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Bill Battle is only a few months into his tenure as the University of Alabama's athletics director, but he quickly discovered that running an athletic department isn't exactly running a business.
Battle studied UA's athletic budget and realized collegiate athletics has an unbalanced ledger.
"This is an interesting business if you can call it a business, which I guess it is," said Battle, 71, who was hired in March to replace the late Mal Moore, who was at the time hospitalized with a pulmonary condition. "It's like running a company that has 21 divisions and two of them are profitable."
The windfall from football and men's basketball, the only sports with incomes that exceed expenses, fund the other sports - but the model isn't quite as simple as that.
"About half your revenue comes from the business of sports and event management, which I guess is the business side of our business," Battle said. "Most of the other half comes from contributions and donations and Tide Pride and so forth, which is different from any business I've ever been in. That has been interesting."