The Wiz of Odds

Most Profitable Athletic Department? It's Kansas State

No athletic department could match what Kansas State did in 2010-11, according to an ESPN report.

The department was the most profitable of 99 public schools that field Division I-A football teams, pulling in a net income of nearly $23 million, according to open records requests for audited financial reports that schools submit each year to the NCAA. The 2010-11 fiscal year is most recent data available.

As for the methodology for defining net income, that is up for debate.

Win in Football, Lose in Academic Donations?

A study suggests that an increase in winning by a football team has a big downside. It leads to a sharp decrease in academic donations to a university.

The study by Gi-Yong Koo, a doctoral student in sports management at Arkansas, and his professor, Stephen Dittmore, examines the winning percentage of a school's football and basketball teams and compares it to annual athletic and academic giving.

As one would expect, winning teams boost gifts to athletics. In football, every additional 1.5 victories increases athletics donations by $6.7 million. But those 1.5 victories are more than offset by a decrease of $16.4 million in academic gifts.