"A college is not in the business of training highly polished athletes.
It is not a school for gladiators as in the ancient days of Rome. Nor is
it a professional training school for professional players of the present-day
period."
"I know of a college of two thousand students that has a gymnasium
costing three million dollars. [These are 1972 figures.-PSB] Now, the amortization
and operational expense of such a gymnasium is conservatively about twenty
percent, or $600,000 a year. Divided by 2,000 students, this means an expense
of $300 per student per year. And this does not include faculty expense.
Now suppose we said to a student: look, your tuition is $1000 a year but
for $300 extra you can have a gymnasium to play around in. For $100 extra
you can have the use of an outside field. For another $50 you can use our
tennis courts and for $200 our golf course. On that basis, how many of our
students -- or parents, who are in most cases paying the bills -- would
be ready to pay for the extra services? To go a step further, how many students
would be willing, as we have already shown, to pay extra to subsidize intercollegiate
sports for a relatively small group of athletes? A friend of mine used to
play polo when he went to Yale. But each player bought and paid for his
own horse. Rationally, it would make better sense to charge each player
for his own participation in any sport, just as we do in life. If we can
afford it, we belong to a golf club. If we go bowling, we pay the rate.
But one reason school costs are skyrocketing is because of the tremendous
expense of supporting intercollegiate teams and for the equally large expenditures
in supporting a physical training establishment whose returns in student
health are not easily discernable."