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Outside my office door, there it looms. Sanford Stadium, complete with its fabled privet hedges and 93,000 screaming fans on fall Saturdays, lies in the very center of the University of Georgia (UGA) campus, with the humanities and social sciences buildings on the hill to the north and Ag Hill to the south. It's quiet this time of year, but the video advertising boards that flicker on periodically are an LED reminder of the South's year-round love affair with college football.
This is the most visible symbol of the UGA Athletic Association, a not-for-profit organization that in fiscal 2011 recorded operating revenues just shy of $90 million. That money enables the association to send its golf teams to Puerto Rico, track teams to Washington State, and Gym Dogs to Utah. Here and there, the Athletic Association also endows professorships and funds a few campus-wide projects.
As munificent as this is, this kind of spending is typical of big-time college athletics programs at universities across the country. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently estimated that college athletics is a $10-billion marketplace. What sets UGA athletics apart is that it can pay for its expenses without turning to the university for help.
Only seven other athletics programs at public universities broke even or had net operating income on athletics each year from 2005-2009, according to data provided by USA Today to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics (for which I consult). The others were Louisiana State University, The Pennsylvania State University, and...
