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Comment by qws | Hacker News Reader

Is it really still profitable in e.g. that case of Dabo Swinney landing a 93 million dollar contract?

The places where the profitability of football is in question is basically everything lower than the 5 main conferences (Big 10, SEC, ACC, Big XII, and Pac 10), and especially the schools lower than that level which aren't reliable winners. (Think the San Jose State's of the world)

Clemson football generated 50 million dollars last year

https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/sports/college/clemso...

While 93 million over 10 years works out to being a pretty sizable chunk of that for one employee,

yeah, its still a profitable enterprise

It's profitable only because the players aren't paid. Only a small percentage of the players make it to the NFL. Many of the remainder suffer physical consequences for the rest of their lives. It's one of the most obscene exploitation schemes still remaining.

that's nothing against the european hooligan scene, who meet to literally bash each other's heads in, in the extreme cases. While the societal affiliations hardly compare, the disparity is the same.

If you lose, it's your fault, but if you win, then we win. It's symptomatic, whether with burned out programmers, upto and over 50% of university drop-outs (in certain programs like maths or physics at least), blue collar workers who break their backs, etc. etc.

> It's profitable only because the players aren't paid.

No.

The NFL minimum salary is under $500k and by your own admission these players aren't that good.

Even a generous $200k/yr and a generous 100 player roster only adds up to $20 million, and there are teams with over $50 million in profits.

First, there are not many teams with over $50 million in profits, only the top 13 as of 2018. [0]

Second, you're assuming that even the top players would only make the minimum, which you have arbitrarily set at $200k, assuming that they would be paid less than the minimum NFL salary. The more accurate measure would be to pay them some percentage of the average NFL salary, which was $1.9 million in 2018. [1] So assuming the average college player salary would be 40% (to use your arbitrary number), that would be just under $800k per player. Even with a 53-player roster, that puts player salaries at over $40 million annually, which wipes out profits for all but the top 15 or 20 teams.

Third, I didn't say these players "aren't that good." The fact that only 2% of them make it to the NFL doesn't mean the other 98% aren't that good, it just means that the market won't bear paying for more players when they're fairly compensated.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2018/09/11/college-f...

[1] https://gazettereview.com/2017/03/average-nfl-player-salary/

The average college football player, with their 2% chance of making it to the NFL, is worth the median NFL salary of roughly $800k? This has gone a little too far off track for me.

The core issue here is claiming that profits are derived from not paying players. There are plenty of teams not paying players and losing money. The top teams could pay players well and still make profit. There's a small Goldilocks zone where what players should be paid lines up with the team's level of profit. The old "profits come from not paying workers" canard is a story with little to no explanatory power here.

University athletic departments have to compete with NFL salaries in much the same way that university CS departments have to compete with FAANG salaries.

Clemson's football program has been exceptional under Dabo. I can see how his 10-year contract is justified.

The top college football programs pull in over a hundred million in revenue each year. Clemson is on it's way there. And that's only in media, ticket sales and such. I'm sure schools with excellent football programs are more likely to attract students and alumni donations.

Check out this WSJ table with revenues from the 2018 season. https://graphics.wsj.com/table/NCAA_2019?mod=article_inline

EDIT: Thinking more about it—there are secondary effects as well. If a team does well, it attracts fans from out of town. Those fans will spend money on food, drinks, entertainment and hotels. That provides local businesses money and the city tax revenues.

Clemson pulls in about $50M / year from football alone, not counting any tangentially related revenue it may generate.

Athletic departments don't necessarily have a need to be profitable, and most are not. Clemson averages ~$77 million in revenue over the last few years, mostly from valuable TV rights and ticket sales.

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