The Program

The Wall Street Journal had a feature article about THE Ohio State University this pas week:

"At $109,382,222 for the current year, Ohio State's athletic budget is the largest in the nation and the biggest in the history of college sports. It allows the school to field 36 varsity teams in everything from baseball and soccer to riflery and synchronized swimming. The school spends about $110,000 on each of its 980 athletes, which is triple the amount the university spends per undergraduate on education. Here in Columbus, the OSU athletic department is a gold-plated island in a region getting roiled by harsh economic forces. The lavish program is the most vivid example of how college sports have turned into a humongous business and created a parallel universe of high-living in the world of academia."

The numbers are mind blowing, but is there really any other school that year in, year out - over the past 20 years - that has had more top 10 teams in both football and basketball combined? Definitely not the school up north. Definitely not the flash in the pan Gators.