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Sports are profitable for Universities.
"You’re talking about 95 percent of colleges that probably spend somewhere between … $40 million and $5 million on college sports, and they lose money,” Baker said
They never specified who they were. I can assure you that certain people make a ton of money.
Which I can't really understand at all as an Englishman. A lot of universities here do have sports teams but they're mostly amateur. The only major event really is the Oxford vs Cambridge boat race which does get sponsorship.
Yeah but imagine that secondary schools and 6th forms were doing grass roots, then unis were scooping up the best players for their own uni teams.
Fully anecdotal, but one of my 6th form rugby teammates went to watch a high school american football game, and said they were comparably as good as we were. Only difference is they filled a stadium and we'd get 3 dads on the sideline.
Junior teams for professional clubs do very much pay attention to school leagues and youth club rugby for players to 'scoop up'.
Seems like a purely cultural difference around going to watch lower level matches to me, rather than the player skill and career trajectory being different.
Yeah I don't know enough about how the US system works. From the media it seems like every high school has a team that draws a crowd.
My experience in the UK system was that even the same secondary school doesn't consistently have a team for each sport.
Also in the UK, it seems like we don't get behind our school teams (even whilst we're in school with them). They're just seen as something the sporty kids do. But that's all purely my experience of our school system. Could be completely different in a different city/county.
The media is accurate. I don’t like sports but in high school we’d go to the football games because that was the social event.
It's the whole setup. The marching band comes in and plays, too. I was in band but I don't really remember if it was actually every game we came and played too but it was a lot. So they're like big events. Cheerleaders also, that's a lot of students with parents who want to see their child perform.
That’s the problem. They shouldn’t be worried about profit. The fact that education and health are completely focused on profit in the US really demonstrates how far we’ve gone down a wrong path. (I’m not a talkie or even a leftist for the record, just hate unfettered capitalism)
Yes there was a lawsuit about colleges not treating players like employees. They should be employees.
No, that too but colleges should be places for education, not making money and not higher investments in athletics.
Some sports are profitable. A lot of sports aren't.
A lot of the sports programs go back to a time when universities acted more like finishing schools for the wealthy and intelligent. It was thought that sports, especially team sports, were a good way to teach the soft skills of being a leader.
Now, it’s profitable for the athletes. They should probably be paying their own tuition if they’re bringing in millions in NIL money.
But isn't their goal to teach people things? I don't understand how silly games and money became their main focus.