Financial Benefits of Athletics Unclear

Academe, Jan/Feb 2005 by Bradley, Gwendolyn

Contrary to popular wisdom, successful college athletics teams do not necessarily create bigger alumni gifts or more or better student applicants, says a report, Challenging the Myth, released in September by the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. The report's author, Cornell University economist Robert Frank, notes that the costs of college athletics programs are rising, and that most athletics departments spend more than they take in. Many institutions continue to spend on athletics, he says, because they believe that successful teams create indirect benefits such as increased gifts or student applications. The empirical studies reviewed, however, do not support that conclusion, and any relationship between successful athletics and indirect benefits is likely small, the report says.

Frank also characterizes universities as being engaged in a competitive "arms race" in which they spend more and more on athletics merely to remain competitive with one another, and he suggests that they jointly agree to cut back on sports spending in order to allocate resources to other pressing needs.

-G.B.