Big Ten conference football and men's basketball teams
"earned record profits for their schools last season, but
almost all the windfall was promptly spent within athletic
departments," according to Fred Girard of the DETROIT NEWS.
Nearly a half a billion dollars in Big Ten sports revenues
-- $403.2M in the '97-98 school year -- were used for
"massive athletic department building projects and
administrative expenses, and to support nonmoney-making
sports programs." Left over after the $395.5M in expenses
was a total of $7.7M in profits. Big Ten football brought
in $87M in profits, and basketball took in $45M -- but they
were used to cover $63M in losses for all other sports.
Another $61M covered losses in the conference's athletic
department business offices, which brought in "a whopping"
$150M from TV, bowl games, sporting goods companies and
alumni donations, but the business offices spent $211M on
construction projects, salaries and other administrative
costs. Of the two MI Big Ten schools, Univ. of MI made an
overall profit of $3.1M, while MI State Univ. (MSU) showed
an overall loss of $6.4M, after it spent $6M on an athletes'
study building. MSU was the only school in the conference
to show a loss. The "surplus winner" was the Univ. of MN
(UMN), with a $4.3M profit -- even with the conference's
lowest-earning football program. While every other Big Ten
school lost money in men's Olympic sports, UMN made $1.5M
"thanks" to its "popular hockey team" (DETROIT NEWS, 11/17).
