individual players, there is no team. Without the team, there is no merchandising. Try again.

I'll let this idiotic point go by since we've established profits in the tens of millions now.
State schools ranked above michigan include Berkley, Virginia and UCLA. None have won a championship. Quickly looking puts the highest ranking school at Florida at 49. That's not better than Michigan academically (rolls in at 29). You're not going to find a general ranking that puts Michigan below Florida. You're not going to find two schools that fit your criteria. Spare me the rankings aren't perfect nonsense as well. It's not close.

You're lying or don't have any clue what you're talking about. It's getting embarrassing for you now.

lol

I'm looking at the Shanghai world rankings. I'll admit Michigan was a bit higher than I expected, but it's always overrated, and it's behind one or the other of the places I worked in both Science and Engineering (I ignored the rest because the rest is bull**** anyway). I won't go into details because they would determine the schools and probably me uniquely. Also Michigan is overpriced for out of state students. They would do better to go to Illinois.

What's really important here is that Michigan hasn't won a football title since before Eisenhower (no one but Michigan alumni counts 1997).

I think I see the problem.

You weren't using the shanghai world rankings you ****ing liar. There isn't a team that has won a national championship in the past 25 years. The closest one is texas which sits at 17 spots below Michigan. You're full of ****.

You've been nothing but completely ****ing wrong this entire exchange... even down to understanding the difference between profit and revenue. BTW, those teams that have won national championships recently? THEY ALL RUN THEIR PROGRAM AT A PROFIT. If you truly did work at not one, but two of these institutions, then how the hell do you know nothing about them? You're a liar.
Except to the AP, Football writers association of america and national football foundation.... you know, 3 of the 4 consensus national championship organizations out there.

Why are you here?

Let's play a game! Is this true?
http://www.shanghairanking.com/FieldSCI2014.html
There's no national champion in the past 20 years above Michigan on this list.

http://www.shanghairanking.com/FieldENG2014.html
There is one on this list... Texas.

So if stealingpotatoes isn't a liar (and let's be real here, he totally is) he had to have worked at Texas.

Texas football financials
Revenue: 113 million
Profit: 74 million

They are literally the most profitable and most valuable college football program out there.

This leaves us with a choice. Stealingpotatoes can be a liar or we can shudder to know that this guy helped educate athletes.

I said three decades, not 25 years.