For big-time college sports, late December is more than the season of holiday basketball tournaments and myriad football bowl games. It?s also the time for making tax-deductible gifts to the booster club of your favorite college team.
These gifts don?t get mentioned much when we hear talk of the excess costs of college sports, but they play a surprisingly large role in the college athletics business, and at considerable cost to the taxpayer.
(Charles Clotfelter, a professor of public policy at Duke University, is the author of the forthcoming book ?Big-Time Sports in American Universities.? This column first appeared in the Washington Post.)