(04-12-2017 02:34 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  UALR sponsors 14 sports.
FBS will require 16 sports.
UALR does not fund all of the allowed scholarships currently.
FBS would require funding a minimum of 200.

UCA reported to the state (which uses significantly different accounting from the report USA Today does, namely not looking at capital expenditures) that they spent almost $3 million more on athletics than UALR.

So to get to the level of a pretty good FCS school UALR has to increase annual operating budget about 32%
To get to the level of AState, UALR has to increase annual operating budget 99.8%
That's an annual outlay in excess of $9 million more than they currently spend on athletics.

Now they could go with a student fee. Arkansas State charges $19 per credit hour per semester. UALR currently charges $20 per credit hour per semester. UCA one of the two FCS programs charges $18 per hour. UAPB the other FCS charges $17 per hour.

So UALR already has the highest athletic fee of the five Division I schools in Arkansas. That doesn't leave a lot of room to divert the cost to students.

They really have to have a benefactor step up, not only to help them get past the start-up costs (football will operate for a year with no revenue at all) but to deal with ongoing costs.

Appreciate the analysis, but you seem to be ignoring that UALR -- I assume -- gets no portion of the Sun Belt distribution for football. That would be more income.

(04-12-2017 01:09 PM)bluesox Wrote:  I would guess this is a bluff to keep arkansas playing games in Little rock. If they move all the games out than UALR football could happen to fill the void.

This is correct, and not a very good bluff. UALR would never come close to filling the stadium, and would bring nobody into town. Nobody will ever mistake a UALR vs Troy game for an SEC game. The cost to the city and to the school make this a lose-lose proposition.

Only Arkansas vs SEC opponents sell out. I think this is driving Arkansas to want to play all games at home, fill their own stadium and make a little more money. Not sure it's smart, as playing one game a year in Little Rock keeps the entire State identifying with the program.

I suspect this comes down to the folks from Fayetteville demanding the stadium or some other related facilities/services/access be improved by the City. and Little Rock doesn't want to pony that up. Hence the weak bluff.

S Alabama would seem to prove you wrong, stugray. Very similar situation. Just substitute Alabama for Arkansas.

Why does not filling the stadium matter?

It's about business for the city. The city doesn't want to pony up for upgrades to keep Arkansas, so the claim they can get the same return from UALR. Which is hogwash.

Bluff will be called.

I agree the deep south is different than the rest of the US when it comes to football and spending education dollars on sports. You don't have the student revolts and rejections of fees, the State laws prohibiting transfers, etc. And all the new move ups in football are from this region it seems. It shows up in other Statistics, such as the spending on research at Universities versus the spending on Athletics. While the ratio is 7:1 to 12:1 among schools in the B1G and P12, its down below 2:1 in the SEC, and if you remove the four AAU schools it below 1.5:1. This points to a very different set of priorities.

Given that, the same numbers which would make any Northern or Western public schools say, hell no to adding football, in Arkansas or Alabama or Louisiana they may well say yes.

(04-12-2017 12:21 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 10:53 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  But here is one thing to counter that, Tom: Arkansas has been able to deny UALR a football team for decades under the premise that "Arkansas" is their football team ... with the proof being the yearly Little Rock game.

Now that game is in jeopardy.


That could be the --- yes, small --- window of opportunity.

When I was a kid, I remember Arkansas would play 3 games a year in Little Rock...I hadn't heard the game is in jeopardy now? Please explain?

The last game under contract is 2018, and there is no sign that Arkansas will renew the contract to play at the WMS.

(04-12-2017 04:41 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  The city doesn't want to pony up for upgrades to keep Arkansas, so the claim they can get the same return from UALR.

Where are they saying they'll get the same return from UALR?

What I see him saying is "well, if Arkansas won't come anymore ... we want someone to use it for college football, so how about UALR??"

(04-12-2017 04:41 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Bluff will be called.

So you're saying that Arkansas won't play games in Memorial after 2018?

(04-12-2017 04:11 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 02:34 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  UALR sponsors 14 sports.
FBS will require 16 sports.
UALR does not fund all of the allowed scholarships currently.
FBS would require funding a minimum of 200.

UCA reported to the state (which uses significantly different accounting from the report USA Today does, namely not looking at capital expenditures) that they spent almost $3 million more on athletics than UALR.

So to get to the level of a pretty good FCS school UALR has to increase annual operating budget about 32%
To get to the level of AState, UALR has to increase annual operating budget 99.8%
That's an annual outlay in excess of $9 million more than they currently spend on athletics.

Now they could go with a student fee. Arkansas State charges $19 per credit hour per semester. UALR currently charges $20 per credit hour per semester. UCA one of the two FCS programs charges $18 per hour. UAPB the other FCS charges $17 per hour.

So UALR already has the highest athletic fee of the five Division I schools in Arkansas. That doesn't leave a lot of room to divert the cost to students.

They really have to have a benefactor step up, not only to help them get past the start-up costs (football will operate for a year with no revenue at all) but to deal with ongoing costs.

Appreciate the analysis, but you seem to be ignoring that UALR -- I assume -- gets no portion of the Sun Belt distribution for football. That would be more income.

That leaves them $8 million short of what AState spends.
They take a full $135,000 or whatever it is of television already. According to AState's AD they already get a partial share of the CFP money under the conference revenue sharing plan.
But you are talking at most a million bucks and that's not there if the go FCS.

(04-12-2017 04:41 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  It's about business for the city. The city doesn't want to pony up for upgrades to keep Arkansas, so the claim they can get the same return from UALR. Which is hogwash.

Bluff will be called.

I agree the deep south is different than the rest of the US when it comes to football and spending education dollars on sports. You don't have the student revolts and rejections of fees, the State laws prohibiting transfers, etc. And all the new move ups in football are from this region it seems. It shows up in other Statistics, such as the spending on research at Universities versus the spending on Athletics. While the ratio is 7:1 to 12:1 among schools in the B1G and P12, its down below 2:1 in the SEC, and if you remove the four AAU schools it below 1.5:1. This points to a very different set of priorities.

Given that, the same numbers which would make any Northern or Western public schools say, hell no to adding football, in Arkansas or Alabama or Louisiana they may well say yes.

People wonder where the school could get the money? From donations from local businesses that wants football games more often at War Memorial Stadium. They lost a lot of business when Arkansas went down to 1 game per year. It is not just students been filling out petitions, local business leaders for the past several years have been doing it as well. They see that Arkansas games will not be played in Little Rock anymore.

Now, the person involved at Little Rock in charge as the director of Athletics donation drive is the son of SFA's head football coach Clint Conque who moved over from UCA, Chasse Conque. Son of a football coach have driven the fever for Little Rock to add football. He was first hired in charge of donation drive at UALR.

http://lrtrojans.com/staff.aspx?staff=1

If he can get donations for baseball, basketball and swimming and diving? I think he could fund raise a drive for a football team which I think would work. He hired women's basketball coach, Joe Foley, away from Arkansas Tech. Tech's Golden Sun team have made several D2 basketball tournaments under his helm, and brought his success to Little Rock's women's program.

(04-12-2017 05:00 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 04:11 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 02:34 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  UALR sponsors 14 sports.
FBS will require 16 sports.
UALR does not fund all of the allowed scholarships currently.
FBS would require funding a minimum of 200.

UCA reported to the state (which uses significantly different accounting from the report USA Today does, namely not looking at capital expenditures) that they spent almost $3 million more on athletics than UALR.

So to get to the level of a pretty good FCS school UALR has to increase annual operating budget about 32%
To get to the level of AState, UALR has to increase annual operating budget 99.8%
That's an annual outlay in excess of $9 million more than they currently spend on athletics.

Now they could go with a student fee. Arkansas State charges $19 per credit hour per semester. UALR currently charges $20 per credit hour per semester. UCA one of the two FCS programs charges $18 per hour. UAPB the other FCS charges $17 per hour.

So UALR already has the highest athletic fee of the five Division I schools in Arkansas. That doesn't leave a lot of room to divert the cost to students.

They really have to have a benefactor step up, not only to help them get past the start-up costs (football will operate for a year with no revenue at all) but to deal with ongoing costs.

Appreciate the analysis, but you seem to be ignoring that UALR -- I assume -- gets no portion of the Sun Belt distribution for football. That would be more income.

That leaves them $8 million short of what AState spends.
They take a full $135,000 or whatever it is of television already. According to AState's AD they already get a partial share of the CFP money under the conference revenue sharing plan.
But you are talking at most a million bucks and that's not there if the go FCS.

Chasse Conque will raise the money. He made a lot of improvements to the sports in upgrades from donations. Coleman family donated a lot of money and more land for Little Rock for a sports complex. Coleman's own the milk factories. That is Little Rock's Sugar Daddy is at.

(04-12-2017 02:04 PM)AZcats Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 10:31 AM)DavidSt Wrote:  I think Little Rock dropped Arkansas from the first part and are known as University of Little Rock. Looks like they are moving away on their own from the people from Fayetteville to be their own like South Alabama did.

Wow. The school's name and what is printed on diplomas is "UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK". It is called Little Rock for athletic reasons only. Fayetteville still runs the Little Rock campus. South Alabama was never a part of the Alabama or Auburn systems.

There has been talk of UArk ending Little Rock games for nearly 40 years and it looks like it may finally happen. One of the main reasons for the LR games was to be more accessible to fans in the southern and eastern parts of the state. Now that the Fayetteville stadium has been expanded (currently about 20,000 more than Little Rock) and having I-49 to make travel to northwest Arkansas easier it's not as important to play in Little Rock anymore.

I thought Arkansas stopped the practice around the time they moved to the SEC.

Road upgrades to college football towns no longer necessitate it.

A whole lot of dreamers on here that can't do math....and a whole lot of non-Arkansans who think they know how Arkansas works.

They already charge the highest student athletic fees in the state and do not have football or the minimum number of SBC sports. They would have to offer those sports, offer scholarships, arrange for facilities, and hire coaching staffs. They would also have to deal with Title IX issues and offer enough women's slots to match. Plus they have to double their athletic department staff and come up with $12 to $30 million in startup costs (their numbers). Plus, I assume that they will still have to pay the War Memorial rent per game.

They have to do all this in a sports media environment that doesn't really want them to exist and won't even agree to follow their athletic branding and in a city that won't even sell out a Razorback game.

They will have to convince the University of Arkansas board to go along with all of this. Remembering that its the same UA that sandbagged its own system with a competing distance learning program not long ago.

We're talking about folks that threatened to not accept transfer credits from a two-year institution if it cooperated with Arkansas State.

And all of this overseen by a state that only allowed A-State to get a medical school or open an international branch if not a dime of state money was involved in it.

Plus, the Conway people are probably going to be vehemently opposed to it.

Is it possible? Yes. But getting it done ain't like in other places.

(04-12-2017 05:18 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 05:00 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 04:11 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 02:34 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  UALR sponsors 14 sports.
FBS will require 16 sports.
UALR does not fund all of the allowed scholarships currently.
FBS would require funding a minimum of 200.

UCA reported to the state (which uses significantly different accounting from the report USA Today does, namely not looking at capital expenditures) that they spent almost $3 million more on athletics than UALR.

So to get to the level of a pretty good FCS school UALR has to increase annual operating budget about 32%
To get to the level of AState, UALR has to increase annual operating budget 99.8%
That's an annual outlay in excess of $9 million more than they currently spend on athletics.

Now they could go with a student fee. Arkansas State charges $19 per credit hour per semester. UALR currently charges $20 per credit hour per semester. UCA one of the two FCS programs charges $18 per hour. UAPB the other FCS charges $17 per hour.

So UALR already has the highest athletic fee of the five Division I schools in Arkansas. That doesn't leave a lot of room to divert the cost to students.

They really have to have a benefactor step up, not only to help them get past the start-up costs (football will operate for a year with no revenue at all) but to deal with ongoing costs.

Appreciate the analysis, but you seem to be ignoring that UALR -- I assume -- gets no portion of the Sun Belt distribution for football. That would be more income.

That leaves them $8 million short of what AState spends.
They take a full $135,000 or whatever it is of television already. According to AState's AD they already get a partial share of the CFP money under the conference revenue sharing plan.
But you are talking at most a million bucks and that's not there if the go FCS.

Chasse Conque will raise the money. He made a lot of improvements to the sports in upgrades from donations. Coleman family donated a lot of money and more land for Little Rock for a sports complex. Coleman's own the milk factories. That is Little Rock's Sugar Daddy is at.

Startup costs will be hard enough. But millions of dollars a year every year? That's a lot milk.

(04-12-2017 04:59 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 04:41 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Bluff will be called.

So you're saying that Arkansas won't play games in Memorial after 2018?

No, the city will likely cave in and compromise to do some things the SEC school wants done to keep coming back

(04-12-2017 04:49 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 12:21 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 10:53 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  But here is one thing to counter that, Tom: Arkansas has been able to deny UALR a football team for decades under the premise that "Arkansas" is their football team ... with the proof being the yearly Little Rock game.

Now that game is in jeopardy.


That could be the --- yes, small --- window of opportunity.

When I was a kid, I remember Arkansas would play 3 games a year in Little Rock...I hadn't heard the game is in jeopardy now? Please explain?

The last game under contract is 2018, and there is no sign that Arkansas will renew the contract to play at the WMS.

No problem there. You could be right. I was specifically talking about your comment about Arkansas-Little Rock not being a part of the Arkansas system.

(04-12-2017 07:37 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 04:49 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 12:21 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 10:53 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  But here is one thing to counter that, Tom: Arkansas has been able to deny UALR a football team for decades under the premise that "Arkansas" is their football team ... with the proof being the yearly Little Rock game.

Now that game is in jeopardy.


That could be the --- yes, small --- window of opportunity.

When I was a kid, I remember Arkansas would play 3 games a year in Little Rock...I hadn't heard the game is in jeopardy now? Please explain?

The last game under contract is 2018, and there is no sign that Arkansas will renew the contract to play at the WMS.

No problem there. You could be right. I was specifically talking about your comment about Arkansas-Little Rock not being a part of the Arkansas system.

I was saying they want to have their identity away from under the umbrella of Arkansas Hogs. That is why they dropped Arkansas in the name for sports. It could be the first step in divorcing from Fayetteville.

(04-12-2017 05:15 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  People wonder where the school could get the money? From donations from local businesses that wants football games more often at War Memorial Stadium. They lost a lot of business when Arkansas went down to 1 game per year. It is not just students been filling out petitions, local business leaders for the past several years have been doing it as well. They see that Arkansas games will not be played in Little Rock anymore.

Now, the person involved at Little Rock in charge as the director of Athletics donation drive is the son of SFA's head football coach Clint Conque who moved over from UCA, Chasse Conque. Son of a football coach have driven the fever for Little Rock to add football. He was first hired in charge of donation drive at UALR.

http://lrtrojans.com/staff.aspx?staff=1

If he can get donations for baseball, basketball and swimming and diving? I think he could fund raise a drive for a football team which I think would work. He hired women's basketball coach, Joe Foley, away from Arkansas Tech. Tech's Golden Sun team have made several D2 basketball tournaments under his helm, and brought his success to Little Rock's women's program.

You have obviously never been to Little Rock. There is razorback stuff everywhere you look, the brainwashed people will support other hog fans. Those same hog fans are not going to donate to a school to compete against their favorite team. Local businesses did not lose that much with fewer LR hog games.

Learn your "facts". Conque had no involvement at all in the hiring of Joe Foley. Foley started at LR in 2003 while Conque did not arrive until 2007 in his first position at the school.

Quote:I was saying they want to have their identity away from under the umbrella of Arkansas Hogs. That is why they dropped Arkansas in the name for sports. It could be the first step in divorcing from Fayetteville.

Nothing is right about that statement. The athletic identity was changed but what was not changed is the fact that UALR is still very much a part of the UArk system. Since the pigs control the state, including politics, that is not going to change either.

(04-12-2017 05:18 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 05:00 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 04:11 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 02:34 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  UALR sponsors 14 sports.
FBS will require 16 sports.
UALR does not fund all of the allowed scholarships currently.
FBS would require funding a minimum of 200.

UCA reported to the state (which uses significantly different accounting from the report USA Today does, namely not looking at capital expenditures) that they spent almost $3 million more on athletics than UALR.

So to get to the level of a pretty good FCS school UALR has to increase annual operating budget about 32%
To get to the level of AState, UALR has to increase annual operating budget 99.8%
That's an annual outlay in excess of $9 million more than they currently spend on athletics.

Now they could go with a student fee. Arkansas State charges $19 per credit hour per semester. UALR currently charges $20 per credit hour per semester. UCA one of the two FCS programs charges $18 per hour. UAPB the other FCS charges $17 per hour.

So UALR already has the highest athletic fee of the five Division I schools in Arkansas. That doesn't leave a lot of room to divert the cost to students.

They really have to have a benefactor step up, not only to help them get past the start-up costs (football will operate for a year with no revenue at all) but to deal with ongoing costs.

Appreciate the analysis, but you seem to be ignoring that UALR -- I assume -- gets no portion of the Sun Belt distribution for football. That would be more income.

That leaves them $8 million short of what AState spends.
They take a full $135,000 or whatever it is of television already. According to AState's AD they already get a partial share of the CFP money under the conference revenue sharing plan.
But you are talking at most a million bucks and that's not there if the go FCS.

Chasse Conque will raise the money. He made a lot of improvements to the sports in upgrades from donations. Coleman family donated a lot of money and more land for Little Rock for a sports complex. Coleman's own the milk factories. That is Little Rock's Sugar Daddy is at.

I think highly of Chasse he is a great fundraiser but we are talking about doubling the budget likely with no fee increase on students.

Little Rock ain't a sports town.

There have been four attempts to get a bowl game there and managed to hold one, back in the 50's for NAIA teams and it busted. There was a group that brought a college all-star game in with a three year commitment and punted after one.
Voters shot down the proposal for a 65,000 seat dome.
Voters turned down a proposed 18,000 seat arena.
Every effort for a new minor league ballpark failed.
The only way we got a new arena was by making it a county-wide vote and putting it in North Little Rock and then UALR ditched it for an on-campus facility (which was good but attendance suffered).
It was North Little Rock that passed a city wide tax to get a new minor league park.

When Arkansas State was set to host Mizzou in football, St. Louis offered AState $1.5 million to move the game to Busch Stadium. Kansas City offered $2 million to move it to Arrowhead. Little Rock offered to charge $17,500 to rent the stadium instead of $35,000.

UCA and UAPB tried playing there and struck out finding sponsors. Basically they ended up having to trade tickets for services to sponsors and they did such a good job distributing tickets that it was rumored they sold less than $1000 in tickets.

I think highly of UALR's AD, their last chancellor was very good, haven't met the new one, but Little Rock is about like Miami as a sports market, just smaller.

(04-12-2017 07:42 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  I was saying they want to have their identity away from under the umbrella of Arkansas Hogs. That is why they dropped Arkansas in the name for sports. It could be the first step in divorcing from Fayetteville.

Or it could be a sign of a Martian invasion.

UALR started as Little Rock Junior College as an arm of the Little Rock School District. After the district was forced to close for a year as a part of the segregation crisis it was spun off as a private school.

It then became a four year college and when it was on the brink of bankruptcy the Arkansas legislature passed a law permitting LRU to join the University of Arkansas system.

The only way UALR could divorce itself from the UA System is to convince 51 representatives and 18 senators to pass a bill to make it happen and then get the governor to sign it.

That would buck the trend of the legislature offering carrots to the state schools to consolidate into larger systems.

(04-12-2017 11:05 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 07:42 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  I was saying they want to have their identity away from under the umbrella of Arkansas Hogs. That is why they dropped Arkansas in the name for sports. It could be the first step in divorcing from Fayetteville.

Or it could be a sign of a Martian invasion.

UALR started as Little Rock Junior College as an arm of the Little Rock School District. After the district was forced to close for a year as a part of the segregation crisis it was spun off as a private school.

It then became a four year college and when it was on the brink of bankruptcy the Arkansas legislature passed a law permitting LRU to join the University of Arkansas system.

The only way UALR could divorce itself from the UA System is to convince 51 representatives and 18 senators to pass a bill to make it happen and then get the governor to sign it.

That would buck the trend of the legislature offering carrots to the state schools to consolidate into larger systems.

I mean let the schools have their own board members, and make decisions what is best for those schools. Look at what went down in Alabama? UAB gets a rep on the board of regents to make what is best for UAB. I think it should be the same way for Little Rock, UAFS, UAPB and UAM.

(04-13-2017 12:24 AM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 11:05 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(04-12-2017 07:42 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  I was saying they want to have their identity away from under the umbrella of Arkansas Hogs. That is why they dropped Arkansas in the name for sports. It could be the first step in divorcing from Fayetteville.

Or it could be a sign of a Martian invasion.

UALR started as Little Rock Junior College as an arm of the Little Rock School District. After the district was forced to close for a year as a part of the segregation crisis it was spun off as a private school.

It then became a four year college and when it was on the brink of bankruptcy the Arkansas legislature passed a law permitting LRU to join the University of Arkansas system.

The only way UALR could divorce itself from the UA System is to convince 51 representatives and 18 senators to pass a bill to make it happen and then get the governor to sign it.

That would buck the trend of the legislature offering carrots to the state schools to consolidate into larger systems.

I mean let the schools have their own board members, and make decisions what is best for those schools. Look at what went down in Alabama? UAB gets a rep on the board of regents to make what is best for UAB. I think it should be the same way for Little Rock, UAFS, UAPB and UAM.

UALR has the Board of Visitors. They don't have binding authority but can adopt recommendations and send a resolution regarding them to the Chancellor and UA Board.

Arkansas Constitution prohibits just devolving some of the UA Board's powers to the Board of Visitors. The only way to grant them any binding authority is to remove UALR from the UA system, otherwise it is an illegal compromise of the powers of the board.

Same is true of the AState system or the Parks and Tourism Commission. Any state board or commission can't have power taken away unless the whole body they oversee is abolished.