The Allegory of the Cave and the Realities of College Athletics

A few weeks ago, we were assigned with reading Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” that deals with perception vs. reality. Socrates describes a group of prisoners that are inside a cave, and forced to look a one side of the cave’s wall. There is an important metaphor to look at here. The prisoners are chained to the wall, forced to look at one side. They can’t look at the other side, thus they can’t perceive what is reality, and what is not. They only know what is in the cave and in the shadows.

College Football fans and students alike are kept in the dark about the realities of College Athletics in general. We all love to support our schools, and look at the purity of the sport in general. We think everything is going well for the majority of the BCS Conference teams. Most people assume that every athletic department makes money. But behind all of the fanfare, pageantry and tradition is a business model that is fundamentally broken.

In my Introduction to Sport Management class, our professor told us that the business model of big-time college athletics is to basically rely on Football and Men’s Basketball to generate enough revenue to be “self-supportive”. The other goal is even more crucial, to “generate excess revenue to fund other athletic department programs.” 

So college athletic departments rely on the two biggest revenue-generating sports to support the athletic department. This model clearly doesn’t work, because the majority of athletic departments lose money. The stat is staggering, and according to my professor: “only 22 athletic departments were financially self sufficient last year.” Also, only 70 out of 120 FBS programs broke even or made a profit.

This is very similar to the story that Socrates tells. When the prisoner walks outside of the cave, he sees new things like the sun. This shocks him, and he now has new knowledge and understanding. He now sees that what he has known to be true is false, and has a new sense of reality.

In the darkness of the cave fans see the amateurism, pageantry, and unpredictability of college athletics, but they are being misled. When fans walk out of the cave and open their eyes, they see the real reality that most athletic departments don’t make money. Most require substantial amounts of money from their universities to cover all the costs.

Now even though I’m being pessimistic and negative, I bleed maize and blue. I’ve been a fan of Michigan and College Sports my whole life. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to hide away from the facts that most fans should know and understand. Most schools would just be better off eliminating their football programs because they just don’t make money.

This information is easily accessible. It can be found in a database created by USA Today.  Why is it not talked about? Think about it. Again, it’s all about money. ESPN would do itself no good in widely reporting this issue, because it doesn’t benefit them in a marketing sense. They would rather focus on covering the Johnny Football or Notre Dame than report the facts.  They are keeping the prisoners in the cave. They only see the positivity that’s reported by the media. See the pattern?

Thank god for the respectable institution that is 60 minutes. Just recently the Michigan athletic department was featured in a special about the realities of big time college football. Everything in the special is true. Michigan’s entire $133 million budget relies on Michigan Football.  Michigan Football is responsible for 75% of that budget. Michigan turns a profit, but it is the exception: “The business model of big time college athletics is primarily broken. It’s a horrible business model,” says Michigan AD Dave Brandon. Even Brandon, an athletic director at a big time program admits it. The model doesn’t work.

Its time to come out of the darkness of the cave and face the facts, the business model of college football is broken.