And let’s not mention how much adjuncts get paid at most school. [Just lob off the first digit.]

Average Annual Institutional Salary per FTE
men’s teams: $132,391
women’s teams: $78,761

The difference is much smaller for assistant coaches. In any case, you can tell by those numbers that we’re not in a premier division so I checked another university down the road:

Average Annual Institutional Salary per FTE
men’s teams: $274,931
women’s teams: $107,796

and here, this relationship remains for assistant coaches.

The film is called Men of LSU; but Menz of LSU is the suggested alternative title.

Although, now that you mention it, <> would be a pretty damn amusing alternative title.

And you know that some people will argue that zeroing out the free farm teams will only further alienate teh menz and ZOMG what about teh menz!

(No one ever asks why teh boyz and teh menz don’t just, you know, study and do their homework in high school and college. No–apparently, the men deserve to have subsidized entertainment to top off their underachievement! I guess that’s the rationale that was at work when the University of Maryland decided to show porn for entertainment for free earlier this spring…)

Exactly!! Now, look up how much it costs to fund one football player (at U of M nearly $35,000) and how much it costs to fund a single women’s crew member ($4,500). There are 110 football players and 99 women’s crew members at U of M.

Clearly, it’s through adding women to crew that U of M achieves its nearly 50/50 gender ratio and its spending imbalance of 50 cents on the dollar for women’s teams as compared to men’s teams. Football expenses alone ($16.7 million) are more than the expenses for ALL the women’s sports ($14.8 million) or the expenses for all the other men’s sports ($14 million).

Is that amazing? You really have to dig into the numbers to see the amazing gender imbalance in dollars spent. Women’s sports are done on the cheap in every aspect as compared to men’s. Even spending across the same sport is unequal: U of M spends twice as much on its men’s b-ball team than on its women’s team. But the only gender parity anybody ever looks at is in numbers of athletes.

Re bake sales — Nice point. But why would sports teams put in effort to make money when there’s a whole department dedicated to their comfort and success? Compare the number of academic or student groups that run bake sales, cookouts, pizza sales, or movie nights to raise money; those students are learning organization, salesmanship, and advertising skills through such activities, useful (though not critical) life lessons.

But, teams need to show team spirit by having bake sales, selling fruit, and frozen bread dough! Where’s the fun in just expecting the university to furnish absolutely everything for your team? Come on–those kids in the drama department have to volunteer to build the sets for their plays and to make their costumes–and that’s something that they’re doing for academic credit. So team members can and should expect to pony up to suppor their team. (Besides, joining a gym after graduation will be a lot more expensive than club sports in college.)

I looked up the expenses to revenues for Baa Ram U. in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available.

Total men’s team expenses: $11,452,158.00
Total men’s team revenues: $4,685,026

When the College of Liberal Arts is subsidized to the tune of 59 cents on the dollar (that is, nearly 60% more than it takes in with tuition money), then we can talk about having an NFL and NBA free farm team again.

(But that ain’t gonna happen!)