This. I wanted to do some quick digging, and even that is still barebones as all ****, save for some minimally detailed graphs. This is the closest thing I've found so far, buuuut its a tad
outdated at this point.
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But then I came across this too, I'll use 2020 for example since I couldn't find an academic budget in 2021 to match with athletics.
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Seems like a no right or wrong argument in a way, because yes, this shows that academic budgets are astronomically high in comparison. BUT (for the sake of being able to coincide with the first picture), if you look at it at a "per student/athlete" basis of spending, there's a giant gap
(800.75m/31670 @ 25.28k & 173.14m/647 @267.k)
(and another eye opener was that Alabama football's budget was roughly 58 million out of that 173,000,000 between 21 teams in 2020)
Certainly a very interesting, if not in a way, convoluted topic..depending on how it's to be interpreted.