Future of Varsity Sports

Archive Report

Challenges Facing College Athletics

Signs of Hard Times and Reaction of Colleges

Of all the american institutions currently threatened by inflation and recession, none is more ail-American than intercollegiate athletics. Varsity1 sports are suffering from murderously high costs and greatly increased competition for the public's sports-entertainment dollar. The situation was summed up by Frank Deford, who wrote in Sports Illustrated on July 28 that if intercollegiate athletics were sold on Wall Street, they “would be down 100 points and the Securities and Exchange Commission would have suspended trading.”

According to Deford and others, 90 per cent of all U.S. college athletic departments are losing money, and “every indication is that it will get worse before it gets lots worse.” An omen of things to come emanated from ...

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