109,901, and Why It Matters
While delayed at the airport multiple hours, had time to write. And so, after yesterday's celebration of my brother Gauss' wedding, another happy entry on a totally different subject. :-)
As a public university, my alma mater has always had a wealth of information publically available about it's inner workings.
For example, every year, U. Michigan publishes the salaries of every single non-student employee. *Every* employee. Want to know how much your department chairman, ward attending, thesis mentor, charge nurse, or even your senior resident is making? All right there -- down to the cents.
Or, for example, the athletic budget, the most recent edition seen here. Broken down by revenues and expenses. Most notably, on the expense side, almost fifteen million dollars in scholarships.
That means twelve hundred kids from Michigan getting a full-tuition U. Michigan education, free and clear, every year.
Much is made every year about the escalating financial arms race in sports of all kinds -- bigger salaries, bigger stadiums, bigger network and media deals, etc. College sports is, of course, subject to the same trends. But there's a slightly different side to the standard money-lust, when it comes to sports at places like U. Michigan. U. Michigan's athletic department leadership -- led by the former chairman of Domino's Pizza -- pursues it's own financial advantage as fiercely as any professional sports team owner. The difference is that, when U. Michigan's athletics department turns a profit, it's not our athletic director or our University President which pockets the proceeds.
Every time U. Michigan and the Big Ten score a big new network television deal, more Michigan high school students get scholarships to go to U. Michigan. Every time U. Michigan convinces wealthy boosters to buy luxury boxes, more Michigan kids from working families get the chance at the doors a Michigan degree opens. Almost fifteen million dollars in athletic scholarships, the vast majority going to students playing sports almost nobody watches. Another two million dollars of further profit -- enough for another 180 full schoarships -- passed on to the University at large.
That's *after* fully funding all of it's own operations -- paying for all it's own equipment, coaches, stadium renovations, and all else. The University of Michigan doesn't pour money into sports. Sports pour money into the University. Often literally, as in the case of the two million transferred directly to U. Michigan's general fund. And that doesn't even count the well-documented correlation between success on the football field and increases in financial donations from wealthy alumni, or myriad other indirect effects.
The vast majority of U. Michigan student athletes will never make a professional living from their sports. But the majority of them -- under former coaches Schembechler, Muller, and Carr, even a majority of the football players -- *do* get a U. Michigan degree. For many of them, a degree they and their families could not otherwise afford. *That's* ultimately what a financially successful U. Michigan athletics program means most.
So yes, as a lifelong Michigan Wolverine sports fan, I'm tickled Maize and Blue by the announcement that Michigan Stadium will reclaim the title of biggest football stadium in America this fall. I'm excited to welcome the University of Nebraska to the Big Ten, and their legions of Big Red fans as fanatical about their football team as Ohio State, Penn State, or Michigan fans are fanatical about ours. I look forward to the epic football clashes to come between Nebraska and U. Michigan (most of which, over the next few years, we Wolverines are going to lose).
But in the end, the sports wins and losses and records themselves don't really matter. What *does* matter are all the Michigan high school kids who are going to get educations paid for by those new luxury boxes and added seats. All the kids from Houghton and Hamtramck who will get the chance to go to get a U. Michigan education because Nebraska's perennial football sellouts will allow the Big Ten to negotiate still higher network broadcast payments. And *that* is something worth cheering about. :-)