[NU Sports] The cost of university athletics

[cherron604 at aol.com]

With the talk of adding a sport or two, and travel budgets, I found this article about Texas.

http://www.statesman.com/sports/content/sports/stories/longhorns/09/30/0930utsportsmain.html

It was noted that UT has made the decision to go with fewer varsity sports than many of its peers.

Some highlights

- $300 a day to bus players from the stadium to the practice field, so they don't risk crossing streets
- $43,000 for an underwater treadmill with video monitoring
- $15,020 for locker room recliners
- $537,000 for player rewards - letter jackets, watches, iPods
- $160,000 to change the seasonal 'Longhorn Sports Center' to a year-round TV production
- $93,000 party after the football National Championship
- $400,000 per game to host a home football game
??? - $3500/game for bomb-sniffing dogs
??? - $682/game for Mack Brown's personal Texas Ranger
??? - $50,000/game to operate the scoreboard
??? - $800/game to stock the football coaches wives' suite
- $9 Million - new scoreboard/video/sound system
- $3.9 Million - buy out the ad rights to the old scoreboard

All told, UT spends $210,000 per student athlete (ten times the national average)?- up from $113,000 in 2003.

I would like to see our budget breakdown - or perhaps I wouldn't...I'm guessing I'd get very depressed.

Chuck Herron?? Tech '85