[Drolefille]

[QUOTE=KSig RC;2030339]Your hand-waving of the initial data (which was intended only to show that the scale is in the hundreds of millions, which I think most people don't understand) and statement of disbelief of the numbers given is why I posted - I know you're smart enough to know this stuff exists, but you literally said "I don't believe ..." etc.[quote] Because budgets aren't the same thing as the reality.

Your larger point, though, is that no amount of money is worth emphasizing money over principle? That seems ... awkward at best, since we can show that money furthers the ability to seek the things that colleges are designed to seek. Should schools stop (largely student-driven and uncompensated) research that lead to lucrative patents, as that isn't learning in its purest form? Aren't we ignoring the "life-learning" realities of modern colleges (who seek to take an active role in every part of student life) when we limit the type of education/profit connection to only the type of thing that happens in a classroom?

I really don't see television deals as comparable to research, internships or out-of-the-classroom learning. The latter are for the primary purpose of learning, the former are for the money. See the difference?

And what about the fact that football gives a very real educational opportunity to students who would otherwise not qualify for college at all?

Hey, it's awesome, until you consider graduation rates aren't necessarily so hot and athletics are prioritized over scholarship even at non-D1 schools. How many people are we actually helping, and how many students are actually graduating with degrees and job skills rather than lost hopes at NFL/NBA/MLB stardom. I don't know that there's an answer.

Whether or not Title IX should apply to football programs in the way the statute is currently applied was our starting point, but I find it narrow-sighted to ignore the vast positives of major-college athletics while looking at the exceptionally small portion of actual students that are affected by the "seedy" parts of major-college football. We're literally talking 125 students out of 30,000.

I don't think I ignored the positives of college athletics, I've mentioned several times that they're important, and that they should exist, just not, in my opinion, in their current form. It is the prioritization of those 125 students OVER the 30,000 for the sake of the all mighty hand-egg that brings in the dough that bothers me.