Re: Boston College Off-Season Thread: 2012 National Champions
Split-N, I get what you're saying here. But I offer these points in rebuttal:
I'm with you on the notion that athletics is a factor in the decisions some (but not all) kids make in deciding which college to attend and I'm not suggesting you shouldn't have a quality athletic program. But last time I looked, the two principal missions of a university were to educate and conduct research, not run player development programs for the NFL and NBA. And that's exactly what you're doing when those two marquee sports can't at least pay for themselves, considering all of the revenue streams they have. I suppose we're getting into philosophical viewpoints here but, in my view, the big-ticket sports ought to at least generate enough cash to fund all of the non-revenue sports, and maybe even intramurals.
If you don't think our athletics program plays not just a 'factor' but a top 3 role in many, many prospective BC students' decisions on where to attend college, then I really don't know what to tell you here. BC is so popular among applicants because it is one of the few 'total package' universities out there that have such extraordinarily high ratings of academics, quality of life, beauty of its campus, etc. Athletics is THE number one reason students will cite a high quality of life on campus when applying here. No, not everyones'. But an extremely high percentage.
Another concern is that when the big-ticket sports need to be subsidized to stay afloat, then there's that much less left in the general funds for things like student aid, facilities, staff, services, and all the other things that relate to the aforementioned principal missions of a university.
This would be a decent point, except:
1) BC is currently spending what amounts to
nearly half its endowment on a massive, campus-wide master plan to completely upgrade nearly every part of campus. We're doing just fine financially.
2) I'm not really sure where you found that BC's athletics department is running in the red.
This is the most recent item I've found (from the beginning of 2011), and athletics made a profit. I'm sure there are more recent ones but I can't find them for some reason. Anyway, regardless of this, BC gets SO much more in donations because of athletics, and even of those not earmarked for the Flynn Fund or for athletics, a great deal of donations are a direct result of a student's love of their school -- much of which is a direct result of BC's athletics program.
Just because Northeastern's athletic department sucks to the point where they had to drop football doesn't mean everyone else who runs a successful athletics program is somehow abandoning their missions of educating students and conducting research in favor of being some player development program for the pros. Having good athletics and good academics isn't mutually exclusive. In fact, BC's academics are stronger because of its athletics program because it brings in so many more applicants and allows the university to be more selective.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure BC really is providing a feeder system of talent to the NHL. But that's something else entirely.
