(09-26-2023, 03:10 PM)BostonCard Wrote: I hate to break it to you guys, but while athletics might have a very strong emotional appeal to the self-selected members of this board, it is mentioned exactly once in the most recent annual financial report (under the definition of "auxiliary services"). If the University were a business, athletics would be someone's legacy passion program that at most has a few vocal champions but contributes little to the bottom line, is at best a weak strategic fit, and is ripe for elimination at the next strategic reorganization. It is only because Stanford is not run like a business that the Athletics department lives on.
BC is always good at the big picture view. But I believe there are some flaws in the above. Am I correct that this only looked at operational expenditures?
- How does athletics fit into the donor situation? I imagine a lot of significant donors are not particularly interested in athletic, but some big donors have given Stanford great athletic facilities and funded coaches.
- There is also the part of life experience that include students being fans of their athletic teams.
- I'm not sure that (say) Chevrolet makes much of its money from sponsoring car racing teams, but they continue to do it. Name recognition counts.
But in my view, I still don't understand how Stanford (and Cal) didn't take this opportunity to start closing down football for health reasons.