Football's hidden fees.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Soundbite - Interview

ESPN columnist Gregg Easterbrook's most recent book is The King of Sports: Football's Impact on America (Thomas Dunne). In November, Reason TV Editor Nick Gillespie spoke with Easterbrook about the hidden ways college tuitions subsidize collegiate sports, the pseudo-capitalism of the National Football League (NFL), and the outrage of college football players' low graduation rates. For a video version of the interview, go to reason.com.

Q: You write, "The $29 million Rutgers tuition subsidy for athletics worked out to nearly $1,000 per student. In-state tuition that year--Rutgers is a public university--was $12,754, meaning about 8 percent of 'tuition' charges paid by parents actually were charges for NCAA athletics." How does this happen?

A: Schools do it because they can get away with it. We're doing this interview about 10 miles away from College Park, where the University of Maryland has a powerhouse football program. The University of Maryland charges each student, undergraduate, $400 a year to subsidize the football program, even though the football program brings in television revenue, gate receipts, and so on. They do it because they can get away with it. I think parents, who pay most college bills, don't know this is happening. The $400 is buried in mysterious asterisks on your bill. But there are only half a dozen big college programs in the country that are not actively subsidized by the universities, even though they're clearing $20 million to $40 million a year in profits after paying all salaries and expenses.

Q: People often claim that at the big schools at least, these football and basketball programs make money, and they subsidize English and the fine arts.

A: Yeah, and it's not true. The University of Florida is a good public university and also a good athletic school. The University of Florida's football program draws $1 million to $5 million a year in direct subsidies from the academic mission of the school. Basically, what they're doing is leasing...