(09-27-2016 08:09 PM)White Hall Wrote:  I keep hoping/waiting for Liberty to try to sue its way into FBS as an independent. The requirement of an invite from an FBS conference is likely to be an antitrust violation. And the threat or the actual filing of a lawsuit may be enough for the NCAA to drop this requirement. Of course, I don't actually see this affecting us as there is about a 1% chance of our admin willing to become an FBS independent.

Unless the sun belt suddenly has a change of heart, suing the NCAA is their only realistic avenue to fbs. The question is if Liberty leads that charge, what bridges will be burned along the way. I would think the big south would dismiss all their sports? Who knows.
Then you're likely going to piss off the P5 unless they're completely not paying attention. Good luck scheduling 12 games against teams who see you as rudely forcing your way into their country club without an invitation. Their ties to Falwell also won't help either from a perception standpoint.
If Liberty does this and is successful, I could see a decent amount of Fcs teams follow them in, JMU of course not being one of them unless the entire CAA moves and forces them to.

(09-28-2016 03:39 AM)Longhorn Wrote:  

(09-27-2016 05:50 PM)BleedingPurple Wrote:  

(09-27-2016 06:34 AM)JMU1985 Wrote:  

(09-24-2016 10:40 AM)Curtisc83 Wrote:  

(09-23-2016 09:50 PM)JMU1985 Wrote:  LU has $126m endowment and when I graduated from HS in 1981, Liberty Baptist College was a small start up. What does that say about our current financial model?

If I'm wrong please correct me. On the new US News rankings LU has an endowment of over 1 billion dollars (link below). Is this correct?

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreview...sity-10392

Net Assets are just under $1b. Endowment is $126M

Makes a lot more sense and I would guess a huge chunk of that endowment came from Falwell upon his death. Nevertheless, makes me question why we aren't double where we are.

No doubt JMU should be doing better historically in the area of building its endowment, but I've long thought that the beauty of our campus, coupled to the near constant construction of one new building after another, has left our alums with misleading impression that JMU is rolling in dough.

I'd be curious to know what value JMU places on its infrastructure (i.e. the replacement value of the university's land and buildings). It wouldn't surprise me that it's well over a billion $$.

Huge value I'm sure and one that I couldn't come close to guessing. Regarding your first point, that is an interesting perspective that I hadn't really considered. One I am very sure of is that the majority of our alumni have no idea how little we have compared to similar universities and getting the word out should be a priority at least when their are private conversations not necessarily a broadcast to the general public, but alumni need to know.