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The podcast hosts discuss whether the athletic program at Georgia Tech is worth the investment. Luke argues that universities lose money on athletics and that Tech's debt makes it difficult to generate profits. He also mentions that the ACC conference may lose some big schools, affecting TV viewership. Seth counters by pointing out that the ACC has a TV deal in place and that Georgia Tech could generate more revenue by adding sports that generate profit. They also discuss the impact of the athletic program on the social and cultural environment at Tech, with Luke arguing that academics should be prioritized and Seth highlighting the potential benefits of a successful program. They mention the positive impact of athletics on schools like UGA and Vanderbilt. Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Yapping Yellow Jackets. I'm your host, Harry, and I'm with my co-host, Luke. Hey, what's up, guys? Luke here. He's a first-year student at Tech. I like to talk about the school, its athletics, and everything related. And my other co-host, Seth. What's going on, guys? My name is Seth. I'm a first-year student as well, and I'm here to argue with Luke today. On this week's podcast, we'll be doing a deep dive into all things about the athletic program at Georgia Tech. The first point of contention on this issue, does the athletic program generate money? Is it worth it to have an athletic program if it's not generating money? So I'll start with you, Luke. Universities will lose money when they invest in their athletics. There's really just not a big enough market in college athletics to generate money for homesteading costs. A prime example, this is Stanford. They've won the Director's Cup. If you don't know what Director's Cup is, it's essentially a ranking of the overall athletic program of every college. They won it this past year, and they still lost $11.5 million in athletics. And then to relate this to Tech, we are already $278 million in debt. I really don't see how we're going to make that up, considering the largest profit. We saw a profit last year, but it was at like $1 million. We really don't see major profits ever, especially not to the factor of $278 million, and who knows what type of deficits we're going to have. A lot of our money comes from ACC television rights and the TV deals that we have, which the more people that watch you on TV, the more money you're going to make. The ACC is a Power 5 conference. It's pretty relevant, except for the fact that three of our biggest schools, UNC, FSU, and Clemson, and potentially others, because of the recent conference realignments that have been going on, everyone's moving around, trying to get more money, they might be leaving. And if we do not have them, I really do not see how we are going to get people to watch our football games, because, let's be honest, nobody wants to watch Boston College play Cal on a Saturday afternoon. They're going to tune in to the big SEC, Big Ten games. That's a good point. What do you have to say about that, Seth? So I agree with Luke that television makes a lot of money. But if you look at it, the ACC has just recently signed a deal with the CW Network, and they have the rights to broadcast all ACC football games. So while the TV is where a lot of money is made, the ACC has a TV deal. They have it set already. It's not going to change just because UNC, FSU, and Clemson are gone. They have a contract signed by the ACC guaranteeing money already. It's not going to go anywhere if those three schools leave. And since we're talking about other schools, the University of Georgia, right here down the road, they made approximately $47 million this past year. If we compare that to Georgia Tech, with our estimated $1.4 million of revenue, it's a pretty big gap. But UGA spent $170 million on their program. Georgia Tech only spent about $85. So how is UGA making this much more money? I truly believe it's because Georgia Tech does not have 60% of the sports that generate profit at a championship level. In the NCAA, the five sports that generate profit are men's lacrosse, wrestling, men's ice hockey, baseball, and basketball. The only two that Tech has are baseball and men's basketball. There's three sports here that we do not have that they make money at the championship level. Y'all might be asking what that means. So football, with the TV, that's where a lot of money comes from. But the bowl games, the championships, the tournaments that happen within college football do not make any money for the NCAA or the schools because they are owned by external entities. So no money goes back to the schools directly through college football, bowl, and tournament games. These five sports are the only ones where the money does come back and there is a profit. So if Georgia Tech added lacrosse, wrestling, men's ice hockey, in five to ten years, they can start digging out of that $278 million debt. Because honestly, there is no way to get out of that $278 million debt by just packing up the athletic program and saying it's over. That debt will be there and there still needs to be a way to generate money to get it out. Because if we just take away funding from the athletic program, that means some money is going to have to come from academics to really get that money out because there's no money coming from athletics. So I think they should take their out of a school like James Madison University. Five to ten years ago, they played in the SCS in all levels of their sports. They weren't making any money. They weren't losing any money. They were just coasting. And they decided to invest in the three sports that they excelled at, which were basketball, soccer, and football. Men's basketball to be specific. And so they invested in these three sports, dumped a lot more money into them. And these sports have been improved and improved. And now, as of 2023, all three schools are powerhouse Division I Sunbelt teams. The football team is in the top 25 teams in the country. The soccer and the basketball team are both undefeated at this point. You know, both made some good points. I think definitely, financially speaking, the athletic program, since it's not losing its money, according to Luke, we made a million dollars in profit last year, which isn't a significant amount, but it is something. I think the athletic program would give us an opportunity to maybe dig us out of that debt like Seth was saying, especially since other schools have done similar things. So I'm on more of Seth's side at this moment, some of the points that he brought up. So on to our next topic regarding the athletic program of tech and whether it's worth it. How does the athletic program of tech affect the social and cultural environment at Tech? Because obviously we're more of an academic school. Yeah. So just like we just said, we're academically inclined. Most of the students here, they came here for an education. They came here to work. They're not here to watch football games. A lot of the SEC schools, you'll see people who are going there because they want the SEC experience. They want to go to the tailgate. They want to spend their whole Saturday in a football game, whereas at Georgia Tech, that's just not what the culture is like. You can ask people who go to Tech. You can ask people who don't go to Tech. You can go to a Georgia Tech tailgate. It's a very, very different environment than what you see in the SEC. And then there's the fact that we do generate a slight profit relative to our debt. It's very minimal. But we aren't even using that profit to help other academic programs. In the other schools that I'll mention, like LSU, UGA, and Texas, they use their money generated from athletics to benefit their academic programs. The problem is, we don't – well, one, we don't generate very much money at all, so it doesn't really make a difference. But even if we are generating money, we should use it for our academics because that's what all the students care about. The other thing is that – I mean, like I mentioned earlier, people aren't really going to the football games. You can see that in ticket sales. We've had one sold-out stadium in the last four years, realistically. We usually have roughly 10,000 to 15,000 seats open in every game. I mean, we've just had some really low attendance numbers over the past few years. People don't just want to go to the games. And then there's also the fact that if you really want people to go to the games, you just got to get better. But that's a whole different argument. I guess it would be a good time for you to jump in, Seth. I think Luke makes a solid point there, but let's just do a quick comparison for some of the data that I gathered. UGA won a national championship of football in 2021, and while Georgia Tech might not be at that point right now, after winning the championship, UGA set an all-time record in applications. And for the class of 2027, they welcomed their biggest, most diverse, highest academic-ranking freshman class ever. And a lot of that came from athletics. These people wanted to watch a very good football team. And while Georgia Tech might not be that that way, they're trending that way. It's possible in the future. Having these more people on campus is just better for the community. So if you take away funding, the program goes to an all-time low. There's not going to be any people that want to come here for athletics. And another thing, people get excited about football. If we get these boosters and these big, famous alumni from Georgia Tech excited about football, you'll get more money donated to the program. For example, Phil Knight, founder of Nike, he's a University of Oregon alumni. He has donated back over a billion dollars into the University of Oregon and has funded athletic and academic projects. So it's not just good for the athletic program. It also brings money into the academic program. And Georgia Tech's an academic school, so let's do some comparisons to similar schools. So I'm taking this data from the Directors' Cup, which Luke mentioned earlier. Georgia Tech is ranked lower in the Directors' Cup than academic powerhouses Princeton, Harvard, Vanderbilt, Cornell, and Yale. It shows Georgia Tech, they're kind of at a low point right now, I mean. We haven't won a national championship in any sport since 2007 and have only won one in the past 25 years. Vanderbilt, on the other side, called the ivy of the SEC, they play in a tougher conference than the SEC, and they've won six national championships since 2000. So they are being a high academic school while also being a successful athletic school. So, you know, if Georgia Tech just put some more funding into it, kind of tweaked how they went about things, they'd be able to be successful in both. I mean, if you look at the data again from Nike Newhouse, Georgia Tech spends 26% more on academics than the average FBS Division I school. So they spend roughly $1.4 billion compared to the athletic program, where it's $85 billion. So they spend a lot of money anyway. We don't have to take away from academics. You spend a little bit more on athletics, you balance the program out better, and I think it just overall is good for the college. Luke, do you have anything to say to that, because I see you kind of itching to jump in. Yeah, the booster alumni funding. Georgia Tech is significantly lower than other schools that I researched, like LSU, Texas UGA, which I mentioned earlier. LSU is roughly $76 million from boosters, Texas gets $78 million, UGA gets $74 million. That's where a significant amount of their revenue comes from. Georgia Tech, however, is generating $13.7 million from boosters. Now that may seem like a lot, but compared to all the big football schools or the big athletic schools that are really generating money, it's not even comparable. And I really don't see how we're going to bump our alumni funding up by $60 million by just investing. I really don't think there's that many people that are this passionate about the football team at Georgia Tech. The environment just doesn't exist. Y'all both made really good points. I'll set that up with you, such as the athletic debt being very high, and the only way to get out of that debt is to invest in the football program or the athletic program in general. But I think that overall, Luke, you had a more solid argument. With Georgia Tech being a more academically inclined school, obviously shown in like the alumni donations being a fifth of Georgia, whereas we spend about half of what Georgia does on athletics, that kind of illustrates how Georgia Tech is different from other schools and how maybe the athletic spending at Georgia Tech should be reduced, because while further investment may make us more money in the future, it has not proven to so far. So yeah, that concludes this episode of the Yappin' Yellowjackets podcast. Who do you think won the argument, Luke or Seth? We'll be back next week with more Georgia Tech-related sports talk.