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Comment by dgoldstein0 | Hacker News Reader

College football and basketball seem mainly to function as publicity for the schools and, when the teams are winning, help them to get the alumni to donate more. And serve as entertainment for the non athlete students. It's profoundly weird and completely unrelated to the academic functions of the university. Lots of people confuse schools with good sports teams for schools with strong academics.

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Football and basketball fund all the other sports. That's important because there are still many kids getting their tuition covered with a sports scholarship, which, in turn, is being paid for by the football and basketball programs.

All that to say there is some academic good that comes out of all this.

Also fun random fact, but at a lot of major US public universities, the highest paid employee would be the men's football or basketball coach.

The highest paid public servant in almost every US state, apparently:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/lnir2v/oc_the_high...

not sure I'd call it fun.

A cousin mentioned that the basketball coach was the highest paid employee at her (private) university. I said that he was also likely to be among the easiest to fire. Even an adjunct is likely to have more chances than a coach who doesn't meet expectations.

They can be fired but if so the school is still on the hook for paying out the rest of their contract....so, maybe easy to do but painful financially.

Football coach but the same principles apply: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/12/jimbo-fisher-buyout/

Fair enough.

> when the teams are winning,

Trust me, this qualifier is completely unnecessary. See: Cal football's inexplicable perennial popularity.

People just like having a team to cheer for, regardless of that team's success.

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