Please explain to me what a business is then. Then explain to me what an organization is that has thousands of employees that they pay tens of millions of dollars to for jobs they perform directly for that organization and also sells products for hundreds of millions of dollars or more each year. The only difference is that one makes a profit and the other puts money in a general fund that would have been profit.
No they are not. Business organizations are defined by law. Schools and churches are organized under law as non-business entities, as are charities and government agencies. They operate under rules different than businesses. They have no owners and are obliged to adhere to the non-profit purpose for which they are organized. If they run afoul of that purpose, they can lose their non-profit status. They do not have ownership interests that can be bought or sold. Businesses can be for any legal purpose chosen by ownership. They aren't required to adhere to that purpose, and can expand into other purposes. They have ownership interests that can be bought, sold, or traded.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
It is a bunch of semantics. Ohio State has 22,000 employees. They have an operating budget of $5,000,000,000. They have an endowment fund with more than $2,000,000,000 in it. But yeah, let's let that get in the way of saying they are a business because they can't be sold and have a few extra laws to follow.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
End of the day, when an organization has paid employees and sells products, they are a business. I could care less what the law wants to define as a business versus a non-profit organization. Both are conducting business via products and money. Or are you going to tell me that schools just conduct non-profit and try to explain it that way?
Schools, churches and other non-profits have no owners. They are expressly prohibited from taking revenues and distributing them as profit. They must use revenues strictly for the purpose for which they were created and cannot distribute revenues to private owners or shareholders as profit. Their activities are governed by their charter and state law.
By your overly broad definition, families are businesses. The owners (parents) bring in revenue (earnings) by providing a service (work), and they have employees (children) who perform work under their supervision (chores). I guess parents should pay their children minimum wage when they're old enough to do chores.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
Legally speaking, college athletic departments are non-profit organizations. But, they have some awfully strange behaviors for a non-profit. I will use Ohio State as an example because I was able to find an itemized budget (not to anger Buckeye fans). Here is the link in case anyone is interested.
http://businessofcollegesports.com/2...cs-department/
For every dollar paid to OSU directly by the fans, 13.8 cents goes to the student athletes and student employees at the school. That's an abysmally low number. On the other hand, around 34.9 cents goes to the staff of the school. In case you were wondering, a good ratio for charities is to have 75 cents on every dollar donated going to those for whom the charity was created. I understand that an athletic department is not a charity, but those are some alarming numbers.
Now, that budget only accounts for the money that actually makes it into the athletic department. What about the money all those people make on the kids outside the university? Think about the amount made by the TV networks, apparel makers, sports writers, bowl workers, the NCAA, the conferences, etc... I would guess that less than a nickel of every dollar spent on college athletics in general actually makes it to the kids. That makes it/me fell pretty dirty.
Variatio delectat - Cicero
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
That number was exclusively for the athletic department. Not the university at large. Now, the "Grant-in-aid" money paid to the university does go to pay the teachers at the school, so schools essentially get to double dip. It reminds me of the old "company towns" run by Carnegie, where the employees get their paycheck and spend it at Carnegie stores. OSU players get their scholarships and it gets spent at the school.
Last edited by improbus; 09-29-2013 at 08:39 AM.
Variatio delectat - Cicero
Quoted for truth.
In the big picture, fielding athletic teams has been part of the university experience since the 19th century. The teams didn't make money and weren't expected to. They were just part of the college landscape, like the chorus or the debate team or the lawn where students hung out on nice days. Game days provided an excuse for alumni to visit and catch up with old friends. They gave scholarships to athletes for the same reasons they gave scholarships to top students -- luring the cream of the crop so their school would be better than their rivals. Being on the team wasn't a job. It was just high-school sports, extended.
It is the modern-day big-time college football and basketball program that is the anomaly, an industry that has blown up far beyond anything that's consistent with why the university exists or what it's supposed to be doing. Not that the universities aren't to blame for this, mind you, or that things aren't out of whack nowadays. If the school isn't making money on your sport, getting a scholarship for being on the team is a pretty good deal. If they're making it by the wheelbarrow-full, it's not.
Reading comprehension is not just an ability, it's a choice
Athletic scholarships and financial aid have been around since the 19th century, but they were codified by the NCAA in 1950. In 1950, Bud Wilkerson (the top college coach at the time) made $15,000 (roughly equivalent to $140,000 today). Bob Stoops makes 32 times that amount. The kids compensation hasn't changed a lick since then.
Variatio delectat - Cicero
Another part of this argument is the age of the participants. This system is built on adults making piles of money while kids concuss themselves on the field.
Variatio delectat - Cicero
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