What athletic department "profitability" means, and doesn't mean:

Good morning, and thanks for your continued support of Extra Points.

I think y'all know at this point that I'm a big fan of open records. Open records requests allow us to better understanding coaching contracts, vendor contracts, game scheduling agreements, what fans are telling coaches and ADs, potential realignment moves, and a whole host of other things.

They can also shed light on athletic department budgets. I collect a ton of FRS reports for the Extra Points FOIA Directory, but I'm not the only person to do it. The Knight Commission and the Newhouse School have partnered together to create the Knight-Newhouse database. Any graduate student or college athletics reporter ought to have this database bookmarked.

There's a lot of information you can pull from this resource. You can quickly check to see how much revenue any department brought in over a particular fiscal year, and how much they spent. You can get more itemized breakdowns of spending and revenue sources, compare schools and conferences, etc.

Recently, one academic, Dr. Scott Hirko of Defiance College, examined that data to try and reach a new conclusion.

How many of these departments are financially self-sustaining? How many...you know...make a profit?

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