(02-14-2017 10:29 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(02-14-2017 05:37 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-14-2017 05:21 PM)miko33 Wrote:  There won't be a group of 5 playoff. However, there may actually be something similar that will come about in the future that will make a new subdivision out of necessity. The brutal honesty is that there are maybe 20 - 30 schools that can legitimately spend at the highest levels to compete. At least 1/2 to 2/3rds of the current P5 setup cannot effectively compete at the highest levels when you look at schools like Alabama, Michigan, OH State, Florida, Texas, and a handful of others and use those as a benchmark for AD spending...it's not sustainable. IMO if your school CANNOT run a revenue neutral AD at the absolute minimum, you do not deserve to be in the highest subdivision. That's the first pass. Second pass, if you cannot spend at a minimum "X" amount of dollars, you have no business being in the highest subdivision. Applying a dual pass filter with these metrics, your ultimate slotting in the subdivisions SHOULD look quite different.

My school cannot compete at the highest levels and it's in a P5 conference. I do not WANT my school to compete at the highest levels. I would rather my school focus more efforts on the academic side AND MORE IMPORTANTLY focus on controlling costs so that tuition is more affordable to the state residents. We're beyond the fun and games at this point. College costs are too high, and playing college sports at the highest levels WHEN YOU CANNOT RUN A REVENUE NEUTRAL AD is morally repugnant in today's world. I no longer GAF if my school can go toe to toe with Ohio State if it means that the AD must be heavily subsidized to do so.

If your school is in a P5 conference (including Pitt), then its football and men's basketball programs are absolutely, 100% making a lot of money. Whether the rest of the athletic department is draining such money and/or there's a lot of creative accounting being employed to show $0 profit or a net loss is another matter.

It's not mutually exclusive for a school like Pitt to have a top level P5 athletic department while also improving academic standards. Once you get past the Ivy League-level schools, there's a pretty strong correlation between academic prestige and P5 membership. A P5 athletic department is also not a reason why tuition is going higher. Public schools everywhere (regardless of whether they are in the P5 or not) are getting little to no state funding these days and private schools have jacked up tuition rates to the point where it's literally funny money if you're attempting to pay out-of-pocket. Don't kid yourself - Pitt isn't going to be more affordable if it drops P5 sports. If anything, that reduces the national name brand of Pitt where they don't attract as many applications from quality students, which then reduces enrollments and then forces the school to squeeze more tuition dollars from its existing students.

I can point to my own home state of Illinois. It's not the University of Illinois (with its Big Ten athletic department) that's hurting due to a complete lack of state funding of higher education (literally) - they've just announced that they've received yet another record number of applications this year. Instead, it's the non-P5 public universities in the state that are getting hammered financially and facing declining enrollments. That's not to say that having P5 athletics is the reason why U of I isn't suffering the same fate as its other in-state brethren, but the point is that it certainly isn't hurting them at all whatsoever. Big Ten membership is a pretty significant plus for U of I in differentiating itself against other schools that are its local competitors, just as ACC membership is a pretty significant plus for Pitt as being a differentiator versus, say, Temple, Delaware or Miami of Ohio.

Which has always been one of my points. Fine. Dump football. Just remember, FBS football attracts students and donations. Without football, the school will need to find a new way to attract enrollment and donation dollars. Its very likely that the marketing to attract these potential students and donations will cost just as much or more than football. And you cant sell tickets or get TV rights to subsidize the cost of a traditional marketing program.

UC-Davis, UC-San Diego, UT-Dallas, UIC (Chicago), George Mason, VCU, IUPUI, UMBC, UMKC, UNCW, UNCG, FGCU, etc... We are seeing a rise of newer schools that are big and do not have a football team.

Of course, the alternative to this are schools like Georgia State, UAB, South Florida, UNC-Charlotte, Old Dominion, etc...