Nearly All US Universities Lose Money on Sports

Because there are donors willing to pay the salaries of those coaches and there aren't donors willing to pay Papadimitriou more money. And, you can actually take money from big-money athletics and pay for acadmics.

You can argue that this shouldn't be all you like, but it is. The money that goes to those coaches can't be spent on CS. If anything, it actually provides more money for CS.

I've listened to John Hennessey, Stanford's president, walk through all this. He thinks that Stanford's athletic program makes money for its academic program.

If you think that he's wrong, please provide details so I can ask him. (And it better be something that isn't currently in this thread, as he went through the equivalent and more.)

Education isn't about the 'information', it's about the collective sum of benefits that a university provides. If it were strictly about the education (courses, books, etc.) there would be no purpose -- most of it can be found for free online.

University is about the whole package, of which a strong alumni network is often a major piece. Without a strong sports program, many of these schools would lose a large fraction of their alumni's attention - and I don't mean dollars and cents. To use a previous commenter:

Ding ding ding. I went to a D3 school for football, and when considering a possible MBA, something I was looking at half jokingly, but half legitimately, was whether the school was large - because I thought it would make watching sports on TV for the rest of my life, and having true attachment, a lot more fun. Undoubtedly, as I progress further in my career, that fervor would have grown with team success, and also made my attachment more real - while my current alma mater (Chapman University in Southern California) - would have fallen away from consciousness with no legitimate way to grab my attention. Whether I make a donation to any school in the future is up for debate, and I am now not likely to get an MBA based on many of the points raised here and elsewhere - but the point made on this comment hits the nail on the head. I find it extremely unlikely that I will ever donate to my small private school in Southern California - because the thoughts of how it's helped me depart with every passing second, and they have no way to get it back.

This obviously leads to a weakening of the school on a whole, in terms of future enrollment and overall reputation, leading to a decline in the quality of education.