Numbers never lie

Numbers might not “lie,” but people certainly do, as we’ve seen in the examination of sex-trafficking statistics. I happened to catch a discussion on ESPN concerning Title IX and all the wonderful things it has done for women, if not necessarily for sports. There was a little animation segment which ended with the statement “Numbers Never Lie,” apparently in consideration of the proportion of women in attendance of colleges and universities, and their representation in school sports; I can’t imagine what else it could be referring to, given that anyone who claims that women overall have the same level interest in sports as men is just playing the justification game. Probably the closest we can come to a making a fair comparison in interest between men’s and women’s collegiate sports is in basketball, so let’s look at the numbers for television ratings and viewership of the two NCAA Final Fours in 2011; on the men’s side, the average rating was 10.28 with a viewership of 15.38 million; for the women, the television rating was 2.14, with an average viewership of 2.87 million.

How do we read these numbers? Since the average viewership per household is no more than 1.5, it suggests that college basketball is not “family” fare, and serious college basketball fans (such as those who are in office betting pools) are more likely to watch it. We can also rightly suspect that it is men and/or their sons or friends who are principally watching the men’s games. The next question is who is watching the women’s games? If we just say that women are the sole audience (for the sake of comparison), it means that 84.3 percent of fans are male. I also suspect that many of the “fans” who watched the women’s Final Four do so for political reasons, not necessarily because they are sports fans. Doubters of this “theory” merely have to observe how many females you see playing “pick-up” basketball games, which is a greater indicator of broad interest. As an aside, I admit that I have a passing interest in seeing if Britney Griner will be the Wilt Chamberlain of women’s professional basketball next season, but beyond that my interest in the WNBA tends to be on the sardonic side.

One irony about Title IX is that athletics was only part of its agenda; it aimed to rectify what was at the time perceived to be inequality of opportunity for females in the overall college experience. A second irony is that at most co-ed schools today, females out-number male students, sometimes by a considerable percentage. A third irony is the perception that admissions departments have gone too far in showing favoritism toward female applicants. How can this be true? Consider this factoid: The 2011 SAT report states the males scored higher on the SAT than females in both the traditional categories—verbal and math—for a total score of 1031, compared to 995 for females. Of course, now they call the “verbal” test “critical reading,” and the SAT board has added a new test, “writing,” which females naturally score higher—probably because this is the test where the bullshit quotient is highest. Still, even with that test, males scored higher overall, and yet it appears that this latter test, when used as an admissions criteria, has more “weight” than the other tests.

But back to the athletics side. There is no shortage of female commentators who will tell you, in response to complaints that women’s athletic programs are a drain on budgets with little or no revenue streams, that the reputation of football programs as significant revenue streams is overblown, and don’t pay for themselves, let alone other programs. I do not know if this is true of schools below Division 1, but in Division 1, the vast majority of football programs are not only “profitable,” but the revenues generated from them are in fact used to pay for athletic programs that are little more than country clubbish vanity affairs. The website “The Business of College Sports” reviewed Department of Education figures and came-up with this profit/loss analysis of the 2010-2011 year in regard to major football (and men’s basketball) programs:

Rank School Revenue Expenses Profit

1 University of Texas (Football) $93,942,815 $25,112,331 $68,830,484

2 Univ. of Georgia (Football) $70,838,539 $18,308,654 $52,529,885

3 Penn State Univ. (Football) $70,208,584 $19,780,939 $50,427,645

4 Univ. of Michigan (Football) $63,189,417 $18,328,233 $44,861,184

5 Univ. of Florida (Football) $68,715,750 $24,457,557 $44,258,193

6 LSU (Football) $68,819,806 $25,566,520 $43,253,286

7 Univ. of Alabama (Football) $71,884,525 $31,118,134 $40,766,391

8 Univ. of Tenn. (Football) $56,593,946 $17,357,345 $39,236,601

9 Auburn Univ. (Football) $66,162,720 $27,911,713 $38,251,007

10 Univ. of Oklahoma (Football) $58,295,888 $20,150,769 $38,145,119

11 Univ. of SC (Football) $58,266,159 $22,794,211 $35,471,948

12 Notre Dame (Football) $64,163,063 $29,490,788 $34,672,275

13 Univ. of Nebraska (Football) $49,928,228 $17,843,849 $32,084,379

14 Ohio State Univ. (Football) $63,750,000 $31,763,036 $31,986,964

15 Univ. of Iowa (Football) $45,854,764 $18,468,732 $27,386,032

16 Michigan S. (Football) $44,462,659 $17,468,458 $26,994,201

17 Univ. of Arkansas (Football) $48,524,244 $22,005,104 $26,519,140

18 Texas A&M (Football) $41,915,428 $16,599,798 $25,315,630

19 Univ. of Kentucky (Football) $31,890,572 $13,905,724 $17,984,848

20 Oklahoma State (Football) $32,787,498 $15,479,410 $17,308,088

21 Louisville (Basketball) $25,890,003 $9,089,769 $16,800,234

22 Univ. of Wisconsin (Football) $38,662,971 $22,041,491 $16,621,480

23 Univ. of Mississippi (Football) $28,409,774 $11,920,510 $16,489,264

24 West Virg. Univ. (Football) $29,467,612 $14,330,236 $15,137,376

25 Univ. of Minnesota (Football) $32,322,688 $17,433,699 $14,888,989

26 Virginia Tech (Football) $31,155,870 $16,302,767 $14,853,103

27 Univ of Wash. (Football) $33,919,639 $19,207,560 $14,712,079

28 Clemson Univ. (Football) $30,994,503 $16,305,528 $14,688,975

29 Duke (Basketball) $26,667,056 $12,286,475 $14,380,581

30 Univ. of Illinois (Football) $25,301,783 $11,092,122 $14,209,661

31 North Carolina (Basketball) $20,551,168 $6,647,459 $13,903,709

32 Univ.of Colorado (Football) $26,233,929 $12,558,503 $13,675,426

33 Univ. of Arizona (Basketball) $19,285,038 $5,806,535 $13,478,503

34 Ohio St. (Basketball) $16,190,723 $4,554,908 $11,635,815

35 Univ. of Missouri (Football) $25,378,066 $13,759,649 $11,618,417

36 North Carolina St. (Football) $22,018,738 $10,408,938 $11,609,800

37 Arizona State (Football) $29,587,236 $17,977,987 $11,609,249

38 Texas Tech (Football) $26,201,009 $14,688,382 $11,512,627

39 Univ of Oregon (Football) $29,505,906 $18,071,012 $11,434,894

40 Univ of Arizona (Football) $24,398,253 $13,685,931 $10,712,322

41 Syracuse Univ. (Basketball) $18,309,470 $8,086,376 $10,223,094

42 Wisconsin (Basketball) $17,666,311 $7,539,418 $10,126,893

43 Illinois (Basketball) $14,413,222 $4,980,589 $9,432,633

44 Georgia Tech (Football) $24,870,064 $15,519,206 $9,350,858

45 Indiana Univ. (Football) $21,783,185 $12,822,779 $8,960,406

46 Indiana (Basketball) $16,570,158 $7,653,945 $8,916,213

47 Univ. of Arkansas (Basketball) $15,515,830 $6,839,213 $8,676,617

48 USC (Football) $29,080,117 $20,820,468 $8,259,649

49 Minnesota (Basketball) $13,733,316 $5,692,149 $8,041,167

50 Michigan St. (Basketball) $16,138,167 $8,250,450 $7,887,717

What do these numbers mean? Comparing this to a USA Today chart of self-sustaining athletic departments—meaning schools that receive all (or nearly all) of their funding for athletic programs from sports revenue or gifts from boosters—65 percent of the University of Texas’s athletic department revenue comes directly from the football program. Even more “astonishingly,” take away the “profit” that the football program generates, the athletic department would have losses of $55 million. The Texas model is admittedly the most extreme example, but overall the story has a similar feel. Although the University of Washington athletic department generates less than half of its revenue from the football program, without its “profit” margin the department would be $12 million in the red; dump football altogether, in order to be “self-sustaining” the UW athletic department would have to find ways to cut 25 percent of the funding for its remaining programs. This would be more problematic than at first blush, because the men’s moderately successful basketball program has its own healthy revenue stream, but nothing like football and it would be patently unfair to force the basketball program to “pay” for other sports. The only other alternative is to force the school to make far more significant subsidies to support the athletic department than it is now—especially since booster “gifts” would dry-up.

And college football programs have significant economic impact on local communities. The University of Wisconsin published a report entitled “The Economic Impact of The University of Wisconsin Athletic Department” earlier this year. It claimed that the athletic department generated $970 million in total economic impact over the year, including $843 million in fan spending, creating or supporting 8,853 jobs and generating $52.8 million in tax revenue, mostly from fan spending. Although there was no breakdown by sport, there can be no doubt that the Badgers’ resurgence as one of the top football programs in the country accounted for the greater portion of this impact.

So numbers don’t lie. Only people do.