U of M’s athletics department seeking donors
I found a statement by the University of Michigan’s athletics department to be very interesting in light of what I reported on yesterday.
Yesterday I reported about a recent study by Forbes Magazine that informed us that University of Michigan was the third-most valuable college football team from 2014 to 2016. The study reported that the U of M football team alone averaged $127 million dollars a year in revenue with an average profit of $75 million.
I then saw their statement dated 9-12-18 this morning in which they informed us they have established what they call their Champions Fund. This Champions Fund is their new initiative from their athletics department in which they are seeking donors to help pay for things like nutrition, training, international travel and recruiting moving forward.
Warde Manuel, U-M's Donald R. Shepherd Director of Athletics was quoted in that statement saying:
Our goal is to stay one step ahead of our competition and to remain one of the top college athletic programs in the country by investing directly into student-athlete welfare initiatives…This fund will support areas of personal growth for our student-athletes on a yearly basis and help us build and develop leaders in the community after graduation.
The statement said that cost to fund these programs is approximately $15 million dollars a year:
The athletic department invests more than $15 million annually toward counseling, career and leadership development, nutrition, athletic medicine, strength and conditioning, international travel and recruiting.
That goal sounds like a very good one but knowing they are profiting on average $75 million a year on their football program you would think they could take some of those profits to fund their programs.
I know that they do fund the other athletic programs in which they lose money, I believe football and basketball are the only programs that pay for themselves and even make a profit for the schools.
More power to them if they can actually get people to donate money knowing that U of M makes so much money from their football program alone.
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