Intercollegiate Athletics might be stuck between a rock and a hard place, but that's no excuse to continue knowingly draining millions of dollars from Ohio University's budget.
The commonly cited solution is dropping from Division I-A to Division I-AA. That's not a cure-all, and Athletics knows that. Donors say they would stop giving money to OU, while Athletics administrators claim students benefit from attending a school with high-level sports.
Athletics has created a $7.5 million budget deficit since 2005 - a trend that can no longer continue. It's totaled one-third of the structural deficit plaguing OU.
Athletics honestly might believe the department improves the quality of life for each student, but despite its administrators' faith, numbers don't lie.
Fall Quarter, the average attendance for each football game was 15,621 - 11,421 of those seats for non-students and 4,200 seats for students. Peden Stadium was enlarged in 2001 to seat 24,000. The average attendance per game for men's basketball was 3,649, with 2,899 non-students and 750 students. The Convo seats 13,000. That is nowhere near capacity.
These numbers include outliers, with sold-out seating such as the parents' weekends and Homecoming, resulting in the average non-student attendance vastly outnumbering average student attendance. About 2.5 times more non-students attended football games than students, while 4 times more non-students attended basketball games.
Once again, students are pushed aside, with OU prioritizing alumni and donors. The fair-weather fans, who supposedly would stop donating if the same team were in a different division, hold more clout than Faculty Senate and students. Students pay about $650 of their general fees each year toward Athletics - something they might or might not benefit from.
Our response to Athletics' argument that no one can quantify the benefits of being a Division I-A school is it's equally impossible to quantify the lack of benefits from being a D-IA school. An intangible is not measurable and is different for each person. It should not be a cornerstone in the debate about Athletics' spending.
Dropping Division I-A football could save about $1 million each year, but it reduces the $4 million we generate in revenue. Overall, we do not know if the numbers would mean saving or losing money in the long run.
OU must seriously restructure athletics, from intercollegiate to club sports. This spending pattern simply cannot continue. With the pressure Athletics faces, this inefficient system has to change.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post's executive editors.
4 Opinion
Athletics' spending pattern needs to be re-examined
