This information is literally decades out of date, but during the Sixties my Mom worked in the Bursar's Office (she left because she had a little bundle of me on the way), and when I go into my anti-athletic departments rants, she says that the AD is a source of revenue for the entire university.

Now, that being said, holding back seven million to buy out the coach's contract when the rest of the University is hurting it a moral outrage. I don't care if they have to keep Fulmer around until after he's dead and they have to have an assistant coach to move his hands into a T to call a time out, that money can be better spent.

Your wrote: "Is it common for major universities to reserve donors for the athletic department, and keep all proceeds from athletics away from the academic side of the university?"

I'm not trying to start a debate about whether or not it OUGHT to be this way. I am simply going to answer the question.

Donors to a university can, if they choose, to designate their gifts to any department they wish. The UT Business College has development people that raise money specifically for the Business College. (Or, more appropriately now, "The James A. Haslam School of Business") Same for other colleges. Same for the entire System.

It is also the same for athletics. (I know it's not a College, and it's not even academic; I'm just answering the question.)

So the University doesn't "reserve donors" just for the Athletics Department. Donors make those choices.

There is a way in which UT is unique, however: Several thousand football tickets are used by the various Colleges and System for fund raising activities that are unrelated to football. Among major universities, this is rare. At the University of Florida or Alabama or Duke University, for example, the only way to get preferred football tickets (or basketball, in the case of Duke)is to make a donation to the athletic department. At UT, a donor the the library fund can get preference for buying season football tickets.

I'm not saying that this sort of arrangement ought to be applauded; maybe it should be the norm. But it isn't.

MDB wrote: "...football and men's basketball make the rest of the sports possible."

True. A difference at UT from most "big or moderate" sports schools is that the operating and capital budgets of the non-revenue (PC term: "Olympic") sports are growing much faster at UT than at it its sports competitors. This may seem like a good thing on the surface, in that it spreads some of the football wealth around some other sports and intercollegiate students.

What we will learn, however, is that UT Athletics Department Mike Hamilton knows a lot about raising money, and he even hired a basketball coach that has done well, but he knows very little about running an athletic department. $16 or $17 million is a bunch of money to spend on football. At least it sounds like it. But in the major sports college world, it isn't. They can't keep cutting or stagnating the football budget and expect to remain competitive. Hamilton is choking his golden goose.

Wait and see what happens when he starts paying a new fb coach $3.5 million a year. He and Pat Summit will live in constant struggle. I think I know who will win that battle. Every year that Fulmer stays as FB coach, Hamilton gets to keep his job another year. When Fulmer leaves, the clock stats running on Mike Hamilton.