(12-16-2014 02:08 PM)wavefan12 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:55 PM)dezagcoog Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:37 PM)SublimeKnight Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:20 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I don't think they devote 50% of their fungible budget to marketing, no.

There's $200m for the teaching of classes and the running of the administration. A $20m cut of that is really going to hurt you--and your reputation, I might add. Since you're not going to be able to hire anything but part-timers to teach.

Besides, UCF is competing for instate dollars at public institutions against UF, USF, Florida St, FGCU, etc. The question becomes, can it raise its profile enough to attract the students electing to go to UF or FSU? And how does it do nit? Improved academics? Football?

This isn't a classic case of marketing nationally to brand yourself. Big state institutions don't do that. They serve an instate constituency.

Students elect to go to San Diego over UCLA for a variety of reasons. In California, both are considered essentially equal, whereas nationally, UCLA has a bigger profile because of sports.

Right now, UCF is already the most applied to university in FL.
When you look at why someone would apply at FSU (2nd most applied to in FL) over UCF: Older, better perceived academics in some major, location, etc... Athletics is really the only thing that money can buy to help improve.

Let's be honest. If UCF hired away the best professors from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard they'd still be rated around where they are today academically. The name of the game in the higher education industry is image. You can only improve image with marketing and athletics is the best marketing tool in the industry.

That's not true. Rice is consistently considered the best University in Texas and their sports/football sucks compared to UT, TAMU, etc.(caveat: exception in Baseball)

Rice has 4k students, it's unfair to compare it to the two big state schools. In fact, I know kids who choose UT over Rice and I am sure athletics plays a role in that decision.

Well but the point is that you don't have to put athletics over education. It depends on the school. If you make that your point I agree, but it goes both ways then. Cause schools like UAB likely should have never gone to 1A. I think that no one really needs to defend what their school is doing because we really need to understand each school is different. Baylor has never had the same P5 success but they're also considered better than UT.

(12-16-2014 02:10 PM)dezagcoog Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 02:08 PM)wavefan12 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:55 PM)dezagcoog Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:37 PM)SublimeKnight Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:20 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I don't think they devote 50% of their fungible budget to marketing, no.

There's $200m for the teaching of classes and the running of the administration. A $20m cut of that is really going to hurt you--and your reputation, I might add. Since you're not going to be able to hire anything but part-timers to teach.

Besides, UCF is competing for instate dollars at public institutions against UF, USF, Florida St, FGCU, etc. The question becomes, can it raise its profile enough to attract the students electing to go to UF or FSU? And how does it do nit? Improved academics? Football?

This isn't a classic case of marketing nationally to brand yourself. Big state institutions don't do that. They serve an instate constituency.

Students elect to go to San Diego over UCLA for a variety of reasons. In California, both are considered essentially equal, whereas nationally, UCLA has a bigger profile because of sports.

Right now, UCF is already the most applied to university in FL.
When you look at why someone would apply at FSU (2nd most applied to in FL) over UCF: Older, better perceived academics in some major, location, etc... Athletics is really the only thing that money can buy to help improve.

Let's be honest. If UCF hired away the best professors from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard they'd still be rated around where they are today academically. The name of the game in the higher education industry is image. You can only improve image with marketing and athletics is the best marketing tool in the industry.

That's not true. Rice is consistently considered the best University in Texas and their sports/football sucks compared to UT, TAMU, etc.(caveat: exception in Baseball)

Rice has 4k students, it's unfair to compare it to the two big state schools. In fact, I know kids who choose UT over Rice and I am sure athletics plays a role in that decision.

Well but the point is that you don't have to put athletics over education. It depends on the school. If you make that your point I agree, but it goes both ways then. Cause schools like UAB likely should have never gone to 1A. I think that no one really needs to defend what their school is doing because we really need to understand each school is different. Baylor has never had the same P5 success but they're also considered better than UT.

There are literally hundreds of Universities so the same model obviously doesn't apply to all of them. there are also leaders in a given state with an agenda. Rice has benefited from oil/gas and the way they setup their school. I am sure staying in D1 has still done more good than bad for them over time. My overall point is that generally speaking athletics plays a huge role in revenue and brand....which today equals better quality students and more donations. No one said you ever had to put athletics over education. This is a discussion about the value of athletics and many profs not understand how much of an important role they play in their lives even if they don;t like sports.

As for UAB, again you need to go case by case. If the state of AL didn't put a stranglehold on the FBall program maybe they could have been relevant and more like the current ULL, which would be a net positive. Knowing the state would strangle them, they probably should have just focused on Bball, which I am sure has provided more positives than negatives to their brand and pocket book. But that's hindsight.

(12-16-2014 01:37 PM)SublimeKnight Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:20 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I don't think they devote 50% of their fungible budget to marketing, no.

There's $200m for the teaching of classes and the running of the administration. A $20m cut of that is really going to hurt you--and your reputation, I might add. Since you're not going to be able to hire anything but part-timers to teach.

Besides, UCF is competing for instate dollars at public institutions against UF, USF, Florida St, FGCU, etc. The question becomes, can it raise its profile enough to attract the students electing to go to UF or FSU? And how does it do nit? Improved academics? Football?

This isn't a classic case of marketing nationally to brand yourself. Big state institutions don't do that. They serve an instate constituency.

Students elect to go to San Diego over UCLA for a variety of reasons. In California, both are considered essentially equal, whereas nationally, UCLA has a bigger profile because of sports.

Right now, UCF is already the most applied to university in FL.
When you look at why someone would apply at FSU (2nd most applied to in FL) over UCF: Older, better perceived academics in some major, location, etc... Athletics is really the only thing that money can buy to help improve.

Let's be honest. If UCF hired away the best professors from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard they'd still be rated around where they are today academically. The name of the game in the higher education industry is image. You can only improve image with marketing and athletics is the best marketing tool in the industry.

No. That's not how you do it. Boston U. is the fastest riser out there, from 70s to the cusp of top 30s and AAU. And no football.

There are ways to game the USNWR measures. The biggest weight falls on reputation, and the people doing the reputation surveys are academics. This is why many schools that have slashed programs have dropped a lot in the rankings. It's also why many schools that have invested like Boston U. have shot up in the rankings.

31 schools in the top 50 does not have D1 football, and many of those schools, like BU, are new to the top 50. Lots of fast risers in there.

If you're talking about real measures like the National Foundations and the Carnegie, those are intensive, and you simply cannot game them easily. Those are boots and heels on campus.

I said that for some schools, losing big $$ on academics makes sense. I said this at the outset.

But this idea that it's always good for branding has been shot down in studies. Andrew Zimbalist wrote a book that went through several case studies showing that athletics helped academics. BC was one of his examples (by the way, BCs move to the ACC didn't give them additional cache, since BCs bread and butter has always been northeast Catholics and still is, BC grabs kids that are choosing between BC and ND). But he went into many examples in which athletics had not only negatively branded the school, but contributed to the demise of academics. As Rutgers was losing $35 million a year, it was cutting departments left and right, and worse than that, it was losing lots of games on the field. It developed a loser's sheen. Last year, there was a Rutgers bball game with 30 fans in the stands. I'm not exaggerating.

(12-16-2014 02:43 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:37 PM)SublimeKnight Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:20 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I don't think they devote 50% of their fungible budget to marketing, no.

There's $200m for the teaching of classes and the running of the administration. A $20m cut of that is really going to hurt you--and your reputation, I might add. Since you're not going to be able to hire anything but part-timers to teach.

Besides, UCF is competing for instate dollars at public institutions against UF, USF, Florida St, FGCU, etc. The question becomes, can it raise its profile enough to attract the students electing to go to UF or FSU? And how does it do nit? Improved academics? Football?

This isn't a classic case of marketing nationally to brand yourself. Big state institutions don't do that. They serve an instate constituency.

Students elect to go to San Diego over UCLA for a variety of reasons. In California, both are considered essentially equal, whereas nationally, UCLA has a bigger profile because of sports.

Right now, UCF is already the most applied to university in FL.
When you look at why someone would apply at FSU (2nd most applied to in FL) over UCF: Older, better perceived academics in some major, location, etc... Athletics is really the only thing that money can buy to help improve.

Let's be honest. If UCF hired away the best professors from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard they'd still be rated around where they are today academically. The name of the game in the higher education industry is image. You can only improve image with marketing and athletics is the best marketing tool in the industry.

No. That's not how you do it. Boston U. is the fastest riser out there, from 70s to the cusp of top 30s and AAU. And no football.

There are ways to game the USNWR measures. The biggest weight falls on reputation, and the people doing the reputation surveys are academics. This is why many schools that have slashed programs have dropped a lot in the rankings. It's also why many schools that have invested like Boston U. have shot up in the rankings.

31 schools in the top 50 does not have D1 football, and many of those schools, like BU, are new to the top 50. Lots of fast risers in there.

If you're talking about real measures like the National Foundations and the Carnegie, those are intensive, and you simply cannot game them easily. Those are boots and heels on campus.

BU and Northeastern took huge gambles and invested heavily on infrastructure. They also enjoyed the surging popularity of the city....but most of all they gamed the US News system. Again, you can quote those schools just as much as you can quote schools that used great sports to rise up and/or maintain their status. BU really was a sleeping giant because of their size and location, one could argue that they screwed up for years. Time will tell whether they can keep it up and their hockey program is probably the most supported in the nation despite a recent downturn. Believe the players are treated like gods on campus, I know many of them.

The fact is that athletics are so important to brand.

The New York Times? They hate football. They have an agenda and an axe to grind. I won't get into politics here, but $crew The New York Times and their agenda.

(12-16-2014 02:50 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I said that for some schools, losing big $$ on academics makes sense. I said this at the outset.

But this idea that it's always good for branding has been shot down in studies. Andrew Zimbalist wrote a book that went through several case studies showing that athletics helped academics. BC was one of his examples (by the way, BCs move to the ACC didn't give them additional cache, since BCs bread and butter has always been northeast Catholics and still is, BC grabs kids that are choosing between BC and ND). But he went into many examples in which athletics had not only negatively branded the school, but contributed to the demise of academics. As Rutgers was losing $35 million a year, it was cutting departments left and right, and worse than that, it was losing lots of games on the field. It developed a loser's sheen. Last year, there was a Rutgers bball game with 30 fans in the stands. I'm not exaggerating.

Right, crap athletics are bad for brand, I went to Tulane. You either invest, get out or focus (Nova type). As for Rutgers, I'd say it paid off big time. They have $40mm a year coming in for the foreseeable future and very desirable schedules, huge risk huge reward.

(12-16-2014 11:05 AM)upstater1 Wrote:  I disagree with many college sports fans on this. A loss of $20m a year is a huge sum of money. For any university. And I think the UAB's calculations are not misleading in the least. In fact, I think administrators and athletics people hide their true losses for a reason. They don't want parents to know about it.

Lots of schools have dropped football in 1-AA and lived to tell the tale. Boston U. dropped it 15 years ago, and they just joined the AAU with test scores skyrocketing. A lot of the Cals don't have it and they are doing just fine without it (i.e. San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine, etc.)

I agree with many of you that football is great for some schools, and adds to academics. For instance, BC, ND, Boise St., and several others. But the sports economist did a study that showed for losing schools (someone has to lose) there is actually a sheen of failure that comes with sports. Take Rutgers for instance. They have dropped 25 spots in the USNWR academic rankings over the last several years, and surveys into the thinking of high school students have shown that Rutgers is associated with losing. It's actually an excellent academic school, but as much as sports colors our perceptions of universities, it can damage them too.

Lastly, I'll say that when college sports people are interviewed, they will defend sports until their dying breath because their jobs are on the line. I've seen excellent internal suggestions made by academics and administrators who have a positive view of college sports rejected by ADs because they don't want to have a drop in support for a sport on their resume. In one example, a school was willing to take a loss on ice hockey (which would have brought together the campus community) but could no longer abide by $25m losses for football. The AD was adamantly against the perfectly sensible plan.

Schools should be willing to lose some money on sports, but the kinds of money being lost now at many schools is absolutely untenable in an era of huge budget cuts to higher education.

A couple of things need to be clarified:

(1) Don't let the art of accounting fool you (i.e. those alarmist articles that all but a handful of football programs lose money). FBS football and Division I basketball both make money in general even at the non-power conference level. Whether those profits are shifted to the university at-large (meaning that the athletic department income statement shows $0 profit or a loss) or used for other non-revenue sports is a different matter.

(2) If we want to talk about profitability in education, then schools should only be providing degrees in business, engineering and law (and maybe medicine as long as they have a very profitable medical center in connection to it). Professors in liberal arts better be careful for what they wish for if they're using P&L justifications to support their personal biases against the athletic department because the sociology department isn't going to look so hot on a revenue/expense basis compared to computer engineering.

(12-16-2014 02:43 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  If you're talking about real measures like the National Foundations and the Carnegie, those are intensive, and you simply cannot game them easily. Those are boots and heels on campus.

In the context of this article, what's funny is that Carnegie's classification for doctoral universities as "high" or "very high" in terms of the amount of research ranks UAB (with its med school) and UAH (Huntsville with its rocket engineering tech research) in the very high category while UA-Tuscaloosa is only in the "high" category. Lol.

Just for fun, I did the AAC schools.

UConn, Cincy, USF, UCF, Tulane, and Houston are ranked very high.

Temple, Memphis, and SMU are ranked high.

Tulsa and ECU aren't ranked for graduate activity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_res...ctivity.22

(12-16-2014 02:54 PM)wavefan12 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 02:43 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:37 PM)SublimeKnight Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:20 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I don't think they devote 50% of their fungible budget to marketing, no.

There's $200m for the teaching of classes and the running of the administration. A $20m cut of that is really going to hurt you--and your reputation, I might add. Since you're not going to be able to hire anything but part-timers to teach.

Besides, UCF is competing for instate dollars at public institutions against UF, USF, Florida St, FGCU, etc. The question becomes, can it raise its profile enough to attract the students electing to go to UF or FSU? And how does it do nit? Improved academics? Football?

This isn't a classic case of marketing nationally to brand yourself. Big state institutions don't do that. They serve an instate constituency.

Students elect to go to San Diego over UCLA for a variety of reasons. In California, both are considered essentially equal, whereas nationally, UCLA has a bigger profile because of sports.

Right now, UCF is already the most applied to university in FL.
When you look at why someone would apply at FSU (2nd most applied to in FL) over UCF: Older, better perceived academics in some major, location, etc... Athletics is really the only thing that money can buy to help improve.

Let's be honest. If UCF hired away the best professors from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard they'd still be rated around where they are today academically. The name of the game in the higher education industry is image. You can only improve image with marketing and athletics is the best marketing tool in the industry.

No. That's not how you do it. Boston U. is the fastest riser out there, from 70s to the cusp of top 30s and AAU. And no football.

There are ways to game the USNWR measures. The biggest weight falls on reputation, and the people doing the reputation surveys are academics. This is why many schools that have slashed programs have dropped a lot in the rankings. It's also why many schools that have invested like Boston U. have shot up in the rankings.

31 schools in the top 50 does not have D1 football, and many of those schools, like BU, are new to the top 50. Lots of fast risers in there.

If you're talking about real measures like the National Foundations and the Carnegie, those are intensive, and you simply cannot game them easily. Those are boots and heels on campus.

BU and Northeastern took huge gambles and invested heavily on infrastructure. They also enjoyed the surging popularity of the city....but most of all they gamed the US News system. Again, you can quote those schools just as much as you can quote schools that used great sports to rise up and/or maintain their status. BU really was a sleeping giant because of their size and location, one could argue that they screwed up for years. Time will tell whether they can keep it up and their hockey program is probably the most supported in the nation despite a recent downturn. Believe the players are treated like gods on campus, I know many of them.

The fact is that athletics are so important to brand.

The USNWR system, whose metrics penalize urban commuter schools, had Louisville listed as tier 4 along with Memphis back in 2005 when UL left for the BE. The next year UL was listed as tier 3 which was credited to the perception involved in its change in athletic conferences. True or not, I have no idea.

(12-16-2014 03:43 PM)cotton1991 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 02:54 PM)wavefan12 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 02:43 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:37 PM)SublimeKnight Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:20 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I don't think they devote 50% of their fungible budget to marketing, no.

There's $200m for the teaching of classes and the running of the administration. A $20m cut of that is really going to hurt you--and your reputation, I might add. Since you're not going to be able to hire anything but part-timers to teach.

Besides, UCF is competing for instate dollars at public institutions against UF, USF, Florida St, FGCU, etc. The question becomes, can it raise its profile enough to attract the students electing to go to UF or FSU? And how does it do nit? Improved academics? Football?

This isn't a classic case of marketing nationally to brand yourself. Big state institutions don't do that. They serve an instate constituency.

Students elect to go to San Diego over UCLA for a variety of reasons. In California, both are considered essentially equal, whereas nationally, UCLA has a bigger profile because of sports.

Right now, UCF is already the most applied to university in FL.
When you look at why someone would apply at FSU (2nd most applied to in FL) over UCF: Older, better perceived academics in some major, location, etc... Athletics is really the only thing that money can buy to help improve.

Let's be honest. If UCF hired away the best professors from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard they'd still be rated around where they are today academically. The name of the game in the higher education industry is image. You can only improve image with marketing and athletics is the best marketing tool in the industry.

No. That's not how you do it. Boston U. is the fastest riser out there, from 70s to the cusp of top 30s and AAU. And no football.

There are ways to game the USNWR measures. The biggest weight falls on reputation, and the people doing the reputation surveys are academics. This is why many schools that have slashed programs have dropped a lot in the rankings. It's also why many schools that have invested like Boston U. have shot up in the rankings.

31 schools in the top 50 does not have D1 football, and many of those schools, like BU, are new to the top 50. Lots of fast risers in there.

If you're talking about real measures like the National Foundations and the Carnegie, those are intensive, and you simply cannot game them easily. Those are boots and heels on campus.

BU and Northeastern took huge gambles and invested heavily on infrastructure. They also enjoyed the surging popularity of the city....but most of all they gamed the US News system. Again, you can quote those schools just as much as you can quote schools that used great sports to rise up and/or maintain their status. BU really was a sleeping giant because of their size and location, one could argue that they screwed up for years. Time will tell whether they can keep it up and their hockey program is probably the most supported in the nation despite a recent downturn. Believe the players are treated like gods on campus, I know many of them.

The fact is that athletics are so important to brand.

The USNWR system, whose metrics penalize urban commuter schools, had Louisville listed as tier 4 along with Memphis back in 2005 when UL left for the BE. The next year UL was listed as tier 3 which was credited to the perception involved in its change in athletic conferences. True or not, I have no idea.

They don't have those tier's anymore, but I digress. I am sure the peer rating went up, that's really the only way to make a 1 year jump. You watch UL will go up. More recognizable brand, more athletic revenue and a greater pool of students.

The only reason that I went to college was for the football games. Ended up with 3 degrees.

(12-16-2014 02:54 PM)wavefan12 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 02:43 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:37 PM)SublimeKnight Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:20 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I don't think they devote 50% of their fungible budget to marketing, no.

There's $200m for the teaching of classes and the running of the administration. A $20m cut of that is really going to hurt you--and your reputation, I might add. Since you're not going to be able to hire anything but part-timers to teach.

Besides, UCF is competing for instate dollars at public institutions against UF, USF, Florida St, FGCU, etc. The question becomes, can it raise its profile enough to attract the students electing to go to UF or FSU? And how does it do nit? Improved academics? Football?

This isn't a classic case of marketing nationally to brand yourself. Big state institutions don't do that. They serve an instate constituency.

Students elect to go to San Diego over UCLA for a variety of reasons. In California, both are considered essentially equal, whereas nationally, UCLA has a bigger profile because of sports.

Right now, UCF is already the most applied to university in FL.
When you look at why someone would apply at FSU (2nd most applied to in FL) over UCF: Older, better perceived academics in some major, location, etc... Athletics is really the only thing that money can buy to help improve.

Let's be honest. If UCF hired away the best professors from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard they'd still be rated around where they are today academically. The name of the game in the higher education industry is image. You can only improve image with marketing and athletics is the best marketing tool in the industry.

No. That's not how you do it. Boston U. is the fastest riser out there, from 70s to the cusp of top 30s and AAU. And no football.

There are ways to game the USNWR measures. The biggest weight falls on reputation, and the people doing the reputation surveys are academics. This is why many schools that have slashed programs have dropped a lot in the rankings. It's also why many schools that have invested like Boston U. have shot up in the rankings.

31 schools in the top 50 does not have D1 football, and many of those schools, like BU, are new to the top 50. Lots of fast risers in there.

If you're talking about real measures like the National Foundations and the Carnegie, those are intensive, and you simply cannot game them easily. Those are boots and heels on campus.

BU and Northeastern took huge gambles and invested heavily on infrastructure. They also enjoyed the surging popularity of the city....but most of all they gamed the US News system. Again, you can quote those schools just as much as you can quote schools that used great sports to rise up and/or maintain their status. BU really was a sleeping giant because of their size and location, one could argue that they screwed up for years. Time will tell whether they can keep it up and their hockey program is probably the most supported in the nation despite a recent downturn. Believe the players are treated like gods on campus, I know many of them.

The fact is that athletics are so important to brand.

I went to BU. They weren't screwing things up at all. West Campus was built in the 80s. In the late 60s and 70s, it was a commuter school. Northeastern is another story because it really hasn't ramped up research. I'm talking about real hard-earned metrics like the AAU and Carnegie. BU went from $25m in research to the $300-400m level. That's mainly why the school skyrocketed.

As for hockey, it's a nice niche sport. I wouldn't say many of BU's 20k come to campus to see that. They average 4k fans, only half of which are students. Doesn't really move the needle.
\
But, look at the 31 schools I mentioned. A lot of them rose into that. Think of the Cal schools. 3 of the SUNYs.

BC rose with sports. But Syracuse has dropped in the rankings a lot. They are now behind UConn.

In short, I really dont think schools like BU have gamed the USNWR system. What they did was invest, and you see it in their research budget.

(12-16-2014 12:10 PM)FuzzyHasek Wrote:  How many Universities can a normal person name that don't play D1 athletics?

79% of the AAU is in D1

You can still be "D1" and play football in the FCS.

(12-16-2014 05:11 PM)BearcatJerry Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 12:10 PM)FuzzyHasek Wrote:  How many Universities can a normal person name that don't play D1 athletics?

79% of the AAU is in D1

You can still be "D1" and play football in the FCS.

no ****... thats why i said D1 not FBS

(12-16-2014 03:31 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 11:05 AM)upstater1 Wrote:  I disagree with many college sports fans on this. A loss of $20m a year is a huge sum of money. For any university. And I think the UAB's calculations are not misleading in the least. In fact, I think administrators and athletics people hide their true losses for a reason. They don't want parents to know about it.

Lots of schools have dropped football in 1-AA and lived to tell the tale. Boston U. dropped it 15 years ago, and they just joined the AAU with test scores skyrocketing. A lot of the Cals don't have it and they are doing just fine without it (i.e. San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine, etc.)

I agree with many of you that football is great for some schools, and adds to academics. For instance, BC, ND, Boise St., and several others. But the sports economist did a study that showed for losing schools (someone has to lose) there is actually a sheen of failure that comes with sports. Take Rutgers for instance. They have dropped 25 spots in the USNWR academic rankings over the last several years, and surveys into the thinking of high school students have shown that Rutgers is associated with losing. It's actually an excellent academic school, but as much as sports colors our perceptions of universities, it can damage them too.

Lastly, I'll say that when college sports people are interviewed, they will defend sports until their dying breath because their jobs are on the line. I've seen excellent internal suggestions made by academics and administrators who have a positive view of college sports rejected by ADs because they don't want to have a drop in support for a sport on their resume. In one example, a school was willing to take a loss on ice hockey (which would have brought together the campus community) but could no longer abide by $25m losses for football. The AD was adamantly against the perfectly sensible plan.

Schools should be willing to lose some money on sports, but the kinds of money being lost now at many schools is absolutely untenable in an era of huge budget cuts to higher education.

A couple of things need to be clarified:

(1) Don't let the art of accounting fool you (i.e. those alarmist articles that all but a handful of football programs lose money). FBS football and Division I basketball both make money in general even at the non-power conference level. Whether those profits are shifted to the university at-large (meaning that the athletic department income statement shows $0 profit or a loss) or used for other non-revenue sports is a different matter.

(2) If we want to talk about profitability in education, then schools should only be providing degrees in business, engineering and law (and maybe medicine as long as they have a very profitable medical center in connection to it). Professors in liberal arts better be careful for what they wish for if they're using P&L justifications to support their personal biases against the athletic department because the sociology department isn't going to look so hot on a revenue/expense basis compared to computer engineering.

1. I never understand this argument. Title 9 is federal law. A lot of the profits must be shifted to non-profit sports. There's no way around it. It still doesn't erase the losses. Plus, it's football that costs an arm and a leg. It's the costliest sport. Not to mention that things like stadiums and facilities are bonded by the school, and they never show up on the ADs expense report.

2. You're absolutely wrong about the liberal arts and research-intensive disciplines. You've got it reversed. Unless schools start charging more for engineering degrees, then they are considered net losers for schools, always running in the red. The profit is typically made in the Humanities where you just need a classroom and faculty.

There have been many studies on this: At U. Illinois, they showed that the student fees of students majoring in English exceeded the expenses of the department by tens of millions, while engineering was running a loss.

UCLA erected the RCM, Responsibility Centered Management, and found that huge profits were being made in the Humanities.

Do you know about the Delta Project? It's a national commission tasked with keeping costs down at universities. Here's what the chairman had to say: "Cutting humanities is penny-wise and pound-foolish. ... Cutting budgets further in the courses that are already the lowest cost is nutty."

If you want a real-world example of this, look at Rick Scott's program in Florida. It was untenable. When the state system studied costs, it found that the driving students away from low cost majors and into high cost majors would crater the state's Higher Ed. budget, esp. at a time when they were cutting $300m from it.

Here's an article about the inverse problem at U. Wisconsin: http://dailyuw.com/archive/2013/01/15/op...JCxjdLF-HM

Schools like U. Toronto already have differential tuition, but the sciences cost more.

(12-16-2014 03:43 PM)cotton1991 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 02:54 PM)wavefan12 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 02:43 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:37 PM)SublimeKnight Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:20 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I don't think they devote 50% of their fungible budget to marketing, no.

There's $200m for the teaching of classes and the running of the administration. A $20m cut of that is really going to hurt you--and your reputation, I might add. Since you're not going to be able to hire anything but part-timers to teach.

Besides, UCF is competing for instate dollars at public institutions against UF, USF, Florida St, FGCU, etc. The question becomes, can it raise its profile enough to attract the students electing to go to UF or FSU? And how does it do nit? Improved academics? Football?

This isn't a classic case of marketing nationally to brand yourself. Big state institutions don't do that. They serve an instate constituency.

Students elect to go to San Diego over UCLA for a variety of reasons. In California, both are considered essentially equal, whereas nationally, UCLA has a bigger profile because of sports.

Right now, UCF is already the most applied to university in FL.
When you look at why someone would apply at FSU (2nd most applied to in FL) over UCF: Older, better perceived academics in some major, location, etc... Athletics is really the only thing that money can buy to help improve.

Let's be honest. If UCF hired away the best professors from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard they'd still be rated around where they are today academically. The name of the game in the higher education industry is image. You can only improve image with marketing and athletics is the best marketing tool in the industry.

No. That's not how you do it. Boston U. is the fastest riser out there, from 70s to the cusp of top 30s and AAU. And no football.

There are ways to game the USNWR measures. The biggest weight falls on reputation, and the people doing the reputation surveys are academics. This is why many schools that have slashed programs have dropped a lot in the rankings. It's also why many schools that have invested like Boston U. have shot up in the rankings.

31 schools in the top 50 does not have D1 football, and many of those schools, like BU, are new to the top 50. Lots of fast risers in there.

If you're talking about real measures like the National Foundations and the Carnegie, those are intensive, and you simply cannot game them easily. Those are boots and heels on campus.

BU and Northeastern took huge gambles and invested heavily on infrastructure. They also enjoyed the surging popularity of the city....but most of all they gamed the US News system. Again, you can quote those schools just as much as you can quote schools that used great sports to rise up and/or maintain their status. BU really was a sleeping giant because of their size and location, one could argue that they screwed up for years. Time will tell whether they can keep it up and their hockey program is probably the most supported in the nation despite a recent downturn. Believe the players are treated like gods on campus, I know many of them.

The fact is that athletics are so important to brand.

The USNWR system, whose metrics penalize urban commuter schools, had Louisville listed as tier 4 along with Memphis back in 2005 when UL left for the BE. The next year UL was listed as tier 3 which was credited to the perception involved in its change in athletic conferences. True or not, I have no idea.

The reason for the tiering fiasco was because USNWR tried to crib from Carnegie's tiers, and when USNWR received a letter from Carnegie stating that it totally misunderstood tiering, USNWR did away with it. The tiers were based on type of institution, not quality.

UConn is one of the schools where academic success has come from athletic success. If Jim Calhoun had never been hired, UConn would be just like the University of Vermont ... a good school that's much less known.

US News: UConn is #58, Vermont is #85.

(12-16-2014 11:05 AM)upstater1 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 10:54 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 10:26 AM)ballhog Wrote:  Many times, the anti-football "academics", who say too much is spent on athletics, don't take into account the non-monetary benefits of athletics such as increased enrollment, good will, higer caliber of students, community outreach...
Although, I'm not so sure this was the case with UAB football.

^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^

Athletics functions as the public face of the university and it's primary advertising/marketing department. How many marketing departments make money? The fact that the schools have a marketing model that generates literally hundreds of hours of mini infomercials (that are watched by millions on national tv), hundreds of press articles, and thousands of mentions on radios and water coolers ------AND are actually able to recover much of the costs via ticket, media agreements, and other forms of revenue is actually pretty impressive.

I disagree with many college sports fans on this. A loss of $20m a year is a huge sum of money. For any university. And I think the UAB's calculations are not misleading in the least. In fact, I think administrators and athletics people hide their true losses for a reason. They don't want parents to know about it.

Lots of schools have dropped football in 1-AA and lived to tell the tale. Boston U. dropped it 15 years ago, and they just joined the AAU with test scores skyrocketing. A lot of the Cals don't have it and they are doing just fine without it (i.e. San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine, etc.)

I agree with many of you that football is great for some schools, and adds to academics. For instance, BC, ND, Boise St., and several others. But the sports economist did a study that showed for losing schools (someone has to lose) there is actually a sheen of failure that comes with sports. Take Rutgers for instance. They have dropped 25 spots in the USNWR academic rankings over the last several years, and surveys into the thinking of high school students have shown that Rutgers is associated with losing. It's actually an excellent academic school, but as much as sports colors our perceptions of universities, it can damage them too.

Lastly, I'll say that when college sports people are interviewed, they will defend sports until their dying breath because their jobs are on the line. I've seen excellent internal suggestions made by academics and administrators who have a positive view of college sports rejected by ADs because they don't want to have a drop in support for a sport on their resume. In one example, a school was willing to take a loss on ice hockey (which would have brought together the campus community) but could no longer abide by $25m losses for football. The AD was adamantly against the perfectly sensible plan.

Schools should be willing to lose some money on sports, but the kinds of money being lost now at many schools is absolutely untenable in an era of huge budget cuts to higher education.

This is interesting and lots to agree with but it can go either way. Say Rutgers starts winning at a high level. 3 straight Final Fours, a national championship and a run of top ten finishes. Suddenly, they start dominating the New York media and probably tap into the Philadelphia media some as well, let alone the national impact and perception.

Look what basketball has done for Gonzaga, who otherwise was basically only known as the alma mater of John Stockton. They have now made that a footnote in their history. And how many of these Cinderellas have made a name for themselves by winning just one game, let alone a Sweet 16 or Final Four run?

It swings both ways, like a--uh, anyways, the argument can go either way because unless you're a rare school that can pull off being world renown without well known sports, the publicity alone is almost always worth it. As for Rutgers falling 25 spots, these things happen and schools are gonna move up and down these often times meaningless rankings with time.

(12-16-2014 01:43 PM)wavefan12 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:22 PM)dezagcoog Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:15 PM)chess Wrote:  I am a graduate of George Mason University and I hope Mason never adds Division 1 football.

The University of Chicago made the correct move to drop out of Big Ten athletics.

-And I love college football.

Amen!

Every situation isn't the same and obviously Mason is starting too far behind and will be in a UAB position behind others in the state. The point I am making is the value of athletics to a schools brand, it's huge.

Mason probably missed a golden opportunity to add football because memory of their Final Four run has faded. Otherwise, they could have added football and joined C-USA. That said, the A-10 is a great home for them in the status quo.

More schools do not need to drop down in football. More schools should drop down, however.