> The people of Alabama, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana very much want competitive sports teams and are happy to pay. Iirc, the Texas and Alabama sports programs ar

> The people of Alabama, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana very much want competitive sports teams and are happy to pay. Iirc, the Texas and Alabama sports programs are self-funding and (when I last looked at it) contributed some amount of excess revenue to the university. Specially, the football and basketball programs are profitable at these schools, and these profits fund all of the other sports programs. I haven’t read a good research study on how sports performance impacts applicants and donations (esp. from alumni). That said, I know that admissions profiles at Alabama have gotten stronger (better grades and test scores) since Saban (a winning football coach) has been there, ostensibly due to an increase in the number of strong applicants from out of state.