I have many questions regarding compensation for college players but I’ll boil it down to one. Where exactly is the money coming from to pay these guys and gals? Have been reading that other Big West schools have a total monetary fund exceeding $1 million.

Source of funding

1) Individual donors
2) Corporate donors
3) Student fees
4) Operational surplus (Total revenue less total expenses)
5) Combination of some or all of these

I’m pretty sure we don’t have many or any in Category 1 or 2. I think student fees are used to pay for scholarships. I don’t think we’re generating surplus since we’re not drawing crowds or getting many body bag games. Am I missing any sources of funding?

Out of these 4, I think Category 4 is the only one where we can generate money to pay players. I brought it up before. It’s a last ditch desperation move but play 10 non-conference “body bag” games on the road, each paying $100,000 per game. Say 30% of that is needed to pay for travel expenses for the game, and you have roughly $700,000 in surplus which could be used to pay players. That’s still not a lot but it puts us at around $1 million ($700,000 plus the $300,000 we have from other sources) which makes us more competitive with the top of the Big West. Yes, we’ll go 0-10 against those teams but we should have a team that is more competitive in the Big West.