The University of Alabama's athletics department provides a good example.
The NCAA placed the school on probation this year and stripped its football team of 21 victories stemming from a textbook-distribution case discovered in 2007. Through an appeal process, the university hopes to have its victories restored.
The cost thus far of Alabama's appeal: $175,449.81, reports The Star's Michael Casagrande.
That cost, taken not from state funds but from athletic department money, will certainly rise as the university continues to encur attorney fees during the process. There's no telling how much the appeal, successful or not, will cost the school's athletics department.
For a university that's paying its football coach more than $4 million a year, $175K sounds like small potatoes. But it does again illustrate the cost of conducting a national sports program.
And the added costs that occur when it tries to escape the NCAA's wrath.
