The only real benefits that should be calc'd are room/board, gear, stiped, books.

Closer to $20k or so per year.

the actual "cost". If you were given a "free" airplane ticket to Europe that the airline did not have to "pay" for, it would still have value. Plus studies have been done of the "value" of a Notre Dame/competitive school education versus other educational institutions that informs the numbers by the Northwestern administrator. Of course, the athlete/student has to take full advantage of the opportunity to realize its value.

Would be otherwise full with paying customers (as ND’s incoming freshman classes would be, without scholarship athletes), then the free flight would have actual cost to the airline.

I doubt that the extra 20 or so freshman football scholarships given annually is causing ND to turn students away. At this point in time, Notre Dame controls exactly how many kids they take annually. I would doubt that Notre Dame is at a tipping point in terms of admissions and that every athlete admitted is costing them actual dollars. Now, that doesn't change the fact that this scholarship is extremely valuable to the recipient.

Furthermore, a point might be made that scholarships invested 60-80-100 years ago (and continuing on, obviously) helped increase the overall popularity of the school and played a major role in increasing attendance and admissions. There is no question that it was a wise investment in terms of increasing the status of the school.

there is tremendous value in the scholarship, which has been lost on many people due to the blatant selfishness and greed being exhibited by the administrators in the athletic department and the University presidents.

By allowing all of these shortcuts, joke majors, etc. they've devalued their product and made it all about the television contracts, etc.

paid a lot less had I known I could make up a number!

The theory is that ND doesn't have to pay itself for the tuition dollars for scholarship athletes. It doesn't cost any more to enroll 85 scholarship football players. There may be some economic loss (that class spot could have been filled by a full-freight paying student), but no actual dollars paid out by the athletic department.

There's a cost to excluding paying students on the waiting list, even if some were getting partial scholarships. Also, you can't go to Costco or Walmart and get ND classes at a discount. It's only available at one place.

It doesn't cost the university anything more to add 85 students to classes. The marginal cost of adding those students to any given class is 0 since that professor is already teaching.

The actual costs would be for the other benefits. As I mentioned, there are economic costs if that spot in the freshman class could have gone to a student whose parents were able to pay full freight, but the main actual costs to the school are room and board plus other benefits since the school doesn't have to pay itself tuition.

Of course it costs ND the cost of tuition for scholarship players. As was pointed out, the spot would be filled by a paying customer otherwise. To ignore that would be ridiculous.

because they have football players on scholarship?