Can't speak of all schools, but at my local state school (which I attended) - which as far as sports teams is way down on the list of being considered important (i.e. you'll never see them on TV), they constantly bringing in coaches making $1M/year, who then hire a bunch of assistant coaches making $200K a year etc - and then when the teams don't do well - like losing 80% of their games - they fire the coaches (paying out the rest of their contracts) and hire the next million dollar coaches, rinse and repeat - and this is at a state-run school; I would imagine at private schools with top tier teams, its even worse.

There is so many overspending problems its not even funny - and yet the people actually teaching the classes are TA's, probably getting $20K/year, while the professors work on their 'research' and are rarely available to students.

Starting to think the whole higher-education model is hopelessly broken.

Sports are generally separate from the rest of the university budget. It's not tuition dollars that are paying the coach, it's season tickets, TV contracts, and donors. Men's football/basketball makes obscene money for the big schools, and the little schools get paid to be beat up by the big schools. The reports that sports don't make money are like how movies don't make money, it's largely creative accounting not actual losses.

Hollywood accounting only works because the producers are taking the profits out by spending the money on outside firms that they get a piece of. That does not work in college sports: they are just plain losing money... except for the coaches and he staff who are making it hand over foot (even on the small schools with horrible records).

The vast majority of college sports programs in the U.S. are losing a lot of money for the school. They are operating at a detriment to the school's main goal of learning.

They "lose" money because they offer more than men's basketball and football. Those two sports finance everything else, it's easy to document millions in losses for swimming, soccer, track, field, baseball, softball, tennis, golf, and everything else.

Also a Universities goal of learning is research, not teaching, especially not undergrad teaching.

This has always seemed like a weird defense of college sports to me, because college swimming, soccer, etc. are still an elite cadre of extremely physically fit young people.

Maintaining physical health is huge, but the demographic that needs to be targeted is lower performance level that club sports. Even THOSE are quite competitive. Even the (very fit) people who participate often cease physical activity and healthy eating soon after graduation.

On the other hand, subsidizing college gym facilities does tend to reach most of the student body. Required athletics classes is even more effective and pays long-term dividends (if they haven't been canceled due to COVID by now). But even more-so than that, consistent physical activity for grade school and high school would be even better from a whole society perspective.

this is a conscious calculation to attract alumni donations — people who are into their college teams donate more than others, and even more when the teams do well