I've heard this is a common misconception. They do bring in some money, but it is more of a noterity issue. You figure say a couple of million, they still have to provide the scholarship money for the athletes, pay for all their travel expenses, pay for top notch athletic facilities, coaches salaries (often more than the univ pres), and the money goes pretty quickly.

No kidding about the coaches' salaries.

Coach June Jones (who came to Hawai`i after turning down a multi-million dollar contract with the SD Chargers) is *THE* highest paid State employee. He makes more than the University president...and even the GOVERNOR. I isht you not.

But hey, what are Booster Clubs for, right?

Not really. Athletes are getting the short end of the stick. They bring in millions of dollars. Take a top team like Duke's basketball team. Each of those players is delaying making millions a year by sitting in that program. The school makes boatloads of money based on ticket sales, NCAA proceeds, merchandising, and builds a strong brand - don't forget how many students come to the school because of the programs. Even with the expenses of someone like Coach K's very high salary, the school comes out ahead by far. IF the school was losing money, breaking even, or barely making anything they would have abandoned these programs a long time ago. The conferences, NCAA, and schools get quite a bit of money off the backs of these student athletes.

For some programs, they say college is better for the athlete to have. In football, it's different from basketball because of size and ability gained in those early years.

-Rudey

At Boston U., there were definitely areas of campus that were known a housing athletes (on-campus apartments especially). These weren't specifically athlete dorms/housing areas, but they did have a higher number of athletes and were the better places to live on campus.

I have no problem with it; never really bothered me if the hockey team got good housing.

We don't really have special treatment for athletes at Marshall except that they get to register for classes first. Some of them live in dorms, some live in houses together, and most of them live in my apartment complex LOL we have University Courtyards, I don't know if any other campus has those, but they're nice and we have several football players in our building. And the players that do live in the dorms just live with all the rest of the kids, nothin special, same crappy stuff for everyone