Empty expensive stadiums and sadistic highly compensated coaches and teams on a permanent crime spree are all well and good; but now Moody’s is warning about Division I schools becoming credit risks, so say goodbye – maybe – to all that fun.
In laying out risk factors to Division I programs, Moody’s cited the increasing use of public subsidies to fund sports, exposure to litigation over head injuries, and the possible movement away from the NCAA amateurism model. Moody’s views future costs as uncertain.
I love that possible movement away…
The amateur tv networks that have taken over amateur Division I sports at our universities will have to bail out these schools when no one will lend any more money to them… At which point tv will call all the shots – not just most of the shots, which they do now. That means they will demand butts in all seats. Viewers hate to see empty stadiums. But how will we do that, the universities will ask their tv guys. Not our problem, the tv guys will say. Meanwhile, each year attendance is effing hemorrhaging .
The university goes to robotics and it goes to engineering and it says to the professors there solve this for us. And they do solve it, they make animatronic students but it’s not cheap, so the university’s athletic division continues to lose zillions every year meaning that they’ve been able to please the tv overlords but they’re still in very bad shape credit-wise…
October 11th, 2013 at 7:59PM
It’s one thing when students refuse to attend games at wannabe schools. This is something else: http://www.statesman.com/weblogs/bevo-beat/2013/oct/10/texas-ou-tickets-available/
Tickets available for the Texas vs. Oklahoma game in the Cotton Bowl. Unheard of.
October 11th, 2013 at 8:57PM
JND: That’s the trend, right there.
October 13th, 2013 at 12:19PM
Reading the comments on the article posted by JND, you would think that the problem is an administrator mistake in not switching conferences. But Oregon can’t get its students to stay, other PAC12 schools are also losing attendance.
Part of the problem is that many colleges have been pandering to foreign students to bolster enrollment. Believe it or not, an Asian/Saudi Arabian kid isn’t going to care who plays what on Saturday. The PAC12 schools have a growing foreign contingent in their student body, they may like to use the spas and elegant facilities, but why should they wander over to a stadium full of drunks and idiots, to see a team that they could care less what they do or don’t do….
October 13th, 2013 at 12:31PM
I suspect that lack of interest among foreign (undergraduate) students, if it exists, is an effect more than a cause. These students have chosen a certain kind of college experience, and might well embrace athletics as part of it – if sports still had the central role they once had. I’d guess the shift in gender balance on most campuses is a more powerful factor.
October 13th, 2013 at 12:35PM
UD, you may know more about this than I do, but don’t public unis lose accreditation if their debt risk falls below a certain benchmark? I know that Penn State’s credit rating has fallen, and if it falls too low, it will lose accreditation. If so, they’ll close, loss of accreditation means loss of all public funding, including FED research grants and all tax subsidies.
October 13th, 2013 at 12:43PM
@Mr.Punch, from my tutoring several foreign students, at least here in Oregon, they recieve government support for attending American universities. I don’t think that their nations are sending their kids to experience college, it’s more that those nations have far too few public universities for the demand, and its cheaper to send those students overseas to receive a degree than to build and take the time to develop new universities. But that’s from my limited perspective….
October 14th, 2013 at 10:12AM
@JND–surely the apocalypse is here. Wow.
October 14th, 2013 at 10:35AM
tp: Bachmann, Palin, and lots of other Tea Partiers seem to expect apocalypse any minute. They seem pretty excited about it.