I've got an idea. After reading this, if anyone has any other information that would back up or change this idea in some way, go for it. I'm open to being wrong, since I'm wrong all the time.

Support Your Football Team: Go to Basketball games! (or any other sport for that matter)

     I'm sure that most of you know what horrible non conference schedules lay ahead. Power House programs like Eastern Illinois and Costal Carolina will descend upon Happy Valley to bore the crap out of 107,000 people. Our beloved athletic director Tim Curley is obviously looking for money. He has 29 Varsity sports to support. That's one of the highest numbers of sports in the country.  Penn State football pays for just about all of them.

     2004-2005 saw Penn State basketball only brought in 5.2 million dollars in revenue and incurred 2.5 million dollars in expenses. That's only 2.7 million dollars in profit. No Big Ten team made less revenue than Penn State. Even Northwestern made more money by taking in 6.7 million dollars and incurring 2.7 million dollars in expenses. NW made 4 million dollars. The top profits in the Big Ten that year were Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois, each raking in 8.1 million dollars. Unfortunately women's basketball loses money at a very fast rate. They were 1.76 million dollars in the red over the same span as the basketball team.

    Football on the other hand made tons of cash (for obvious reasons). The football team incurred 10.7 million dollars in expenses and took in 33.2 million dollars in revenue. That's 22.5 million dollars in profit. Overall Penn State athletics took in $60,785,497 and incurred $60,218,673 of expenses. That means that the athletics department was $566,824 in the black. I can see why Tim Curley is trembling at the thought of having a bad football season. A bad football seasons means that other sports get screwed, so Curley schedules teams that suck so that we have a good record, get to a bowl game and bigger TV games. He is desperate for money. He is desperate because he wants to keep all of the other sports programs up and running.

    So in order for there to be better games on the football schedule either: A) the cost of football season tickets must go up (they are already ridiculous from what I understand, I'm a student, but my father has season tickets), or B) other sporting events must pick up the slack. Ed DeChellis and Tim Curley need to get that basketball team in line. If they can pick up the slack and generate some interest in basketball here in Happy Valley then there will be no excuse for Curley not to schedule some better football games.

      You may thing I'm an apologist for Curley, however that is untrue. I think he could probably stay in the black with having tough out of conference games, but he obviously doesn't think so. I would love for him to have no other option than to schedule some great games. I think Penn State should schedule two crappy teams and two teams that are pretty good. Preferably the good teams will be some old rival from the independent days (which unfortunately I don't remember).

      The money has to come from somewhere and it's time for basketball to start picking up the slack. They have great facilities in a competitive conference. There really isn't a reason I can think of why the basketball team can't improve and help the athletic situation.