Pun Salad

A couple weeks back, Pun Salad noted actual students committing acts of journalism at the University of Maine, reporting that the athletics program there was losing $7 million a year, a loss made up from general revenues. At the time, I wondered what the numbers from the University Near Here might look like.

Well, thanks to USA Today, here's an E-Z access database so we can answer that question; it contains data for all NCAA Division I schools. Some factoids:

• For the 2008-09 academic year, UNH kicked in about $7.7 million in "Direct institutional support" for its athletics program.

• In addition, the program is subsidized for another $9 million by "Student fees".

• These two items are by far the biggest contributors (about 69%) of athletic revenue. For example, only 9.57% of revenue came from "Ticket Sales".

• Despite all that money coming in, athletic program expenses still managed to outpace revenue by a cool $892,812.

I found the USA Today database via this post at University Diaries, a quoted letter from a UMaine physics prof. Like UNH, Maine is currently undergoing a period of fiscal woes and belt-tightening. His conclusion:

The bottom line is the academic programs are being forced to support a bloated administration and a not particularly successful athletics program -- with the possible exception of hockey. This is unsustainable, and the Academic Program Prioritization Working Group had no chance of "achieving sustainability" since they were directed by administration to focus solely on proposing cuts to academics.