The University of Oregon – one of the scummier sports schools around – is having a bit of trouble holding aloft the ‘self-supporting’ banner. We don’t take a penny! Our program makes so much money we don’t need to take a penny!

Well, if you’re persistent enough, and don’t mind filing repeated public-records requests, you’ll discover in the fine print at almost every school that claims to be self-supporting all sorts of contractual maneuvers that amount to subsidies.

For instance, UD‘s friend

Bill Harbaugh, an economics professor … filed a public-records request. What turned up was an illuminating “memorandum of understanding” between Pat Kilkenny, former athletic director, and former UO president Dave Frohnmayer that was signed in June 2009, two weeks before Frohnmayer retired.

That memo capped the athletic department’s overhead assessment at 3 percent through June 2012. That is one half the assessment rate charged other UO auxiliaries this year …

For instance:

UO diverted $8.5 million in general fund dollars from 2002-2010 to pay for academic support — including tutoring and counseling — of its athletes.

For instance:

[T]he general fund is picking up 50 percent of the legal costs in defending UO against possible recruiting violations by the football program.

A clean program (UD hasn’t encountered one yet, but assume a clean program) of this sort costs a fortune; a dirty one, like Oregon’s (And pretty much all the others. You know Jerry Tarkanian’s famous saying: “In major college basketball, nine out of 10 teams break the rules. The other one is in last place.”), costs a mega-fortune because of all the court cases and settlements and lawyers. Basically big-time university sports programs are always under threat of sanctions for violations, always being sued by fired coaches, always – see Penn State – defending themselves against criminal conduct accusations, always paying hotshot accountants to hide their bright budgeting ideas (as in the present case), etc., etc. Do you have any idea how much money self-supporting jock schools have to take out of their general funds just to protect their asses from what it means to do business as a big-time university sports team?