(01-25-2018 11:32 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(01-25-2018 06:30 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-25-2018 11:56 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(01-25-2018 11:20 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-25-2018 10:54 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  That’s because football is marketing to the university. Your marketing department is an expense item—not a profit center. Why would anyone pay $750,000 to sponsor a NASCAR for one race? All you get is a logo on the paint job of a car racing around the track for an couple of hours. How much money does that logo on the paint job make?

Like all functional area expenses, marketing is actually an investment - firms make a marketing investment in something like sponsoring a NASCAR racer because they expect that to translate into increased revenues that more than offset the costs of sponsorship. If it doesn't, then they won't do it again.

So like any investment, football has to be assessed in terms of its return.

Unfortunately, most schools simply seem to take it on faith that their football teams add more value than they cost. There's precious little evidence for that, save at the biggest-brand schools.

Notre Dame? No doubt it's true when they say that football built their library or their science lab. At LSU, i know that the athletics department is required to transfer at least $7.5 million each year to the university (meaning the actual academic side), and since the SECN kicked in that has risen to $10m. That's a positive ROI.

At G5 schools? Their science lab and library have less materials because money that could have better funded them has been transferred to fund football.

That was my point in the rest of the post above.

First, the entire athletic department costs the school about 1% of its operating budget. It would typically cost twice that much, but generated revenue cuts the cost by half (marketing is essentially subsidized by alumni, fans, and other outside entities).

Most companies spend about 10% of total revenue on advertising and marketing. Many spend far more than that. The athletic department at a school like UCF represents just 10% of the typical marketing budget for a business with 1.5 billion in revenue.

So, basically 90% of any goodwill and name recognition created by the marketing department is generated by the schools sports teams--which account for only 10% of the normal marketing budget. Plus, this doesnt even address its value as a amenity to the students.

There's no evidence that sports teams at UCF (or USF) generate any % of good will, much less 90%. You are just assuming they do.

USF and UCF were both large, growing schools before they got football in the late 1990s. There's no reason to think they wouldn't be where they are right now in terms of enrollment without it.

I'm glad USF has football, take great pride in it, wish we had it when i was there, but I can't defend the current funding mechanism.

Its not much of an assumption. How many times do you hear a schools name when it isnt connected to sports? How many people look at the latest Carnegie list vs how many people catch a game on TV or a score during the evening news broadcast. Much more likely to hear a school name connected to its sports team than due to any other reason.

Oh, and UCF had an enrollment of 20,387 in fall of 1990. Their 2017 fall enrollment is 66,183. Interesting the rate of growth accelerated in the late 1990's--about the time they jumped to FBS. That said, they had been a successful FCS program prior to that (it was 1AA back then).

https://ikm.ucf.edu/historical-enrollment/

Metro Orlando's population has basically doubled since 1990. Florida's population is up by 90 percent. So you can attribute roughly half of UCF's enrollment growth to population increase.

Now, lets look at the rate that Floridians are going to college. in 1992, 45% did. In 2008 58% did. And that's just the percentage that are going directly from high school to college. So, in just 15 years, Floridians going directly from high school to college increased by 57%. So simply accounting for population increase plus propensity to attend college....you get roughly 1.5 times. That would get you to 50,000 students. And I think that 1.5 factor is actually a bit low.

Now lets look at the percentage of Floridians in high school. Not only is Florida getting bigger, and more high school graduates as a percentage are electing to attend college, but Florida is also getting younger, which means that there even more high schoolers to go into college as well. Not only are the number of students increasing, but they're also graduating from high school in much higher percentages. Lets add another 5 to 6 thousand there.

So basically, simple demographics can pretty much account for roughly all but 10,000 students in the increase in enrollment. And that ooesn't account for the impact of greater numbers of non-traditional students at UCF either. My guess is that they account for most of the remainder.

Its doubtful that much of this increase had anything to do with football.

I will concede that its possible that UCF's football program has helped the school recruit some more people looking to go south for college. But I'm not sure that its that large of a number that can be attributed to football.

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I think we can see this impact by looking at the Dallas college market. There are two large institutions that do not play football (UT-Dallas, and UT-Arlington) and one that does (North Texas).

Lets look to see if we can find a difference

UT-Arlington 1992 enrollment - 24,000, 2016 enrollment 41,993
UT-Dallas 1992 enrollment - 8,993, 2016 enrollment 26,783
U North Texas 1992 enrollment ~ 23,000, 2016 enrollment 37,979

It looks like the non-football schools performed better than the football one. And the area closest to UNT actually grew at a much faster rate than Tarrant and Dallas counties. Now, one could argue that UNT elected to stay smaller and get more selective, but I'm not sure that is the case.

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I'll concede that UCF's greater prominence in athletics probably has led to more students. I just think its a small number, and that UCF could have gotten the same result using that money to invest in academics. And FBS football at UCF makes MORE sense than it does at other institutions, because of the higher level of students. Basically, on a per student basis, it is one third of what a typical MAC school would charge.