(03-29-2012 09:51 PM)The Brown Bull Wrote: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/col...story.html
Whit Babcock, who took over as athletics director last year, told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday that the two-year experiment with games at Paul Brown Stadium didn’t work out financially as well as the school had hoped.
I’m not saying we’re not going to go back, but we prefer to play on campus. Right now, we don’t have any plans to play future games there (Paul Brown), but that could change.”
Great news for Cinci!!
Glad Cinci's fairly new AD has some economic sense...because playing in front of 20,000 empty seats at a NFL stadium (like Cinci did last year for their 2 games) doesn't cover much of the costs of renting out a stadium, losing all concession, parking and advertising revenue.
Plus, moving their "best games" of the season to the NFL stadium HURT Cinci season tix sales...as fans wanting to go to just the best games of the season (last year it was the UL and WVU game), they could easily buy cheap tix to those games at the Bengals stadium...and not have to purchase season tix for Cinci's other games played on campus.
Biggest benefit to hosting HUGE games in smaller stadiums is that they help drive SEASON TIX SALES...as fans don't want to be left out of the biggest games...and only way to ensure a tix to them is to buy season tix.
College football BELONGS ON CAMPUS...and Cinci's beautiful historic Nippert Stadium puts fans right on top of the action...unlike the Bengal's NFL stadium.
NOTE: In the USA Today special articles on the rise of coaching salaries in hoops and how schools are fighting to raise enough $$$$ to pay for them, in the article below that mainly focuses on VCU's Coach Smart and UNLV's situation when they lost Kruger, it noted this about UC's Athletic Dept:
"Even some of the power conferences' less-prosperous schools are feeling the weight of athletics. Cincinnati, of the Big East, reports on its NCAA financial documents that its program receives no student fees. But the university's support of athletics has risen from $10.7 million in 2007-08 to $14.7 million in 2010-11. Even with that subsidy, the program reported an annual deficit of nearly $1 million that increased its cumulative operating deficit to $33.9 million."
UC can't afford to "give away" lost $$$$ by moving certain games to the local NFL stadium.
PS. Here's the complete article:
Even small schools pay big for hot NCAA coaches
RICHMOND, Va. – Shaka Smart, the charismatic men's basketball coach of Virginia Commonwealth University, made news last week when he told the University of Illinois thanks, but no thanks — same as he told North Carolina State a year ago.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/m...53828414/1