It makes sense if you are a booster who really, really wants your football team to win, and have the capacity to spend millions of dollars to make it happen.

You can't legally make direct payments to recruits, so better facilities is an indirect payment.

To me, its like the old days of air travel ( pre1975) when many air fares were set by the FAA. Since airlines couldn't compete directly on price, they had to compete on services- better food, prettier stewardesses, etc..
Take away the fare regulation, and airlines compete much more on price.

In college sports, boosters can legally only pay recruits tuition and housing, and its done through athletic department fundraising. To compete for the best recruits, boosters can differentiate their favirite foitball programs by paying the schools to upgrade facilities, as we see in the article. They do this because winning is THAT important.

Deregulate booster payments to recruits, and money currently funneled into facilities upgrades will start going directly to recruits, at market prices.

[Post edited by PadrosWindup at 12/22/2015 1:39PM]