What specifically is the problem with that? Do you think a "director of a university's drama department" brings the same value to a university as "Successful football and basketball coaches"?
Mainstream economics operates with a subjective idea of value. The previous poster can think whatever he wants about the drama vs sports, there's no objective right or wrong.
What does exist is an outcome about who gets paid.
There seems to be a large segment of HN users with an irrational distaste for sports. I suspect it's because they lacked the work ethic and pain tolerance to ever become good at any sport. So they denigrate sports in general as a mental coping mechanism.
CMU for example, is known for the school of computer science, and the arts, especially drama, though some people might know it better for Andy Warhol having been an alum.
That's how an elite university should operate. Sport is fine. It's healthy. But warping the educational mission to feed the maw of an exploitative sports economy is something no university should be involved in.
What next? MMA as a college sport? It's a free country: beat each other's brains out. But to pretend that US college sports is anything but a grotesque distortion is disingenuous.
