UD has followed benighted, sports-obsessed Ball State for years on this blog. Now one of its students does the numbers on student athletic fees and stuff.

… How much does each student actually pay for sports? The actual numbers are found buried in the annual budget. Using the numbers from the 2008-09 budget, there is a $1,464 dedicated fee charged to each full-time student. The dedicated fee is included in tuition and fees and is generally used for funding student services, technology, etc. Of this dedicated fee, 56 percent is used to fund intercollegiate athletics. This works out to $827 per student. The proposed budget for 2009-10 increases the amount allocated to sports to $877 per full-time student.

Interestingly enough, it costs only $216 for season tickets to all Ball State sporting events. That is admission to all events Ball State charges for: football, men and women’s basketball, and women’s volleyball. As far as marginal benefits, the season pass available to anyone is equivalent to the “free” admission available to students.

In reality, the vast majority of students do not attend sporting events and even though they do not attend, they are still being charged. I attend one, maybe two, football games a year. I would be much better off buying the tickets for $20, or whatever price on game day, and not having to pay $877. I would save $837. Ball State is making me $837 worse off. Why are we all being charged for something only a few of us use?

Ball State’s intercollegiate sports department would operate in the red if not for the student subsidy. For 2008-09, the athletics department budgeted expenses were $14.3 million, two of the main revenue sources to cover these expenses were almost $8.9 million from student fees and $2.5 million from additional university support. Ticket sales were only expected to be less than one million. Intercollegiate sports, at least at Ball State, are not self-sustaining.

… 80 percent of Division I schools’ athletics programs have been losing more than $10 million a year.

… Ball State’s football coach earns… $350,000, only $6,400 less than President Jo Ann Gora.

Currently on our tuition bill, we see some of the “dedicated fee” broken up. There are technology fees, health center fees and other student service fees. However, intercollegiate athletics, which is 56 percent of the dedicated fee, does not show up. Why is such a large percentage of the dedicated fee not itemized? Either Ball State does not think it is important for students to know they are spending $877 each year on sports, or they do not want us to know…

Why, the student asks, aren’t faculty (as well as students) outraged?

UD grappled with that one long ago.