Wallace Renfro: "Profitability no indicator of importance of college athletics programs"

posted by Swish Appeal
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 8:48pm EST

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Wallace Renfro: "Profitability no indicator of importance of college athletics programs"

The link above is worth a read as information with which to respond to people who say women's sports and/or Title IX hurt universities because they don't generate revenue.

"There’s something wrong with that concept – that somehow or another, intercollegiate athletics is failing because it’s not paying its way," Renfro said at the workshop, which was held on the campus of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. "Take a look at a campus and take a look at the number of departments that don’t even come close to paying their way. They exist because the university believes it’s important to have those departments.

"What you have in higher education is a very complex system of cross-subsidization. There are a few areas in a few places that make a lot of money. Those monies are used to help pay for those other things that universities believe they must have if they’re going to have comprehensive university.

Imagine, for example, if people said we should cut history departments because they weren't profitable. That sounds rather Orwellian and thus frightening to me.

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Wallace Renfro: "Profitability no indicator of importance of college athletics programs"

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