If you’re a fan in today’s professional sports world, you are probably very familiar with the ultimate factor driving all decisions.money. If you’re a student here at WU, you’re also no stranger to how money plays a role in decisions made by the administration on this campus. Now, try imagining these two aspects combined, and you’ll figure out that there are several costs involved in fielding our men’s and women’s sports teams. Additionally, while these teams do make money, you might be surprised to learn which team is getting the most for what they pay for.

All of the following numbers were reported in the annual “Higher Education Act” report, filed each year by the university. Upon analyzing both the men’s and women’s programs, it appears that the men’s side has over 10 percent more total expenses than the women’s side. This does not mean, however, that the university has decided that men’s sports teams are more deserving of funding-this number can simply be attributed to the cost of maintaining the men’s football team.

When looking at the each of the individual sports’ game-day expenses, the cost for having the men’s football games hovered around $105,000 a year, which was about 20 percent greater than the next individual sport expense, which is women’s basketball ($84,000).

After reading this, you may be surprised to find out that when looking at total revenues for each program, it is actually the women who end up producing more money. According to the report, the women earn over $105,000, which ends up being a little more than 7 percent greater than the men’s number ($91,000).

If you’re wondering how the women could earn more with less funding, you can look no further than our very successful women’s basketball team, as they bring in significantly more revenue than any of the other individual sports. This can probably be attributed to their numerous tournament appearances over the years, and their publicity amongst the student population. However, it should be noted that when comparing only the respective men’s and women’s basketball programs, the women incur far more operating costs. Also, when looking at the revenues from both sides, it was found that the men actually end up with less of a disparity when subtracting revenues from expenses than the women. So while the women’s basketball team makes almost as much money as that of the men’s football and basketball teams combined, they still maintain a high expense for a university basketball program.

The costs of maintaining other sports at this school were also analyzed, and there seems to be less disparity between the men’s and women’s programs. Soccer, swimming and diving, and the running teams all had nearly identical operating costs for both sides. Additionally, the men’s baseball and women’s softball teams showed similar game-day expenses. Women’s volleyball, which is the second-most costly women’s sport to maintain, had expenses around $52,000, which was slightly less than the $60,000 allocated for men’s basketball. The tennis program, however, showed a slight disparity, with more than $10,000 dollars more money being spent in the women’s program than the men’s.

One final note that I thought was interesting: when you take away football, volleyball and both basketball programs from the equation, all the combined women’s sports teams cost more to operate, and make more revenue, than the combined men’s sports teams.

Now, while all of this may have read like a transcript from some lost ESPN “Outside the Lines” segment, it just goes to show how sports can have a financial impact even at a small Division III school such as WU. If you could possibly imagine the staggering numbers from big schools such as the University of Michigan, or Texas, you might be able to understand how much of a factor money plays in college sports. So, while the NFL sells new franchises for over a billion dollars, Major League Baseball is on the verge of another work stoppage, and NBA high school kids are making more money than some of us will make at age 35, college sports also can have their financial issues.. even though they probably are at an “amateur” level.

Contact Nick at [email protected]

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2001 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.