Okay, do the math with me, 26 athletes on the team at an average in state cost of $14,000 per (tuition, fees, room and board), 4 coaches at an average of $50,000, 12 travel events on this year's schedule including Corvallis, OR and several overnight events in IL and NY plus some busing events like Cornell (that ride would suck) but let's say between travel costs, hotels and food you are looking at $500 per athlete-coach per trip. I won't allocate training staff, facility costs or AD overhead, so you come up with a total of $744,000. My guess is that they have a total operating budget of close to $1mm when you add in all of the overhead allocations but will stick with $744k.
An average adult ticket cost is $20 for the general public ($16-$24 on line). Assuming students in the mix at $5 per ticket and season ticket holders at an average of $9 per ticket (combined let's take a guess at a 25% average event base split evenly for those two groups although my guess is that it would be more like 40% of your average crowd), your effective price per ticket is $16.75. That equals 44,417 tickets to break even on $744k. Do you have attendance figures for this year? Do you think they averaged over 3,700 per home event? I did see article that said 2,600 against MN with 5,500 expected for PSU. Assuming that MN is typical and adding in for PSU, you are still 25%+ short on ticket sales on low operating cost assumption and a high revenue assumption. Even if you assume 100% ticket sales at the average adult ticket price, you are 15%+ short.
Wrestling is not and never will be a self sustaining sport even at the highest levels. Not even at IOwa and NE. If you can't break even on WBB, field hockey or soccer (both sexes), how in the heck do you break even on wrestling? No media money, high costs. This does not imply that it is not a good sport. It just implies that your statement is pretty much not based in reality.
