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The attached is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the Ten Billion losses on college sports. The principal school in the article is Georgia State but UAB and Houston make cameos.

It clearly shows that UAB is not alone in running 20 million deficit. The only major difference is that most of the other schools deficits (according to this article) are from student fees while ours is only a third or so. IMHO the reason is the relatively smaller undergraduate student body than most div 1 football

http://www.chronicle.com/interactives/nc...ils_220862

It's all a lie - a trick of the books by schools to "show a loss" so they can justify charging more. Athletics at UAB is not a loss, or at least not much of one. UAB shows the cost of a student-athlete scholarship as being the full price of attending. However, it only costs the university a fraction of that cost. So, they will show an in-state football player's scholarship as costing $14,000 per year (I don't know if that number is accurate, but let's go with it). They will show an out-of-stater as much more of an "expense". But the actual cost of having those students is about $4,000 per year.

They will tell us football scholarships cost over $2 million per year, BUT
$4,000 X 85 = $340,000, which is the actual cost.

Football will have about 30 walk-ons each year, most of which would not attend UAB if they didn't have a team. So, they will pay full price (let's say they are all in-staters):

$14,000 X 30 = $420,000, which is money generated by walk-ons. You'll notice that is more than the cost of the 85 scholarships. Football has already made money! Now, TV money, ticket sales, and bye games will have to cover salaries, travel, and gear. And maybe it doesn't, but it isn't a huge deficit.

As for other sports, let's look at men's soccer. They give 9.9 scholarships.

$4,000 X 9,9 = $39,600

There are 29 players on the roster, almost all of which would not be at UAB if there were no program.

29-9.9 = 19.1

19.1 X $14,000 = $267,400

So, mens soccer is making money on scholarships!!

Repeat this for any sport.

(10-19-2016 11:27 AM)the Dragon Wrote:  It's all a lie - a trick of the books by schools to "show a loss" so they can justify charging more. Athletics at UAB is not a loss, or at least not much of one. UAB shows the cost of of a student-athlete scholarship as being the full price of attending. However, it only costs the university a fraction of that cost. So, they will show an in-state football player's scholarship as costing $14,000 per year (I don't know if that number is accurate, but let's go with it). They will show an out-of-stater as much more of an "expense". But the actual cost of having those students is about $4,000 per year.

They will tell us football scholarships cost over $2 million per year, BUT
$4,000 X 85 = $340,000, which is the actual cost.

Football will have about 30 walk-ons each year, most of which would not attend UAB if they didn't have a team. So, they will pay full price (let's say they are all in-staters):

$14,000 X 30 = $420,000, which is money generated by walk-ons. You'll notice that is more than the cost of the 85 scholarships. Football has already made money! Now, TV money, ticket sales, and bye games will have to cover salaries, travel, and gear. And maybe it doesn't, but it isn't a huge deficit.

As for other sports, let's look at men's soccer. They give 9.9 scholarships.

$4,000 X 9,9 = $39,600

There are 29 players on the roster, almost all of which would not be at UAB if there were no program.

29-9.9 = 19.1

19.1 X $14,000 = $267,400

So, mens soccer is making money on scholarships!!

Repeat this for any sport.

A-freakin-men, Dragon.

(10-19-2016 11:27 AM)the Dragon Wrote:  It's all a lie - a trick of the books by schools to "show a loss" so they can justify charging more. Athletics at UAB is not a loss, or at least not much of one. UAB shows the cost of a student-athlete scholarship as being the full price of attending. However, it only costs the university a fraction of that cost. So, they will show an in-state football player's scholarship as costing $14,000 per year (I don't know if that number is accurate, but let's go with it). They will show an out-of-stater as much more of an "expense". But the actual cost of having those students is about $4,000 per year.

They will tell us football scholarships cost over $2 million per year, BUT
$4,000 X 85 = $340,000, which is the actual cost.

Football will have about 30 walk-ons each year, most of which would not attend UAB if they didn't have a team. So, they will pay full price (let's say they are all in-staters):

$14,000 X 30 = $420,000, which is money generated by walk-ons. You'll notice that is more than the cost of the 85 scholarships. Football has already made money! Now, TV money, ticket sales, and bye games will have to cover salaries, travel, and gear. And maybe it doesn't, but it isn't a huge deficit.

As for other sports, let's look at men's soccer. They give 9.9 scholarships.

$4,000 X 9,9 = $39,600

There are 29 players on the roster, almost all of which would not be at UAB if there were no program.

29-9.9 = 19.1

19.1 X $14,000 = $267,400

So, mens soccer is making money on scholarships!!

Repeat this for any sport.

BINGO!

Andy Schwartz did a good analysis of that effect regarding UAB Bowling.

As for the Chronicle piece, it's agenda-driven and should have been far more tightly edited. It sets up Georgia State as exploiting a needy student body dependent on Pell Grants (thereby plucking the taxpayer string), repeatedly citing the increases in fee revenue, but only deep in the piece admits that:

While athletic fees have gone up during Mr. Becker’s tenure, the overall fee burden for the typical student has not increased. That is partly because the university has retired some other charges that students formerly paid. However, because of a sharp increase in enrollment, overall fee revenue has continued to climb.

So. Georgia State has used football as part of an overall strategy to grow enrollment, grow research, and revitalize a decayed part of Atlanta. Students who would never have gone to college before are now receiving a university education.

Sounds like Mark Becker - sneered at in the piece as "an adrenaline junkie" - is, unlike our own pumpkin-headed failure, doing his damned job.

(10-19-2016 11:27 AM)the Dragon Wrote:  It's all a lie - a trick of the books by schools to "show a loss" so they can justify charging more. Athletics at UAB is not a loss, or at least not much of one. UAB shows the cost of a student-athlete scholarship as being the full price of attending. However, it only costs the university a fraction of that cost. So, they will show an in-state football player's scholarship as costing $14,000 per year (I don't know if that number is accurate, but let's go with it). They will show an out-of-stater as much more of an "expense". But the actual cost of having those students is about $4,000 per year.

They will tell us football scholarships cost over $2 million per year, BUT
$4,000 X 85 = $340,000, which is the actual cost.

Football will have about 30 walk-ons each year, most of which would not attend UAB if they didn't have a team. So, they will pay full price (let's say they are all in-staters):

$14,000 X 30 = $420,000, which is money generated by walk-ons. You'll notice that is more than the cost of the 85 scholarships. Football has already made money! Now, TV money, ticket sales, and bye games will have to cover salaries, travel, and gear. And maybe it doesn't, but it isn't a huge deficit.

As for other sports, let's look at men's soccer. They give 9.9 scholarships.

$4,000 X 9,9 = $39,600

There are 29 players on the roster, almost all of which would not be at UAB if there were no program.

29-9.9 = 19.1

19.1 X $14,000 = $267,400

So, mens soccer is making money on scholarships!!

Repeat this for any sport.

Right on. Bad finances is a false narrative.

Add to this scenario the seeming fact that no university budget - athletic or academic - has been subjected to any independent, outside (as in objective) audit of their spending patterns. It is whatever they say it is without any challenge of their figures.

& even if we lost our ass we would lose more without athletics (as proven by the Campaign For UAB fund collecting slowdown & subsequent restoring of UAB football by Watts)

Guys this comparison is using GASB, FASB and federal circular standards is about the entire athletic budget not just football. So at least the comparison between the schools is clearly valid. This methodology must be used for reporting to the financial community, the State government NCAA and the federal government etc. But clearly you can chose to just use this to see well UAB stands in comparison to its peers

Now I understand why non-accountants prefer to use the incremental opportunity lost costs methodology (essentially one more athlete does not cost the University anything - thus the tuition part of scholarships should be counted as a zero cost). Your methodology calculated that only 30 percent(4/14) of scholarship cost should count. However even using this methodology UABs overall deficit would still be 24 million. The 30 million deficit minus 70 % of say 8 million scholarships. Further at UAB the student books (true everywhere), the food and the new dorms are true cash outlays to third party vendors not incremental costs to us. At UAB should be minus 40 percent not 70 percent.

This methodology was used by economists to calculate the incremental cost of football and worked well. But will be recognized for no other official purposes but does make us all feel much better.

(10-19-2016 03:22 PM)uabbean Wrote:  Guys this comparison is using GASB, FASB and federal circular standards is about the entire athletic budget not just football. So at least the comparison between the schools is clearly valid. This methodology must be used for reporting to the financial community, the State government NCAA and the federal government etc. But clearly you can chose to just use this to see well UAB stands in comparison to its peers

Now I understand why non-accountants prefer to use the incremental opportunity lost costs methodology (essentially one more athlete does not cost the University anything - thus the tuition part of scholarships should be counted as a zero cost). Your methodology calculated that only 30 percent(4/14) of scholarship cost should count. However even using this methodology UABs overall deficit would still be 24 million. The 30 million deficit minus 70 % of say 8 million scholarships. Further at UAB the student books (true everywhere), the food and the new dorms are true cash outlays to third party vendors not incremental costs to us. At UAB should be minus 40 percent not 70 percent.

This methodology was used by economists to calculate the incremental cost of football and worked well. But will be recognized for no other official purposes but does make us all feel much better.

I am a CPA, but the cost methodology used by Universities to show athletics as a loss is garbage, regardless of the GASB and FASB standards. The regulatory reporting standards and cost methodologies are broken.

(10-19-2016 03:22 PM)uabbean Wrote:  Guys this comparison is using GASB, FASB and federal circular standards is about the entire athletic budget not just football. So at least the comparison between the schools is clearly valid. This methodology must be used for reporting to the financial community, the State government NCAA and the federal government etc. But clearly you can chose to just use this to see well UAB stands in comparison to its peers

Now I understand why non-accountants prefer to use the incremental opportunity lost costs methodology (essentially one more athlete does not cost the University anything - thus the tuition part of scholarships should be counted as a zero cost). Your methodology calculated that only 30 percent(4/14) of scholarship cost should count. However even using this methodology UABs overall deficit would still be 24 million. The 30 million deficit minus 70 % of say 8 million scholarships. Further at UAB the student books (true everywhere), the food and the new dorms are true cash outlays to third party vendors not incremental costs to us. At UAB should be minus 40 percent not 70 percent.

This methodology was used by economists to calculate the incremental cost of football and worked well. But will be recognized for no other official purposes but does make us all feel much better.

There is a difference between accounting and business. It's been clearly shown using this accounting method was horrible for the business of UAB. It was the basis for a decision that would have made the loss in athletics look like couch change. When you consider the contraction in student enrollment, millions in donations that would have walked not to mention the loss of community goodwill it was/is a disaster that has been significantly mitigated.

The old accounting saying you keep 3 sets of books - one for the IRS, one for the shareholders & the true sets of books. No one but the Pres & CEO see the true books.

(10-19-2016 10:24 AM)uabbean Wrote:  The attached is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the Ten Billion losses on college sports. The principal school in the article is Georgia State but UAB and Houston make cameos.

It clearly shows that UAB is not alone in running 20 million deficit. The only major difference is that most of the other schools deficits (according to this article) are from student fees while ours is only a third or so. IMHO the reason is the relatively smaller undergraduate student body than most div 1 football

http://www.chronicle.com/interactives/nc...ils_220862

What a load. Old article by the way and very biased.

But I will play along. Assuming we spend $4.2M more than we take in. I guess the assumption is that the university has to write a check to cover the deficit. Well our Fiscal 2017 operating budget for the university will be $980M. Sorry Chronicle, try again.

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(10-19-2016 12:55 PM)58-56 Wrote:  Andy Schwartz did a good analysis of that effect regarding UAB Bowling.

As for the Chronicle piece, it's agenda-driven and should have been far more tightly edited. It sets up Georgia State as exploiting a needy student body dependent on Pell Grants (thereby plucking the taxpayer string), repeatedly citing the increases in fee revenue, but only deep in the piece admits that:

While athletic fees have gone up during Mr. Becker’s tenure, the overall fee burden for the typical student has not increased. That is partly because the university has retired some other charges that students formerly paid. However, because of a sharp increase in enrollment, overall fee revenue has continued to climb.

So. Georgia State has used football as part of an overall strategy to grow enrollment, grow research, and revitalize a decayed part of Atlanta. Students who would never have gone to college before are now receiving a university education.

Sounds like Mark Becker - sneered at in the piece as "an adrenaline junkie" - is, unlike our own pumpkin-headed failure, doing his damned job.

Becker is a academia rock star. The BOR pays him one of the top President salaries in the nation to ensure he retires in Atlanta.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

(10-19-2016 09:00 PM)panama Wrote:  

(10-19-2016 12:55 PM)58-56 Wrote:  Andy Schwartz did a good analysis of that effect regarding UAB Bowling.

As for the Chronicle piece, it's agenda-driven and should have been far more tightly edited. It sets up Georgia State as exploiting a needy student body dependent on Pell Grants (thereby plucking the taxpayer string), repeatedly citing the increases in fee revenue, but only deep in the piece admits that:

While athletic fees have gone up during Mr. Becker’s tenure, the overall fee burden for the typical student has not increased. That is partly because the university has retired some other charges that students formerly paid. However, because of a sharp increase in enrollment, overall fee revenue has continued to climb.

So. Georgia State has used football as part of an overall strategy to grow enrollment, grow research, and revitalize a decayed part of Atlanta. Students who would never have gone to college before are now receiving a university education.

Sounds like Mark Becker - sneered at in the piece as "an adrenaline junkie" - is, unlike our own pumpkin-headed failure, doing his damned job.

Becker is a academia rock star. The BOR pays him one of the top President salaries in the nation to ensure he retires in Atlanta.

And our beloved BOT pays Ray Watts $853,000 a year to insure that Mark Becker continues to look good.

(10-19-2016 03:22 PM)uabbean Wrote:  Guys this comparison is using GASB, FASB and federal circular standards is about the entire athletic budget not just football. So at least the comparison between the schools is clearly valid. This methodology must be used for reporting to the financial community, the State government NCAA and the federal government etc. But clearly you can chose to just use this to see well UAB stands in comparison to its peers

Now I understand why non-accountants prefer to use the incremental opportunity lost costs methodology (essentially one more athlete does not cost the University anything - thus the tuition part of scholarships should be counted as a zero cost). Your methodology calculated that only 30 percent(4/14) of scholarship cost should count. However even using this methodology UABs overall deficit would still be 24 million. The 30 million deficit minus 70 % of say 8 million scholarships. Further at UAB the student books (true everywhere), the food and the new dorms are true cash outlays to third party vendors not incremental costs to us. At UAB should be minus 40 percent not 70 percent.

This methodology was used by economists to calculate the incremental cost of football and worked well. But will be recognized for no other official purposes but does make us all feel much better.

For 2015 the athletic deficit dropped from 15.1 million in school funds down to 14.1 million in school funds. Hope we can decrease it again in 2016/2017.

(10-19-2016 10:09 PM)Shrack Wrote:  

(10-19-2016 03:22 PM)uabbean Wrote:  Guys this comparison is using GASB, FASB and federal circular standards is about the entire athletic budget not just football. So at least the comparison between the schools is clearly valid. This methodology must be used for reporting to the financial community, the State government NCAA and the federal government etc. But clearly you can chose to just use this to see well UAB stands in comparison to its peers

Now I understand why non-accountants prefer to use the incremental opportunity lost costs methodology (essentially one more athlete does not cost the University anything - thus the tuition part of scholarships should be counted as a zero cost). Your methodology calculated that only 30 percent(4/14) of scholarship cost should count. However even using this methodology UABs overall deficit would still be 24 million. The 30 million deficit minus 70 % of say 8 million scholarships. Further at UAB the student books (true everywhere), the food and the new dorms are true cash outlays to third party vendors not incremental costs to us. At UAB should be minus 40 percent not 70 percent.

This methodology was used by economists to calculate the incremental cost of football and worked well. But will be recognized for no other official purposes but does make us all feel much better.

For 2015 the athletic deficit dropped from 15.1 million in school funds down to 14.1 million in school funds. Hope we can decrease it again in 2016/2017.

Well some football revenue will be helpful

(10-19-2016 10:00 PM)58-56 Wrote:  

(10-19-2016 09:00 PM)panama Wrote:  

(10-19-2016 12:55 PM)58-56 Wrote:  Andy Schwartz did a good analysis of that effect regarding UAB Bowling.

As for the Chronicle piece, it's agenda-driven and should have been far more tightly edited. It sets up Georgia State as exploiting a needy student body dependent on Pell Grants (thereby plucking the taxpayer string), repeatedly citing the increases in fee revenue, but only deep in the piece admits that:

While athletic fees have gone up during Mr. Becker’s tenure, the overall fee burden for the typical student has not increased. That is partly because the university has retired some other charges that students formerly paid. However, because of a sharp increase in enrollment, overall fee revenue has continued to climb.

So. Georgia State has used football as part of an overall strategy to grow enrollment, grow research, and revitalize a decayed part of Atlanta. Students who would never have gone to college before are now receiving a university education.

Sounds like Mark Becker - sneered at in the piece as "an adrenaline junkie" - is, unlike our own pumpkin-headed failure, doing his damned job.

Becker is a academia rock star. The BOR pays him one of the top President salaries in the nation to ensure he retires in Atlanta.

And our beloved BOT pays Ray Watts $853,000 a year to insure that Mark Becker continues to look good.

We have been so fortunate to have Carl Patton and then Mark Becker as presidents. If you had told me in 1989 that we would ever start football, buy a MLB ballpark to convert to football and have 53k students I would have laughed hard.

Point is that these articles have agendas. They are anti athletics period. Huckaby is at most MBB games in full GSU gear. Becker attended the 2 year unit of Penn State out of high school before enrolling in Penn State. He WAS one of those students that this article is supposedly protecting. Providing some context might have helped here but oh wait that would destroy the narrative. Nm.

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(10-19-2016 03:48 PM)hooverblazer Wrote:  

(10-19-2016 03:22 PM)uabbean Wrote:  Guys this comparison is using GASB, FASB and federal circular standards is about the entire athletic budget not just football. So at least the comparison between the schools is clearly valid. This methodology must be used for reporting to the financial community, the State government NCAA and the federal government etc. But clearly you can chose to just use this to see well UAB stands in comparison to its peers

Now I understand why non-accountants prefer to use the incremental opportunity lost costs methodology (essentially one more athlete does not cost the University anything - thus the tuition part of scholarships should be counted as a zero cost). Your methodology calculated that only 30 percent(4/14) of scholarship cost should count. However even using this methodology UABs overall deficit would still be 24 million. The 30 million deficit minus 70 % of say 8 million scholarships. Further at UAB the student books (true everywhere), the food and the new dorms are true cash outlays to third party vendors not incremental costs to us. At UAB should be minus 40 percent not 70 percent.

This methodology was used by economists to calculate the incremental cost of football and worked well. But will be recognized for no other official purposes but does make us all feel much better.

I am a CPA, but the cost methodology used by Universities to show athletics as a loss is garbage, regardless of the GASB and FASB standards. The regulatory reporting standards and cost methodologies are broken.

Agree, cooking the books to show a loss. I can make a set of books tell you whatever story you want.

(10-19-2016 03:22 PM)uabbean Wrote:  Guys this comparison is using GASB, FASB and federal circular standards is about the entire athletic budget not just football.

I'm pretty sure that's what we were talking about - the entire athletic budget. If you want to internally charge the athletic department for those full scholarships and make them transfer the funds to another department, and then later have the president of the university transfer millions in a subsidy to cover the "losses" then that is fine. I don't care.

What is a problem is when you project to the world that athletics are costing your university tens of millions of dollars each year. That story is a lie. Charging athletics millions and then signing over millions to cover it is a wash. It is smoke and mirrors.

Then, you conspire with almost every other major university to cook the books the same way to project a similar lie. That is straight out dishonest, and most people believe it!

Athletics is funded by increased enrollment - namely walk-on athletes, band members, cheerleaders and dance team girls, friends of star athletes, and other student fans. These students would not attend these schools if not for certain sports. Their full price education pads the university coffers, and they KNOW it! That's why schools are adding sports, not dropping them!

Example: Jake Ganus signed with UAB out of Chelsea HS. An entourage of his friends followed him there because he was going to be a football star and they were his close friends (and had no specific allegiance to other schools). They paid full price. They alone made up for his scholarship costs, and then some! Jake's presence at UAB made UAB money. How many band members, cheeleaders, and dance team girls pay their own way? Most of them.