Wow. What you're saying is so utterly ridiculous, and absurd, I don't even know where to begin. Smh
Regurgitating conservative talking pts. is not going to help you understand this issue. Nor is reading Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, & Ayn Rand. You can't analyze this issue through the lens of Austrian economics & Libertarianism, because its irrelevant, and doesn't apply here. Unfortunately for you, to understand this issue you actually have to engage in some form or critical thinking.
1.) It appears to me that you are fundamentally confused about the nature & economics of college athletics. College athletic depts. have non-profit organizational structures. This means that unlike in private business or professional sports, there are no stakeholders with incentives to retain excess income for profits or future needs. As a result athletic departments spend basically all of their revenue each year on their mission-focused work. This underscores the pt. that athletic dept. spending rises in direct proportion to revenue, and the benchmark or threshold for competitive investments is always set by the highest revenue earners. Implementing spending controls are necessary, because the increase in revenue disproportionately goes to already wealthy schools. If this trend continues tell me what do you think is going to happen to the programs who are in the 3rd quartile of revenue earners, during the next round of conference media deals? What should they do? Should they lift themselves up from their bootstraps, and just try harder? The problem with this line of thinking, is that most of these athletic programs have already been optimized & are operating at maximum efficiency. There's no other way for them to rearrange their budgets, without putting them at a competitive disadvantage.
2.) I don't even understand what you're trying to say here. The issue is collectively, the disparity in resource allocation between the highest revenue schools & everyone else adds financial risk to the entire system. Spending controls are necessary, so that revenue earners in the 3rd quartile won't have to teeter back & forth between operational & insolvent, in order to keep pace with high earners. The highest revenue earners are not relying on in-kind expenditures/contributions to achieve their spending advantage. Instead they're exploiting a system that lacks a regulatory framework to gain their advantage.
3.) In addition to the non-profit organizational structure, the tendency to prioritize spending over saving is reinforced by the zero-sum nature of competition in college athletics. Currently less than 50% of P5, and less than 25% of G5 programs have any type of reserve fund. This makes athletic programs less resilient towards financial setbacks. This pt. was made crystal clear to you last yr during the pandemic. I think you should go back and research how many P5 programs were forced to make layoffs, furloughs, and budget cuts. Programs like Stanford, Iowa, & Minnesota respectively. These programs were already under distress prior to last yr. The pandemic only amplified & exacerbated the issues. If the programs aren't forced to spend close to 100% of their revenue each yr, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect them to save more?
Hoping for parity, competitive balance & sustainability in college athletics is not a utopian vision. It's a normalized vision. Kind of like what we see in professional sports & the NFL. Would anyone ever accuse Jerry Jones of being a Socialist? Or is he a staunch Capitalist? Tell me. In the end this is about financial sustainability, and competitive self-interest. That's what you're not understanding. It's not about ideology & propaganda
VERY telling observation.
