(05-06-2018 02:02 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  In general intercollegiate athletics is not a capitalistic enterprise.

There is very little emphasis on returning profits to the owners and the owners aren't trying to maximize value to sell the enterprise.

Yes ... when a going concern is run on a non-profit basis, with profits handed over to somebody else, there is a strong tendency to let costs go up in a way that benefits the people running the organization, because they do not get a share in the profits. And for the most purposes, the going concern is not the University, it is the Athletics Department, and revenues that are profits handed over to the University are revenues that could have been used for the benefit of the Athletics Department instead, if it was just possible to generate a "necessary cost" item instead.

The most lucrative Athletic Departments do hand over a small surplus, but that is more a matter of the amount necessary to buy effective autonomy within the University.

And then the less lucrative Athletic Departments get into an arms race with the bigger ones to hold onto coaches and have facilities to let them recruit the second string prospects of the bigger schools to be first stringers at their school, and the relatively small surplus at the lucrative departments get translated into an ongoing loss for the median department.

Now, it's not universal, and some Athletic Departments run a tight ship, but the most common problems are not exactly the same as the most common problems you run into with a for profit commercial corporation. It's more like the problems of featherbedding that are an ongoing problem in not for profit charities.