Very interesting piece in this morning's Richmond Times, listing the annual spending of Virginia's Division 1 colleges in Football & Basketball in 2016 (latest data available). No surprise to see VT at top of list in football ($31.1 million) and basketball ($9.4 million).

Interested to hear some interpretations & opinions from other folks in the Tribe community.

Here's the link to the article ...
http://www.richmond.com/sports/football-...56bed.html

Our basketball spending is embarrassing, much lower than I expected.

I've got plenty to say...I just need to figure out how to say it politely.

And we wonder why we can't find a recruit in today's college-sports atmosphere. God forbid what happens when we have to go looking for a head coach.

They are not good numbers. The percentages tell a big story. I agree with Mrs GR. we better hope Tony doesn't retire...anytime soon.

"we better hope Tony doesn't retire...anytime soon."

I have felt this way since the end of the 2008 season.

Wow! Just Wow! Football spending seems on the low end of acceptable although it could use a bump up, but basketball...

I knew we were behind in MBB, but I didn't realize by quite how much. Do we report something differently that causes us to be so low, or is this reporting on an equal footing with the other schools shown?

Is WBB at a similar disadvantage?

I knew Tony was doing more with less, but this is ridiculous...

wow

edit: not a good wow either

(06-11-2017 09:09 AM)Mrs. Got Ribe Wrote:  I've got plenty to say...I just need to figure out how to say it politely.

And we wonder why we can't find a recruit in today's college-sports atmosphere. God forbid what happens when we have to go looking for a head coach.

Yeah, you're right. Basically, three things are going on here:

• We're trying to run a giant athletic program on a shoestring. To me, admin seems to take a perverse pride in "doing more with less."
• Football just knows how to work the system better than basketball, and that's a knock on Tony. I ran some numbers about six months ago and found that the share of our budget devoted to football keeps increasing. And as a percentage of the budget, it's usually greater here than at places like JMU and Delaware.
• Admin is stubbornly and extremely risk averse. Little thought is given to basketball expenses being a form of investment. And when a major, major gift is proposed for basketball, it is steered toward scholarships instead of, say, a practice facility. (Don't worry, "a lot" of the money saved on the scholarships will come back to basketball.)
  

Mrs. R knows that I've learned to take a Costanzian "serenity now" approach toward all this. Because when you care more than the powers that be, it'll drive you nuts.

I agree that it seems that Shaver is not as adept at working the system as others might be. However, by all I've seen and heard he's a good man and good coach and getting the best results he can get given the constrains under which he is (or allowing himself to be) working under.

The program can't be successful in the CAA with these numbers. I am totally confused as to how to get out of this box. The "Competitive" report, or whatever it was called, seemed to suggest that each program would be asked to compete for funds, etc. Fine - except I don't know how that happens.

One could argue that MBB is the only sport in which W&M competes that is not supported by the College. Football is on the low side of its competition but certainly in the ballpark. The Olympic sports don't get much money but neither does their competition. My guess is that our MBB spending is at Patriot League level at best.

I am reluctant to consider dropping all athletic support for W&M. However, if they continue to underfund the sport about which I am most passionate, fail to provide an opportunity to grow that sport and ask it compete at a higher level than it is funded, then W&M's athletic vision is different than mine.

Analyzing these numbers a small bit, if I'm correct we are 9 out of 14 in mbb expenditures. What is disturbing is that we could raise our spending by 72% and still be 9 out of 14. I wouldn't be so disheartened if we were a close 9th, as I am we're a distant 9th.

We're 7th out of 10 in fb. By contrast, if we raised our fb spending by 72% we'd go from 7th to 3rd behind VT and UVA.

Our MBB budget should be close to those of JMU, ODU and GMU (the next 3 state schools ahead of us who are clustered tightly together), not 55.9% of their average mbb budget.

Football's numbers are deceptive...we have spent 27 million in the past three years on the stadium
and a million plus more on a new field surface and our football practice facilities. They are not reflected in the six million plus number shown. Although on the lower side it is not terribly so. Much of the difference with Va and VPI is 63 scholarships versus 82 for them, sp out spending is on pace or very close to others in our division.

Basketball, however, is , as others have said, stunningly low...especially considering we fund 13 scholarships as does everyone else. Much of the figure reflects embarrassing coaches' salaries and
a puny recruiting budget

On the bright side next season will be the first that the major gift announced late last summer to fund all basketball scholarships perpetually (somewhere in the 25-30 million dollar range) takes effect. This means that we can spend two million dollars without funding the scholarships. If this occurs we will actually be on a par or near competitors.

(06-11-2017 01:40 PM)LeadBolt Wrote:  Analyzing these numbers a small bit, if I'm correct we are 9 out of 14 in mbb expenditures. What is disturbing is that we could raise our spending by 72% and still be 9 out of 14. I wouldn't be so disheartened if we were a close 9th, as I am we're a distant 9th.

Wow-this is depressing. We can't even get them to increase it 50k to pay for a promised overseas trip.

(06-11-2017 01:59 PM)BigTribe3 Wrote:  On the bright side next season will be the first that the major gift announced late last summer to fund all basketball scholarships perpetually (somewhere in the 25-30 million dollar range) takes effect. This means that we can spend two million dollars without funding the scholarships. If this occurs we will actually be on a par or near competitors.

I think I'll let Mr GR handle that one. Have at it...

(06-11-2017 02:14 PM)Mrs. Got Ribe Wrote:  I think I'll let Mr GR handle that one. Have at it...

Oh thanks.

The policy, as it was explained to us, will be to apply some portion of the funds previously spent on scholarships back to the basketball program. It definitely won't be all of the money. My sense is that all sports will benefit from the savings, and that basketball has reason to hope that it will benefit more than most.

There's nothing nefarious here, and these are good people making tough decisions, but if you tried to take a gift which was supposed to be about basketball and turn it into something else entirely, this is exactly what you would do.

Serenity now.

It will be interesting (and telling) to see what the increase in the basketball budget will be after this gift is realized.

It would also be interesting to know what the football budget increase was after the Zable scholarships went through.

(06-11-2017 01:59 PM)BigTribe3 Wrote:  Football's numbers are deceptive...we have spent 27 million in the past three years on the stadium
and a million plus more on a new field surface and our football practice facilities. They are not reflected in the six million plus number shown. Although on the lower side it is not terribly so. Much of the difference with Va and VPI is 63 scholarships versus 82 for them, sp out spending is on pace or very close to others in our division.

Basketball, however, is , as others have said, stunningly low...especially considering we fund 13 scholarships as does everyone else. Much of the figure reflects embarrassing coaches' salaries and
a puny recruiting budget

On the bright side next season will be the first that the major gift announced late last summer to fund all basketball scholarships perpetually (somewhere in the 25-30 million dollar range) takes effect. This means that we can spend two million dollars without funding the scholarships. If this occurs we will actually be on a par or near competitors.

OK, if we assume midpoint of your range and a 4% payout, that would be $1.1 mm. according to the article our current spending is approx. $1.9 MM. If we got all of the increase that would still put us 10% or so behind GMU, the team just above us on the list.

I'm begining to think that the Athletic Department takes some sort of perverse pleasure at being a member of the forlorn 4...

I wanted to take look at the list and compare what percentage of money was available to a school's basketball team compared to the amount being spent by their football team. Obviously, that eliminated the schools that don't play football and the P-5 schools were eliminated because, well, because of money...just a different level of cash there.


Of this remaining group of 8 schools, we come in 8th. Here are the numbers:

1. UR has the closest balance, as their B-Ball spends about 71% as much money as the football team. This is probably because they are trending to basketball first and it has probably been changing for a few years now (Rocco's departure??).

2. NSU's basketball program spends about 46% as much money as the fb team.

3. Madison B-ball spends 39% as much as FB.

4. VMI B-Ball spends 38% as much as FB.

5. ODU, increasing FB spending, spends 37% as much on B-Ball.

6. Liberty, spending like crazy, on well, everything, spends 34% as much for B-Ball as FB.

7. Hampton's B-ball spends 33% as much as their FB team.

8. W&M spends 29% as much for basketball as we do for football.


The average is 40.8% as much spent on basketball, across the schools who fund both. Toss out UR's aggressive 71% and the Tribe's low 29% and the more accurate rate of state basketball teams spending 37.8% as much as their football teams, is the median number for the schools who are closest to us in level of play.


We would have to add about $640,000 to reach the 37.8% level. Obviously, there is more to this than just raw numbers, but we still have a ways to go to reach the median level.

(06-11-2017 08:08 AM)Pete24 Wrote:  Very interesting piece in this morning's Richmond Times, listing the annual spending of Virginia's Division 1 colleges in Football & Basketball in 2016 (latest data available). No surprise to see VT at top of list in football ($31.1 million) and basketball ($9.4 million).

Interested to hear some interpretations & opinions from other folks in the Tribe community.

Here's the link to the article ...
http://www.richmond.com/sports/football-...56bed.html

I agree that the administration doesn't treat any expenses as an investment. I'm not that old, but do remember when we were D1 in football and played name teams at home and the same for hoops. I can't pinpoint when the college just gave up, but it must have been in the early/mid 80s under Graves and Verkuil.

What is most significant to me on this list is Liberty University. They are 3rd in the state in football spending and 4th in basketball.
If you have followed Liberty over the years, this is amazing.
Ten years ago, Liberty University was deeply in debt, with no endowment.
Then, two things happened. First, in 2007, Jerry Falwell, Sr died -- and left the payout from his $34 life million insurance policy to the college.
The second thing that has happened is that Liberty's online college grew exponentially. They now have over 100,000 online students (4th largest online college in the U.S.), in addition to 12,000 on campus. And this online cash seems to be fueling their investment in athletics.
Every athletic team's facility has undergone a transformation since 2011 and they are all expandable. On a side note, Liberty athletics was in the news recently for agreeing to pay ODU an absurd $1.3 million appearance fee to come play them in Lynchburg in 2018.
Looking at the big picture, I am of the opinion that Liberty University's emphasis of their online college hurts their academic reputation and de-values a degree from Liberty.