The annual rant about student fees paying for college athletics

I guess I need to write the annual column raising issue with student fees being used to balance budgets at UVA and Virginia Tech.

You’re not going to like it, so go ahead and send your cards and letters to …

USA Today released its annual D1 college athletics finances report last week. Texas, as usual, topped the list, reporting a whopping $214.8 million in athletics revenues.

UVA was 39^th on the list this year, bringing in $92.9 million. Virginia Tech was 44^th, at $87.4 million.

Further down the list:

• JMU: $48.2 million (62^nd nationally)
• ODU: $46.2 million (67^th nationally)
• VCU: $34.3 million (86^th nationally)
• George Mason: $29.6 million (103^rd nationally)
• William & Mary: $28.4 million (108^th nationally)
• Norfolk State ($13.7 million, 184^th nationally)
• VMI ($13.2 million, 189^th nationally)
• Radford ($12.9 million, 196^th nationally)
• Longwood ($11.9 million, 204^th nationally)

Richmond and Liberty, as private institutions, were not included in the report.

First observations focused on the discrepancies between the various levels of athletics competition. There are the Texases, then the UVAs and Virginia Techs, then the JMUs, ODUs and VCUs, then everybody else.

Also of note: both UVA and Virginia Tech reported higher spending than revenues (UVA with a $7.4 million operating deficit, Tech with a $3.3 million operating deficit), while none of the other Virginia D1 schools reported operating deficits.

Go ahead and scratch your head there.

Then, finally, we get to my annual issue with the student athletics activity fees.

These are the fees hidden on your kids’ bills each semester, along with tuition and room and board.

They go straight to the athletics departments for their bottom-line budgets, along with things you’d expect to be there, like proceeds from ticket sales, TV appearances, bowl game and NCAA Tournament earnings, donations from alums and other supporters.

Here is a table of student athletics activity fees from the 2016-2017 athletics year

• UVA: $13.9 million
• Virginia Tech: $8.9 million
• JMU: $37.1 million
• ODU: $28.7 million
• VCU: $19.9 million
• George Mason: $15.2 million
• William & Mary: $14.4 million
• Norfolk State: $6.3 million
• VMI: $5.8 million
• Radford: $10.9 million
• Longwood: $7.7 million

So, I said above that I make this an annual column, but this is the first time I dove deep into the numbers for other Virginia schools.

And I have to say, I’m shocked.

We’re talking half to beyond three-quarters of athletics revenues at the non-ACC schools coming from student athletics activity fees.

The problem that I have with this: when I was a student at UVA, I came in from a low-income family background, and those fees were dollars that I either had to pay for out of pocket or had to borrow.

The idea that college students making a few bucks an hour working nights and weekends while in school and in their summers to pay tuition and expenses and having to borrow tens of thousands extra to pay for tuition having to pony up extra so that their schools can have D1 programs should be something that bothers us all.

We’re sold the idea that when the football team is successful, for example, like it has been the past few years at JMU, it pays for the other sports, and it somehow contributes to the bottom line for the academics side.

Um, no, clearly, not at JMU, not at any of the other non-ACC schools, and not even at the ACC schools. Virginia Tech has a successful football program, and its athletics department ran at a deficit in 2016-2017, even with $8.9 million in these student fees.

The explosion in spending on new stadiums and coaches salaries is supposedly justified by the notion that successful teams and successful programs pay their own way.

Well, that’s at least true at the tippy-top of the pyramid. Seven of the top nine programs on the revenues list didn’t assess a single dollar in student fees in 2016-2017.

Column by Chris Graham