This article appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on December 30, 2009.
It's almost New Year's Day, and that's great news if you like college football. If you don't enjoy it, however, turning on your bowl-clogged TV can make you feel as though you're paying a very steep price for college gridders.
But you're not just paying on New Year's -- it's all year round.
For those not fond of college football, the first source of your more-than-January-one pain is that bowls have been on since mid-December. The New Mexico Bowl and the St. Petersburg Bowl kicked off the bowl season on Dec. 19, and eighteen more games will have been played between then and New Year's Day. And the grid glut doesn't end on Jan. 1 any more. The national championship game won't be played until Jan. 7.
Of course, if the only cost to nonfans was listening to the din of announcers, grunting and whistles for a few weeks, and maybe having to forgo a little "American Idol," it wouldn't be that bad. But college football also costs you where it hurts -- your wallet.
For starters, many bowls receive generous taxpayer subsidies. According to Mark Yost, author of Varsity Green, seven bowls received more than $21.6 million in government aid between 2001 and 2005. And the majority of bowls are tax-exempt, supposedly because they're good for local tourism. That bowl executives often make big money and corporate sponsors get prominent advertising is apparently irrelevant.
Then, while playing in a bowl comes with a minimum payout of $750,000 for participating schools, many institutions end up spending much more than that to participate -- losses that taxpayers bear. READ MORE AT CATO
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