Oregon Football is self-sustaining. They barely are, but they are. they lost money going to the BCS the past two years, but Uncle Phil's $ helps a lot!
Oh, no you are not. FAR from it. In the 2009-2010 Oregon athletics received over 1 million dollars in state and government support. One MILLION. $1,140,798.00
How in the world does Oregon have any reason to get a dime in state money for athletics when Knight alone has poured over $300 million into that program single-handedly? That would be like an NFL franchise getting a sweetheart deal from the state for their stadium lea....uh, never mind.
Also, Uncle Phil hasn't donated $300 million to the football program. He's donated that much to the school in general. He's donated millions to the Oregon law school, sports marketing programs and so on. He's also donates $100 million to Stanford, and $100 million to OHSU's cancer research institute. LSU has more over-all donation per year then Oregon has, so I don't see the big deal. Sure, it's Phil Knight. Sure, he owns Nike. Sure, he's by far Oregon's largest donor. But over-all, most SEC schools have more donations then Oregon.
I didn't mean to imply that Phil's money all went to the football program. But to pretend that money that doesn't directly go to football (for example, that Mecca of an athlete academic center) isn't used by Oregon to wow their football recruits is disingenuous. None of that addresses my original question, which is why Oregon needs $1M in state taxpayer freebies for athletics when the university is already receiving very generous amounts of money from private sources.
The money goes towards the non-revenue generating sports to keep them afloat. Just as it is at every other college and university. I still find in humorous that people complain about the money Oregon get's from Phil Knight. I can't find 2010 data, but as of 2009 8 SEC teams spent more on football then Oregon did. 1. Auburn $28.80 2. Alabama $26.44 3. Tennessee $22.96 4. Florida $22.86 5. Louisiana State $22.74 6. South Carolina $19.88 7. Georgia $19.83 8. Arkansas $18.30 Oregon Spent $15.86 Million. Oregon ranks 6th in the PAC-10! Give the "Oregon is winning because of all that Nike money" argument a rest. The SEC, Big 10 and Big 12 among others, have been spending that coin for years. Oregon's just stepped up their game so they can run with the big dogs. If anyone had 2010 data, please share, as I know Oregon spent more $ last year since they went to the NC. Link to article
Penn State's one of them... But in Central PA there is no other ticket in town. PSU also boasts the largest Alumni that gives back to the University. I lived in State College PA for 5 years and it's pretty reasonable to go to most games. You could actually go to all the games for free if you volunteered to help with parking. So there are 3 named for sure, LSU Nebraska and PSU. There are actually 5 more according to the article I read.
