Rose asks:
How many College/University athletic programs are not fully supported by attendees at games. How many of them are paying the highest salaries on campus to sports coaches? How many are funding stadiums and special gyms for athletes by increased student funds over the past 20 years? What are the debt rates for such athletic programs?
Here’s a report from 2013 on how athletic programs are paid for. Only a minority are self-supporting. There are also graphs for increased funding and increased student funds.
Here’s some info on coach salaries from 2019. I don’t know of any schools with football programs in which the highest salary isn’t a coach salary (though sometimes basketball), but I don’t have exact numbers. Not all schools have football programs. In 2018 the highest paid public employee in 39 states was a coach.
Here’s a 2017 article about sports debt from bloomberg. Here’s another from 2018 from USA Today.
It will be interesting to see what happens in 2020. I know that my school has said even if all classes are online, we will still have football.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
June 19, 2020 at 1:50 pm
THANK YOU. So depressing. So much devaluation of education in favor of physical prowess and ‘winning’ & game playing’. No wonder science is so disrespected and history and economics and math and etc are deemed worthless. We prioritize the wrong things. And we are reaping the results now.
THANK YOU for answering. I had wanted to be wrong in my guesses.
June 20, 2020 at 9:50 am
It has to be terrible for the athletes to have to practice and play under these conditions. It’s as though all pretenses of them being there for an education have completely vanished.
June 20, 2020 at 10:17 am
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June 20, 2020 at 11:10 am
I mean, in theory, could you set up a tutor-intensive academic program that permitted social seclusion of the players that worked better than the regular status quo for student athletes? Probably.
Will anyone do that?
That’s a nope.
June 20, 2020 at 11:13 am
Maybe they’ll do all their classes online?