College Athletics , Profits, Paying Players

[Nutriaitch]

So during the course of a discussion with a co-worker on how much $ colleges make of athletics and how players should get paid, etc. I started doing some digging to see actual numbers.

All info from here on out is based on numbers reported for the 2017-2018 Athletic year.
Also, I do not have an average number of student athletes per school, so I am using LSU's number of roughly 600 as my quantity.

Every one knows football is king and makes by FAR the most money on campuses. This is not disputable.
However, if any players were to get paid (meaning directly by school/NCAA, etc.) it would be a near unilateral thing and not just football. Title IX will not allow football players to make anything extra that women athletes don't make.

So, just how much money is there to go around?

answers in next post:

 

 

[Nutriaitch]

Some schools turn an absolute ridiculous profit.  But nowhere near as many as you would think.

Lets say schools divided up every single penny of their annual profit evenly among their student athletes.

Do you know many schools could pay their athletes $20k+
7.

Do you know how many schools (i only did top 100 revenue schools) are in the negative and the players would owe money to the schools instead?
32.

And I know what you're thinking. Those 32 are probably small schools from mid major and lower conferences.
Well, 10 of those 32 are in Power 5 conferences (3 from the SEC).
 

 

 

[Nutriaitch]

Using only the top 100 revenue schools.
Using 600 as the average number of student athlete (no clue if that is high, low, close, etc.)

If literally every single penny of profit was spread evenly among student athletes, the each athlete would receive a whopping $4,386.81

now you me and everyone else knows they aren't giving all of that money to athletes.
hell, would they even give 10% of their profits up? 

at 10%, the average athlete would get $438.61 more than they do now.

 

just something to think about next time you hear someone say "there is plenty of money to go around"

 

[Nutriaitch]

oh and the numbers for LSU

a hair under $8mil total profit
breaks our to $13,285.46 per athlete

10% would we $1,328.54. 
or about $26 per week 

[houtiger]

There has always been a general recognition about what you say, without any specific numbers.  But, the general recognition has been that if the "bigs" were allowed to pay the players, it would create one "super conference" for the really bigs, and then everyone else.  But the Cali law, letting industry pay the players for their image in advertising, there could be some really big bucks in that.  Tiger Woods used to get millions per year from Nike.  What would Matt Leinert or Reggie Bush have gotten at USC?  If you had a super conference of pay for play, with ad dollars thrown in, could LSU compete with USC?  Probably not, the ad revenue in LA would swamp that in BR.