Funding college sports...

The Sports Biz Blog has a synopsis of an article that was in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. It shows how some schools' athletic departments have benefitted from investments with venture capital firms. Among those that have taken this funding approach:

- UCLA: they invested $400,000 in a fund in 2000. Now they have $400,000. Someone neglected to tell them that they were in the middle of an unprecedented housing boom, and that they could have used that money to buy a condo in Reseda and probably made 30% on their investment.

- Northwestern: they put $500,000 into a partnership and made $2 million on it. They then used that to build a field hockey and lacrosse stadium. Are you kidding me? Why not just buy new slide-rules for all the students..

- Stanford invested $100,000 in 1982 and now has $85 million. Typical. That will buy a lot of PowerPoint software and overpriced German sedans, but it won't get Prince Lightfoot's boys into the NCAA tournament.