You and I have discussed this issue before. It’s clear we will never agree. 
Steve
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Also good for the school. They get lots of supporters from the general public! They boost their brand! It increases their visibility and appeal to students and generates goodwill among the voting public. Most big-time football programs are at public colleges, so it’s very helpful to the institution if lots of people in their state are fans of U. of State or State U. That helps not just with getting good student classes, but a host of other things - especially budget and grant allocations from the state! But it also helps faculty recruitment, development of their infrastructure, building a good brand for their research hospitals and other public-facing aspects of the university, etc. Having represented several colleges in zoning matters, including both University of Miami and Florida International University, having lots of active and supportive alumni in the community is a valuable asset in dealing with local government.
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This discussion is getting repetitive. I have already shown examples of universities who are highly regarded for academic excellence, that people compete to attend, that have little to zero football program.
Steve
Why can’t it be both? Schools that have athletics and schools that don’t. Let the student choose where they wish to go.
Andy
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Sure. Having a good intercollegiate athletic program isn’t the only way to build your brand, but it’s certainly one way to do it. If you’ve got a fantastic brand identity for something else, then a good athletic program may not be useful to you. That’s especially going to be the case for first-tier small, private, niche and specialty institutions that have established brand recognition - even if not among the general public, among the people they need to cater to. Harvey Mudd and Parsons don’t need to advertise!
But if you’re in charge of a large, “everything” university (State U. or U. of State), you can’t take that route to differentiate yourself. And because you’re a public institution, you need to generate general support for your institution so that state legislators will think well of you.
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It’s another form of tribalism - as with all sports fans.
If not the college, then the city or the name (Raiders, Athletics etc.) of the club.
People want to be part of the boys network…
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Yes - not everything goes well all the time. Sometimes the football program you hoped would please the students, alumni, faculty, and state legislators who control your budget gets embroiled in scandal. There absolutely can be downsides to having a big-name athletic program.
That doesn’t take away from the reasons why colleges have all these athletic programs. To foster school identity, make their institutions more attractive to students and faculty, provide a point for alumni engagement…those all still exist. Those stakeholders like intercollegiate athletics. I mean, not every single last one of them. It sounds like you didn’t and don’t, for whatever schools you’ve graduated from - but a lot of them do. They’re part of what makes being part of a full-time college environment fun and enriching and rewarding, which is why schools like MIT and Harvard have such broad athletic programs. Their worth isn’t just measured in revenue.
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Some people ask questions, and some simply drink the kool-aid. They mindlessly do what “everyone” says they “need” to do, and think what they are told they “need” to think. And, decades later, none of it worked for them.
What does that have to with anything? Athletics are fun. People enjoy them. Young people - which are obviously hugely important to universities - enjoy them. Even at serious academic institutions, young people like to have events that they do together, wear fun clothing and sing silly fight songs and generally enjoy doing youthful and foolish things. Athletics are an excellent change for them to do that.
It’s not mindless conformance to the mob for people to enjoy taking part in group athletic activities, either as a participant or as a spectator. Virtually every college of a certain size has a vibrant intercollegiate athletics program (yes, even MIT) - and the ones that are too small to have their own program will sometimes band together with other small schools so they can field teams. If you want to attract good students (and faculty), you want to provide them with things they want and like in a university experience - not just classroom instruction. Whether it’s a campus radio station or a regularly scheduled movie night or having a big quad that people can hang out in…it is good for your institution if you provide things your students and faculty will enjoy. Within limits, and up to a point - but still, nearly every sizable college decides its worth at least some budget to have organized intercollegiate athletics.
It would be an interesting experiment to run with the three second rate universities in Michigan: Western, Eastern, and Central. They all currently provide a second rate education, at a high price, because money is siphoned off to fund a second rate athletic program. Run one as the control: continuing to charge a high price, for a second rate education, to subsidize a second rate athletic program. One school drops athletics, and uses the money to improve their academic performance. The third drops athletics, and uses the money to offer lower prices to students for the second rate education they receive. Come back in twenty years, and see what the result is. It might also be interesting to run an analysis of percentage of students who complete their degree, and what the degree is, to see if one school trends more to useful degrees: engineering, chemistry, physics, accounting, and which one has more “general ed” and “art history” sort of degrees, as well as more incomplete degrees as the party ended when the “bank of dad” called a halt. But running such an experiment would require the person in a position to make it happen, be willing to ask that question, rather than drinking the kool-aid that “every college needs athletics, no matter how bad, and loss making, the program is”.
Our understanding of economics will tell us that the more expensive something is, the less we get of it, but make something really cheap, by subsidizing it, and we will get more of it. How would a person interpret a system that makes education expensive, but makes circuses cheap or free?
Speaking of U of M, one of the few that provides both academic excellence and a competitive athletic program, which seems to cover it’s own costs:
That would be an interesting experiment. Given how visible the loss of the entire athletics department would be, compared to the amount of net cost savings, I suspect that the control school would be doing better on all counts, in the long term.
The other two would immediately be all-but-unique among large schools in the country for the complete lack of athletics - even small schools will at least run Division II or Division III athletics. It’s highly unlikely any improvements in academics would be visible enough to students to replace that. A reduction in tuition might…but that depends on how much the savings are, and that depends a lot on what the University ends up having to spend on other activities to replace the services that athletics provide - additional campus social and entertainment events, multi-use athletic facilities, and basic marketing to replace the lost visibility. Especially since alums may not take kindly to killing every sport.
Again, my bet would be on the one that kept the athletic program faring the best of the three.
Did you go to a second or third rate university? Realize how bad the teams are? Reality is the only “student athletes” that land in the second rate programs are the ones that couldn’t get themselves recruited by a competitive program. The football team was so bad one year, at the university I was at, that it nearly drew the collar for the season. They managed to beat another second rate university in the last game of the season. But the athletic department treats them all like they are a cinch to make the NFL. The student newspaper ran a series on how corrupt that second rate program, in a second rate university, was. One counselor told of trying to get a football recruit through class registration. She got him set up with some “general ed” classes (BS classes the university requires everyone to take that only make your degree cost more). One of the assistant ADs took the kid away from her. When she caught up with him, a bit later, the assistant AD had cancelled the “general ed” classes, which would have counted to meet his graduation requirements (which appear to not be a priority), and enrolled him in a couple “remedial reading” classes, with a tame teacher that could be relied on to give him a passing grade, without any course work being done, to maintain the sham of “NCAA academic qualification”.
For the halibut, I put together some numbers from US News And World Report for university academic rankings and cost, from another site for football team rank, and from another site for 10 year enrollment trend.
As you said, general state universities have tended to drink the kool-aid and offer football, rather than following the lead of Cal Tech and Kettering with no football, or that of MIT in running a high school size football program.
But maybe we can tease some information of the elasticity of demand with regard to price.
U of M: 3rd best public university, 4th best football team, tuition $17786/year, 10 year enrollment trend up 19.4%
WMU: 162nd best public university, 101st ranked football team, tuition $14594, ten year enrollment trend down 27.4%
CMU: 141st best public university, 104th ranked football team, tuition $14790, ten year enrollment trend down 37.8%
EMU: 203rd best public university, 120th ranked football team, tuition $15170. ten year enrollment trend down 33.8%
Overall college enrollment trend in Michigan is down 9.7%, in line with the state’s population drop.
My read is people look at going to U of M, for 20% more than the second rate schools, and decide it is worth the extra green. Whether they make that decision based on academic excellence, or football, I don’t know. U of M is one of the outliers that does both well.
Those other three are trending toward taking a dirt nap. Why not try something innovative?
At the end of the day, you could persuade me to help pay for your education, so you make more money, so you pay more into SS and Medicare, which makes my last few years a bit more comfortable. But why does it become my job to subsidize student “fun”?
Steve
I went to a university with a third rate football team, that’s for sure. And we went to the games and had a blast going. Tons of fun, stands filled with people - including lots of professors, alumni, and other grownups that would never really hang out socially with the students. Even though the team was terrible, it was a great time. I ended up being in the “jock” upperclass dorm, so I knew a bunch of the football guys - none of them were deceived into thinking they were going to the NFL.
Because your state decided to subsidize college. If you don’t have a state university system, where a large chunk of the budget comes from taxpayers, then you don’t need to subsidize anything. But if you’re going to have a publicly-funded university, then you have to provide the amenities and programs and features necessary to succeed. Your potential students and faculty (and legislatures) have a choice which institutions to enroll in, work in, or subsidize - if you want your institution to be successful, then you have make it attractive to the people you need to attract.
I would say that, if they go to college for “fun”, they can go elsewhere and leach off the taxpayers, and the college students, of another state.
Steve
Damn dude. I get your point, but isn’t college supposed to be fun?
Only in the US.
Elsewhere it is supposed to be an education.
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Right. 
Andy
And in Australia.
Andy
Eons ago, I read of a football game between one of the major SoCal universities and their big rival. One of the teams had a bunch of folks seated together in the stands, with flip-cards, to form different messages.
Some guys from Cal Tech got their hands on the instructions for the card flippers, and made some changes. I don’t recall what all of the messages were that ended up being shown during that game, but they were not what the big SoCal university intended. The guys from Cal Tech had a lot of “fun”, without millions of tax and student dollars being diverted away from academics, for circuses.
A coworker of mine was unusually tall. When he was in college, he formed up a basketball team with some other inordinately tall guys in the dorm. They even had jerseys made up. They called themselves the “Munch Mes” and they were all #69. They had “fun”, without millions of dollars being diverted from academics, for circuses.
There used to be a house near the Whatsa Matta U campus, called “the shady rest”. Every fall, the guys in that house had a party. My g/f commented about walking through the party on her way back to her apartment from work. Their theme that year was the Jonestown mass suicide, and they were handing out dixie cups of kool-aid. The guys had fun, but Kalamazoo PD had no sense of humor, always showed up to break up the party. Whatever KPD spent ruining that party, was peanuts, compared to the millions diverted from academics, for circuses.
Whatsa Matta U used to have a rope tow, on a sizeable hill on campus, near the dorms. After a few years of disuse, the rope tow was taken out. No money for it, but they divert millions from academics, for circuses.
The high school I went to had an annual event, the “Band Follies”, which featured student performers, as well as the school band, choir, and dancers performing. When the new building was built in 72, they had money for a football field, or an auditorium. Administration drank the kool-aid, built the football field, and the band follies went away, for lack of a venue. After that, the band only performed, as an adjunct to football games.
The head of the music department at Central made audio recordings of all the band follies he was involved with. Some thoughtful person uploaded the big production number from the 66 follies. I’m not that impressed with the choir, but that band was really good, when it stood on it’s own, rather than intermission time between sessions of overgrown morons crashing into each-other.
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