Not wise from a business perspective, but hey they won a football championship. Chase believes these major brands in college football have unlimited resources, but it's clear he's a clueless moron.
OSU athletics operated at a $37 million deficit in 2024
- Thread starter NDinNJ
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Just wait a couple of years.....these National spanning conferences are about to wake up and realize how expensive it is to fly across the country for games instead of taking the bus. While I do not 100% have a problem with Football teams doing this due to how few games they play I do think its ridiculous the Swim team, volleyball team, soccer etc. have to fly 5 hours for a game when they could play local.
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Chase is a complete moron and is proving with each comment he knows absolutely nothing about business and budgets.
He doesn't realize that the athletic department of a university is just that a department. It has its own revenue stream and expenses as a department. Just as every other department at a university has its own revenue stream and expenses.
The OSU athletic department had greater expenses than revenue in 2024. Again the school is not getting wealthier if the athletic department is operating at a loss and other profitable departments are required to offset the deficit. Any deficit affects the bottom line as a whole.
Again Chase has zero business acumen. I thought he was a complete moron prior to his last comment, but now I'm certain of it.
He doesn't realize that the athletic department of a university is just that a department. It has its own revenue stream and expenses as a department. Just as every other department at a university has its own revenue stream and expenses.
The OSU athletic department had greater expenses than revenue in 2024. Again the school is not getting wealthier if the athletic department is operating at a loss and other profitable departments are required to offset the deficit. Any deficit affects the bottom line as a whole.
Again Chase has zero business acumen. I thought he was a complete moron prior to his last comment, but now I'm certain of it.
A lot of corporations are able to skirt taxes and avoid raising the pay of their workforce by doing the same trick: claiming a loss on the business or corporation overall even though their bread and butter product is more profitable than ever
These are all accounting and semantics tricks to be able to invest large sums of money into the business or to increase the wealth of the people in the business at the top of the food chain without having to share proceeds from the part of the business that is profitable with the rest of the workforce who is producing the labor that is leading to those profits
This is the same thing going on with wealthy universities through their athletic departments
Take the proceeds from the sports that are extremely profitable
invest long-term with those proceeds back into the institution through the athletic department through various endeavors and then claim an annual loss on the athletic department while the university overall becomes wealthier and wealthier and wealthier through the investments made over long periods of time
So you may be losing money in the front end on the athletic department on an annual basis even though the bread and butter products in your athletic department are producing more wealth than ever and growing the wealth of your institution on the backend
Let me give you an example: OSU is claiming a $37 million loss in their athletic department this year as per the title of this thread but in a recent Wall Street Journal study OSUs football program has swelled into a 2 billion dollar enterprise in and of itself if it was a private entity that could be sold (My guess is that the university too has also become far more wealthy correlative to the success of their football program over a similar period of time) even though their athletic department is reporting annual losses
These are all accounting and semantics tricks to be able to invest large sums of money into the business or to increase the wealth of the people in the business at the top of the food chain without having to share proceeds from the part of the business that is profitable with the rest of the workforce who is producing the labor that is leading to those profits
This is the same thing going on with wealthy universities through their athletic departments
Take the proceeds from the sports that are extremely profitable
invest long-term with those proceeds back into the institution through the athletic department through various endeavors and then claim an annual loss on the athletic department while the university overall becomes wealthier and wealthier and wealthier through the investments made over long periods of time
So you may be losing money in the front end on the athletic department on an annual basis even though the bread and butter products in your athletic department are producing more wealth than ever and growing the wealth of your institution on the backend
Let me give you an example: OSU is claiming a $37 million loss in their athletic department this year as per the title of this thread but in a recent Wall Street Journal study OSUs football program has swelled into a 2 billion dollar enterprise in and of itself if it was a private entity that could be sold (My guess is that the university too has also become far more wealthy correlative to the success of their football program over a similar period of time) even though their athletic department is reporting annual losses
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By the way I don't blame Notre Dame for doing this either it's just apart of the arms race in college sports, part of the culture among super wealthy universities with billion dollar sports programs within and staying competitive/protecting their interests
I saw this article also. Most big time programs athletic departments run deficits. Football and men's basketball basically fund everything else. Women's basketball helps but not sure how many are self sufficient right now. I have a 10 am meeting at Ohio St next Monday with all their compliance/NIL folks and some Athletic Dept personnel. I would imagine this article will be a topic of discussion.
if you think this is true, then you believe in the tooth fairy,
I still think this is all heading towards two conferences, or leagues if you will, for FB and possibly MBB SEC/ESPN league and the B1G/Fox league. All non-revenue sports will go back to smaller local conferences. The leagues will be broken into divisions ala NFL and NBA with majority of games played in your division and some formula to play games versus other division. You have rounds of league playoffs before a Super Bowl/ Finals type of championship. With money, travel, unbalanced schedules I don't see how this doesn't become the outcome.
Couldn't agree more. The professional model will be the rule of thumb in the near future with a revenue sharing agreement in place.
Difference between operating performance and valuation. We know it’s above your weight class though.
OSU will just ask the state for more $$$. The taxpayers should hold them accountable.
This would not surprise me at all. That's why when we have these regular conversations about whether ND should join a conference or not, I say we aren't going to have a choice.
So did the university as a whole operate at a deficit. .? What other “profitable departments “could possibly make up for that deficit? Aren’t public schools required to submit an annual budget annually? And adjust tuition accordingly? Would be interesting to see entire annual statement for entire university. I’ll look into it and report back out of curiousity
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If big time programs run deficits, what do small time programs run? Sounds like the government
Ohio State is a land grant non-profit controlled by the state. Essentially, employees of Ohio State are state employees. If the entire university as a whole is running a deficit all they need to do is ask the state government to make them whole with tax payer dollars.
I know this because Rutgers has been running deficits with their athletic program for over a decade. Just this past year they ran a $70 million deficit, and they are a receiving full shares of BIG10 money.
I was replying to what wi hoosier said about leagues for football and basketball and the other, non revenue-generating sports returning to regional conferences. I was saying we could be very easily forced to join a league (conference) for football
I believe one of the issues - if not the biggest - is that OSU supports 36 athletic programs ----the most in the NCAA. Like almost every school out there, all are funded by CF profits with the exception of MBB. Look for OSU to cut a few programs in the next year or two
BTW I'm not a guy with high business acumen and not trying to sound like one either. I'm just trying to get across the point that just because OSU (or any other high P4 level football school in the modern era) is reporting annual losses in the athletic department, it doesn't mean that the football program isn't growing the wealth of the athletic department/university overall.
I don't remember too clearly, but I think there was a USA Today article about three years back on how athletic departments that run deficits actually go to the students by charging them "athletic fees" and Rutgers was mentioned as having the highest, or among the highest, fees in the country.
Yes, but that's not even enough. they also get state aid and private donors.
That was one of the points in the article...all kinds of aid comes in, and they still charged the students a ton of money.
Yep, their football program is a $$ monster - nothing wrong with it - obviously. Some of the other minor sports that operate in the red are in deep doo doo however
Here's fairly recent article about Rutgers. This athletic department is completely mismanaged. It actually breaks down revenue, and expenses.
Rutgers’ athletics deficit topped $70M again in 2023-24. But it still wasn’t a record.
Rutgers spent an all-time record to support its athletics teams during the 2023-24 school year.
I will not be disclosing details of a business meeting I had with a major university on a public forum such as this. I would lose my job and it's unprofessional.
You raise a very valid point.
There’s also a significant distinction between private schools and public schools which are supported by the taxpayers
If the Athletic Department is losing money, it doesn’t matter how much the football program is earning, the net result is a loss.
Which means that the State’s taxpayers are getting hit at public schools like Ohio State.
Hence, the state’s taxpayers have to ask whether or not victory is worth the price
