Athletic fundraising is between six and eight percent of overall fundraising at Ohio State. Two of our most successful multi-year fundraising campaigns occurred when the football team was down (late Bruce/early Cooper years and again at the end of the Cooper era). People were very frustrated with the program, yet they set records for those campaigns. Football success drives athletic donations and nothing else. Nobody is donating to the medical school or history department based on the football team's record. Tell me, why do Illinois and Minnesota have multi-billion dollar endowments while Alabama and LSU can't crack a billion? Why do they do multiples of research funding over schools like Oklahoma or Clemson? Athletics and academics can both be strong at the same university, but the latter does not depend on the former. Cal sucks at everything other than Olympic sports. UCLA hasn't been relevant in football in a generation. Yet, those are two of the top (if not the top two) public universities in the country. Sure seems like low visibility football programs aren't hindering their academics one bit while the high visibility football programs don't seem to be doing much for elevating the academics at Clemson or Oklahoma. Schools are good at academics and academic fundraising if they choose to put those issues at the forefront of the university's priorities, not upon how well their football program is doing.
Page 30 lists the top public research universities in the country. Take a look at the top twenty. Some are football powerhouses. Some are mid-level programs. Some are historic bottom feeders. Some don't even play football at the FBS level. I see zero link and causality between big time foosball and big time academics.
