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I was wondering if other school's athletic departments had separate endowments. At Richmond it has been reported that the Athletic Endowment is around $80 Million these days. I think at its peak (pre-crash) it was at $100 Million. Do your schools have separate funds like UR? I think the income from this money is what allows the Spiders athletic department to run close to a breakeven level.

ODU does have a seperate athletic endowment. Last I heard, it was between 14 and 14.5 million. All the scholarships for the men's basketball team are endowed here, and our coaches apparently get pretty nice (undisclosed) bonuses from the Big Blue Club too. I wouldn't be surprised if Wendy Larry (w bb coach) also does, along with Bobby Wilder (fb coach).

edit: that 14-14.5 mil dollar figure is wrong. Looked into it and found this from a recent article:

Currently, the Big Blue Club has grown to over 1700 members, contributing more than $4 million annually for athletic scholarships, and an additional $22 million in endowments.

My understanding is, esp at many state schools with large athletic programs, the athletic endowment (for scholarships, sport backing, etc..) is a separate fund. At SBU very little of the budget is derived from state funds. The AD went on record a little while ago as saying that Athletics takes up about 1% of SBU's state budget, a relatively minuscule amount for a very specific purpose (my guess would be facility upkeep and NCAA standards regulation). Other sources of funding come from large scale grants for capital projects and our PAWS/Athletics Booster program.

Yes, I would expect that this, and commercial sponsorship, allows mid major programs to break even.

FYI - Total athletic budgets from 2007 courtesy of the Bleacher Report. Looks like our top tier is pretty close to the Non-BCS top tier, though we really didn't need this site to tell us that.

It would appear from oo oo oo's avatar photo that Old Dominion is very well endowed.