[Goose]

The Athletic Department is undoubtedly engaging in the "creative" accounting used by organizations that have a desired result and want to use financial  reasons as justification for their preferred actions. The department can allocate many fixed costs in crazy ways into which nobody outside the department has any visibility. If a group of donors comes up with funds to cover that number, they will rejigger things so that X is now 2X. AMTRAK does this all the time when it wants to cancel a long-distance train in the West. It moves costs around and "proves" that route loses money, all the while subsidizing the Northeast Corridor to make it look like less of a money sink. When asked for detailed cost breakdowns they in effect say "It is too complicated for you to understand". It is easy to prove something when you can alter the "facts" at will. The only thing that will save these sports is the University abandoning their agenda, whatever that may actually be. Money won't, by itself, do it.

[Goose]

The Athletic Department is undoubtedly engaging in the "creative" accounting used by organizations that have a desired result and want to use financial  reasons as justification for their preferred actions. The department can allocate many fixed costs in crazy ways into which nobody outside the department has any visibility. If a group of donors comes up with funds to cover that number, they will rejigger things so that X is now 2X. AMTRAK does this all the time when it wants to cancel a long-distance train in the West. It moves costs around and "proves" that route loses money, all the while subsidizing the Northeast Corridor to make it look like less of a money sink. When asked for detailed cost breakdowns they in effect say "It is too complicated for you to understand". It is easy to prove something when you can alter the "facts" at will. The only thing that will save these sports is the University abandoning their agenda, whatever that may actually be. Money won't, by itself, do it.