While watching snippets of the Academy Awards the other night, it struck me how much the motion picture industry and major college athletics have in common.

Both are in the entertainment business, and you could easily compare the big conferences with lucrative television contracts – Big 10, SEC, Big East, ACC, Big 12, etc. – to the major movie studios.

Member schools of each collegiate conference are, in turn, similar to independent movie production companies, each going about the business of overseeing several projects in hopes of producing a blockbuster or two.

At Kansas University, as you know, men’s basketball is a bankable guarantee, much like a movie starring Tom Cruise or Will Smith. So, to a slightly lesser extent, is football. Meanwhile, all the other KU sports are basically low-budget productions with hopes of becoming the cinematic equivalent of “Little Miss Sunshine.”

Nevertheless, major differences exist between major college athletics and the motion picture industry.

For instance, whereas movie companies have to pay everyone from the producers and directors all the way down to the assistant dolly grips, athletic departments don’t have to fork over a nickel to one huge personnel segment.

I’m talking about the performers. Movie firms have to pay their actors, but student-athletes are cost-free. Yes, the schools must provide room, board, tuition and books, yet they really don’t dip into revenue for that, either. Donors supply those dollars.

So here is a business that doesn’t have to cut checks for 500 or so in its work force, and what it does have to pay is funded by people who are delighted to donate just for the opportunity to buy good seats for the next blockbuster.

Is that a great deal or what? But, wait, there’s more.

Every movie production company must invest in costuming. Not the major college athletic departments. All of them have shoe and apparel contracts. Not only do these companies provide the uniforms, warm-ups, shoes etc. gratis, they pony up an annual fee to have the firm’s logo displayed on the uniforms.

Another movie production cost is the studio buildings, places where sets can be constructed and sound stages assembled. Obviously, buildings don’t come cheap, unless they’re the venues used by most college athletic departments.

The colleges have learned, to their everlasting joy, that a large portion of well-heeled patrons – usually graduates – are more than willing to exchange a chunk of their riches to have their names placed on the structures.

So to summarize, major college athletic departments are like movie companies with these exceptions – they don’t have to pay their performers, they don’t have to buy costumes and they don’t have to undertake building costs.

Oh, and there’s one more thing.

College athletic departments DO NOT have to pay taxes. None. Not a farthing. No federal taxes. No state taxes. Heck, most even receive state money to pay some salaries and for upkeep.

Now you know why so many schools – KU included – have burgeoning sports administration curriculums.