(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 09:01 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 08:58 PM)SoCalPanther Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 07:27 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  This is revenue, but what about profit? You gotta spend money to make money.

and if you didn't make any, then you must not have spent any. Lol...

The converse is not necessarily true, of course. The point is that most of these revenues are balanced out -- to the cent -- by expenses in the same books that report the revenues.

The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Yes, I figured it's mostly funny money.

(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 09:01 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 08:58 PM)SoCalPanther Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 07:27 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  This is revenue, but what about profit? You gotta spend money to make money.

and if you didn't make any, then you must not have spent any. Lol...

The converse is not necessarily true, of course. The point is that most of these revenues are balanced out -- to the cent -- by expenses in the same books that report the revenues.

The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

(11-13-2019 02:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 09:01 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 08:58 PM)SoCalPanther Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 07:27 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  This is revenue, but what about profit? You gotta spend money to make money.

and if you didn't make any, then you must not have spent any. Lol...

The converse is not necessarily true, of course. The point is that most of these revenues are balanced out -- to the cent -- by expenses in the same books that report the revenues.

The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

Yes, the notion of a school counting mandatory fees charged to students as "athletic revenue" is absurd. It's equivalent to your example about an owner putting more money in his own business. Not revenue.

(11-13-2019 02:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 09:01 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 08:58 PM)SoCalPanther Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 07:27 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  This is revenue, but what about profit? You gotta spend money to make money.

and if you didn't make any, then you must not have spent any. Lol...

The converse is not necessarily true, of course. The point is that most of these revenues are balanced out -- to the cent -- by expenses in the same books that report the revenues.

The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

You can’t really compare private industry accounting with government and nonprofit accounting. I’m not saying something dubious is going on. The Dept of Education and NCAA both tell the schools to report those receipts as revenues, so they’re revenues. I’m just saying that the DOE numbers, in thier own words, is not meant to be an accounting of the athletic department as noted in the fact that they instruct you to report the same revenues twice. The USA Today figures are better in that aspect but the determination of what is and isn’t included in the athletic department is still pretty wide open.

I don’t know why I’ve always been suspicious on some of those numbers.

The two G5’s with the highest revenues are independent and are comparable to the lower P5’s: BYU and UConn.

Louisiana Tech is doing more with less.

(11-13-2019 02:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 09:01 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 08:58 PM)SoCalPanther Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 07:27 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  This is revenue, but what about profit? You gotta spend money to make money.

and if you didn't make any, then you must not have spent any. Lol...

The converse is not necessarily true, of course. The point is that most of these revenues are balanced out -- to the cent -- by expenses in the same books that report the revenues.

The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

More like the restaurant owners seeing the shortfall put in $12 million more of their money and assessed a uniform fee on employees and decreased the employee discount on food and beverage to raise another $4 million.

(11-13-2019 02:25 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 09:01 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 08:58 PM)SoCalPanther Wrote:  and if you didn't make any, then you must not have spent any. Lol...

The converse is not necessarily true, of course. The point is that most of these revenues are balanced out -- to the cent -- by expenses in the same books that report the revenues.

The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

Yes, the notion of a school counting mandatory fees charged to students as "athletic revenue" is absurd. It's equivalent to your example about an owner putting more money in his own business. Not revenue.

So would tuition and fees be revenue to the schools? If so then why not to the athletic department? What about taxpayer funds paid to public schools? Private research grants? Government grants? It’s almost as if comparing the financial structure of a university and thier ancillary activities to a privately owned restaurant is absurd.

(11-13-2019 02:36 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  I don’t know why I’ve always been suspicious on some of those numbers.

The two G5’s with the highest revenues are independent and are comparable to the lower P5’s: BYU and UConn.

Louisiana Tech is doing more with less.

LT has good reason for keeping their athletic budget and items that could be included in the ad lower due to how that state allows allocation of general funds to athletics. The guy that changes lightbulbs in the chemistry building then goes and changes lightbulbs in the football stadium. Some schools would allocate his salary, LT would rather not. Most basketball arenas are dual purpose, there’s a lot of ways to allocate that which would create a lot of different results. Neither is right or wrong unless there’s state laws that determine reporting requirements. There’s practices that would be egregiously wrong but a lot of room within what is right.

(11-13-2019 02:36 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 09:01 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 08:58 PM)SoCalPanther Wrote:  and if you didn't make any, then you must not have spent any. Lol...

The converse is not necessarily true, of course. The point is that most of these revenues are balanced out -- to the cent -- by expenses in the same books that report the revenues.

The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

You can’t really compare private industry accounting with government and nonprofit accounting. I’m not saying something dubious is going on. The Dept of Education and NCAA both tell the schools to report those receipts as revenues, so they’re revenues. I’m just saying that the DOE numbers, in thier own words, is not meant to be an accounting of the athletic department as noted in the fact that they instruct you to report the same revenues twice. The USA Today figures are better in that aspect but the determination of what is and isn’t included in the athletic department is still pretty wide open.

Not only that, there is a wide spectrum of what is an athletics expense that varies not just state to state but school to school.

Student athletic trainers or student managers who get scholarship assistance to perform those roles might or might not be charged to the athletic budget.

Same goes for cheerleaders and dance team.

Athletics might fund all, part, or none of pep band and marching band. At AState pep band members get X dollars per game the play at, marching band has scholarships but none funded by athletics unless it has happened recently but athletics did pay for new uniforms last time around.

I know of a former Sun Belt member that charged the cost of parking attendants to the campus police budget 10 years because their counsel at the time told me they did (been a decade so may no longer be the case), most others bill it to athletics.

Some schools hire temps to work as concession staff, some pay a flat fee to any group that will staff as a fund-raiser, some just lease concession space to third parties.

School might put the physical plant in charge of maintenance and painting, mowing and maybe post-game clean-up of the venues or athletics pays the physical plant a fee that might be well below market rates or might hire temps to do it.

Arkansas has some tough rules for state finance purposes but nothing like Virginia where my understanding is that nearly anything related to athletics has to be billed to athletics for state accounting purposes. As explained to me if the university foundation pays a funds manager to manage the endowment then athletics is billed on the books for the percentage of the endowment that is athletics money. It's incredibly hard to do apples to apples comparisons of schools. Louisiana and Texas have some hard to understand rules about what accounts can be used to fund athletics, while Arkansas has a dollar amount cap on what can come from the accounts for depositing tuition and the account for depositing state funding but could in theory tap into accounts for student housing, the cafeteria, vending machines and student parking fees unless those are pledged for debt service and other states cap by percentage. Some states or higher ed boards require student fees for any athletic or athletic related service be subject to a student vote others the board can impose.

I gave up trying to figure anything to any degree of certainty. Now I look at the Fed numbers, the USA Today numbers, state audit numbers, and IRS filings with a skeptical eye and figure the truth is somewhere between the extremes of each source.

(11-13-2019 03:35 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:36 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 09:01 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  The converse is not necessarily true, of course. The point is that most of these revenues are balanced out -- to the cent -- by expenses in the same books that report the revenues.

The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

You can’t really compare private industry accounting with government and nonprofit accounting. I’m not saying something dubious is going on. The Dept of Education and NCAA both tell the schools to report those receipts as revenues, so they’re revenues. I’m just saying that the DOE numbers, in thier own words, is not meant to be an accounting of the athletic department as noted in the fact that they instruct you to report the same revenues twice. The USA Today figures are better in that aspect but the determination of what is and isn’t included in the athletic department is still pretty wide open.

Not only that, there is a wide spectrum of what is an athletics expense that varies not just state to state but school to school.

Student athletic trainers or student managers who get scholarship assistance to perform those roles might or might not be charged to the athletic budget.

Same goes for cheerleaders and dance team.

Athletics might fund all, part, or none of pep band and marching band. At AState pep band members get X dollars per game the play at, marching band has scholarships but none funded by athletics unless it has happened recently but athletics did pay for new uniforms last time around.

I know of a former Sun Belt member that charged the cost of parking attendants to the campus police budget 10 years because their counsel at the time told me they did (been a decade so may no longer be the case), most others bill it to athletics.

Some schools hire temps to work as concession staff, some pay a flat fee to any group that will staff as a fund-raiser, some just lease concession space to third parties.

School might put the physical plant in charge of maintenance and painting, mowing and maybe post-game clean-up of the venues or athletics pays the physical plant a fee that might be well below market rates or might hire temps to do it.

Arkansas has some tough rules for state finance purposes but nothing like Virginia where my understanding is that nearly anything related to athletics has to be billed to athletics for state accounting purposes. As explained to me if the university foundation pays a funds manager to manage the endowment then athletics is billed on the books for the percentage of the endowment that is athletics money. It's incredibly hard to do apples to apples comparisons of schools. Louisiana and Texas have some hard to understand rules about what accounts can be used to fund athletics, while Arkansas has a dollar amount cap on what can come from the accounts for depositing tuition and the account for depositing state funding but could in theory tap into accounts for student housing, the cafeteria, vending machines and student parking fees unless those are pledged for debt service and other states cap by percentage. Some states or higher ed boards require student fees for any athletic or athletic related service be subject to a student vote others the board can impose.

I gave up trying to figure anything to any degree of certainty. Now I look at the Fed numbers, the USA Today numbers, state audit numbers, and IRS filings with a skeptical eye and figure the truth is somewhere between the extremes of each source.

Yep, it’s the Wild West of accounting. The best you can hope for is that schools are at least consistent in thier handling so you can compare the same schools numbers from year to year. But there’s no reason to really expect that. My understanding is VA state laws are stringent in reporting. There’s a line item in our FS for University overhead charged to the Athletic Department. That’s not AD overhead but an allocation of University overhead to athletics. And it seems that some VA schools take it more seriously than others. JMU shows a lot more in indirect expense and overhead, gameday expenses, etc than does ODU. Their AD has an accounting background though apparently so I guess that makes sense.

(11-13-2019 02:50 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:36 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  I don’t know why I’ve always been suspicious on some of those numbers.

The two G5’s with the highest revenues are independent and are comparable to the lower P5’s: BYU and UConn.

Louisiana Tech is doing more with less.

LT has good reason for keeping their athletic budget and items that could be included in the ad lower due to how that state allows allocation of general funds to athletics. The guy that changes lightbulbs in the chemistry building then goes and changes lightbulbs in the football stadium. Some schools would allocate his salary, LT would rather not. Most basketball arenas are dual purpose, there’s a lot of ways to allocate that which would create a lot of different results. Neither is right or wrong unless there’s state laws that determine reporting requirements. There’s practices that would be egregiously wrong but a lot of room within what is right.

Arenas are a whole book worth of stuff.

We had an assistant AD at AState who came from Temple. The athletic department at Temple was carrying the full debt load on their arena and he was banging his head against the wall trying to coordinate with the arena at AState which was an independent arm of the university answering to a different vice-president.

Because the arena isn't profitable every year the school's accountants pointed out transferring the arena to the athletic department was a problem because it would eat into the state limits on funding. There is no state limit to make up a shortfall if the arena doesn't cover its expenses as an independent arm, there is a hard cap if it is part of the athletic department and it only breaks even or profits about three out of five years.

Meanwhile down in Louisiana, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's Cajundome was jointly funded by the state, the university, and the consolidated city/parish government and is run by a five member board with representation from each. UL has been a consistent opponent of awarding the conference tournament to the top seed because every so many years the conference tournament overlaps Mardi Gras and the arena is a staging point for the local parade and they would have to forfeit hosting in those years.

Arkansas Little Rock for a time used the Statehouse Convention Center in downtown Little Rock but could never get all their home dates so would play some games at the Fairgrounds and even moved games to Pine Bluff, and one time to the University of Central Arkansas for a TAAC play-in game, then used what was then Alltel Arena until a booster built them a 6300 seat arena that is an independent arm of the school because there is no interest in doing concerts there so no outside revenue stream.

Just about any ownership and financing structure you can imagine is in place somewhere in division I when it comes to arenas.

(11-13-2019 03:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  Yep, it’s the Wild West of accounting. The best you can hope for is that schools are at least consistent in thier handling so you can compare the same schools numbers from year to year. But there’s no reason to really expect that. My understanding is VA state laws are stringent in reporting. There’s a line item in our FS for University overhead charged to the Athletic Department. That’s not AD overhead but an allocation of University overhead to athletics. And it seems that some VA schools take it more seriously than others. JMU shows a lot more in indirect expense and overhead, gameday expenses, etc than does ODU. Their AD has an accounting background though apparently so I guess that makes sense.

That right there.

My observation is if you get a long-term administration in place you get consistency because it becomes easy to just do it the way we did it last year. Get some churn at AD or campus CEO and it can go all over the place as they adjust to tell what ever version they want to tell.

(11-13-2019 02:42 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:25 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-12-2019 09:01 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  The converse is not necessarily true, of course. The point is that most of these revenues are balanced out -- to the cent -- by expenses in the same books that report the revenues.

The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

Yes, the notion of a school counting mandatory fees charged to students as "athletic revenue" is absurd. It's equivalent to your example about an owner putting more money in his own business. Not revenue.

So would tuition and fees be revenue to the schools? If so then why not to the athletic department? What about taxpayer funds paid to public schools? Private research grants? Government grants? It’s almost as if comparing the financial structure of a university and thier ancillary activities to a privately owned restaurant is absurd.

Agreed, there are a lot of complexities when it comes to taxpayer-funded organizations.

But to me revenue comes from outsiders, not insiders. A school assessing a mandatory fee on students, insiders, to fund athletics is not revenue, its as someone else said like forcing your employees to kick back a percentage of their salary, or the owner investing in his own business. Likewise, if the state appropriates $100 million to build the school a new basketball gym, that's not revenue either.

Athletic revenue comes from the outside and from voluntary sources - media deals, corporate sponsorships, tickets sold, etc. - including tickets sold to students, if the students are free to buy or not buy, etc. Mandatory fees, no.

I'm not in favor of "soaking" students for athletics fees, but I wouldn't say college students are equivalent to the employees of a business. They're more like the customers.

(11-13-2019 09:02 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  These numbers look really weird.

E.g., FSU has a smaller financial pocketbook than Florida in every way - less conference money, less attendance at football games, etc.

So where is it getting $177m from? Did a T-Boone Pickens type donate $60m to the athletic department?

Makes no sense, as does the Kansas number.

I wonder if the KU revenue includes a $50M donation by David booth to kick off a campaign to raise funds to upgrade KU’s football stadium which is now called David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. KU’s revenues had been consistently close to $100M the last few years which in itself is remarkable considering the sad state of its football program.

(11-13-2019 07:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:42 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:25 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 01:52 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  The reporting guidelines state that expenses can not exceed revenue. Their reasoning is the bills have to be paid somehow, right? So how’d you pay them? If you use surplus revenues from prior years to cover current year shortfall then you should report those revenues in both years. You can pretty much throw the idea of “books” or “accounting” out the window with these numbers.

Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

Yes, the notion of a school counting mandatory fees charged to students as "athletic revenue" is absurd. It's equivalent to your example about an owner putting more money in his own business. Not revenue.

So would tuition and fees be revenue to the schools? If so then why not to the athletic department? What about taxpayer funds paid to public schools? Private research grants? Government grants? It’s almost as if comparing the financial structure of a university and thier ancillary activities to a privately owned restaurant is absurd.

Agreed, there are a lot of complexities when it comes to taxpayer-funded organizations.

But to me revenue comes from outsiders, not insiders. A school assessing a mandatory fee on students, insiders, to fund athletics is not revenue, its as someone else said like forcing your employees to kick back a percentage of their salary, or the owner investing in his own business. Likewise, if the state appropriates $100 million to build the school a new basketball gym, that's not revenue either.

Athletic revenue comes from the outside and from voluntary sources - media deals, corporate sponsorships, tickets sold, etc. - including tickets sold to students, if the students are free to buy or not buy, etc. Mandatory fees, no.

I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

(11-13-2019 09:47 PM)Realigned Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 09:02 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  These numbers look really weird.

E.g., FSU has a smaller financial pocketbook than Florida in every way - less conference money, less attendance at football games, etc.

So where is it getting $177m from? Did a T-Boone Pickens type donate $60m to the athletic department?

Makes no sense, as does the Kansas number.

I wonder if the KU revenue includes a $50M donation by David booth to kick off a campaign to raise funds to upgrade KU’s football stadium which is now called David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. KU’s revenues had been consistently close to $100M the last few years which in itself is remarkable considering the sad state of its football program.

Oregon was #1 a few years back because of a huge Nike donation. Texas A&M was #1 one year because of a stadium campaign. Those are actual revenues. Just not recurring ones. Doing a 3-5 year average would present more comparable numbers.

They have enough data that you can dig down and determine how much of revenue is real revenue, how much is student fees (some of which could be considered "ticket" revenue-i.e. at Texas they had an optional athletics fee which gave you entrance to all athletic events) and how much is simply subsidy from the university.

(11-13-2019 10:05 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

The idea of outside income being enough to fund an athletic department or even enough to cover much of the cost of the athletics department is an incredibly new development in the world of intercollegiate athletics.

Building stadiums and arenas as a path to greater revenue that would cover construction costs is very new. If they had been a great investment University of Arkansas rather than the WPA would have built Razorback Stadium and Barnhill Arena. LSU wouldn't have designed a sloped dormitory with a 120 yard long courtyard in the middle.

Incredible lack of self-awareness when Enormous State University athletics were simply an expense for 70 years and then started making some money and then last 25 years has operated solely on outside income then Enormous State University at Capital City announces they want to add football and everyone is like hold up how are you going to pay for it? Duh school will pay for it like ESU main campus did for seven decades. No that's unacceptable, you need to be a profit center or not play at all.

(11-14-2019 11:40 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 10:05 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

The idea of outside income being enough to fund an athletic department or even enough to cover much of the cost of the athletics department is an incredibly new development in the world of intercollegiate athletics.

Building stadiums and arenas as a path to greater revenue that would cover construction costs is very new. If they had been a great investment University of Arkansas rather than the WPA would have built Razorback Stadium and Barnhill Arena. LSU wouldn't have designed a sloped dormitory with a 120 yard long courtyard in the middle.

Incredible lack of self-awareness when Enormous State University athletics were simply an expense for 70 years and then started making some money and then last 25 years has operated solely on outside income then Enormous State University at Capital City announces they want to add football and everyone is like hold up how are you going to pay for it? Duh school will pay for it like ESU main campus did for seven decades. No that's unacceptable, you need to be a profit center or not play at all.

I wonder how true this is. Yes, outside revenues were far less back in the day, but so too were expenses. E.g., in 1995, when Florida played Nebraska for the national championship, Florida's entire athletic budget was $15 million, and they were just about tops in the nation. Baylor, a "power" conference school, had a $7m athletic budget.

I know Florida was drawing 80,000 fans a game in 1995, so it wouldn't surprise me if real revenues - that is, not counting special state appropriations or mandatory fees - were greater than expenses.

People talked about football building libraries at places like Notre Dame and Penn State long before media dollars exploded, etc.

(11-13-2019 10:05 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 07:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:42 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:25 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-13-2019 02:08 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Of course. The reported figures are just a story that the athletic department wants to tell.

There are probably many dubious aspects in any athletic department's reported numbers. One of the most dubious things is including university money (student fees, money from the university general fund, etc.) in "revenue". That's not revenue. That is money used to cover the shortfall between expenses and real revenue.

Suppose that a restaurant chain had $30 million in expenses last year, and collected $14 million from restaurant customers, and the owners put in $16 million of their own money to make sure all the bills were paid. Did the restaurant chain have $30 million in revenue last year? Of course not. They had $14 million in revenue. But if the restaurant chain was a college athletic department, they would report $30 million in revenue and $30 million in expenses.

Yes, the notion of a school counting mandatory fees charged to students as "athletic revenue" is absurd. It's equivalent to your example about an owner putting more money in his own business. Not revenue.

So would tuition and fees be revenue to the schools? If so then why not to the athletic department? What about taxpayer funds paid to public schools? Private research grants? Government grants? It’s almost as if comparing the financial structure of a university and thier ancillary activities to a privately owned restaurant is absurd.

Agreed, there are a lot of complexities when it comes to taxpayer-funded organizations.

But to me revenue comes from outsiders, not insiders. A school assessing a mandatory fee on students, insiders, to fund athletics is not revenue, its as someone else said like forcing your employees to kick back a percentage of their salary, or the owner investing in his own business. Likewise, if the state appropriates $100 million to build the school a new basketball gym, that's not revenue either.

Athletic revenue comes from the outside and from voluntary sources - media deals, corporate sponsorships, tickets sold, etc. - including tickets sold to students, if the students are free to buy or not buy, etc. Mandatory fees, no.

I get your point, “self generated revenues” is a good measure of athletic dept solvency but the traditional financing model of college athletics has been that most income has come from the institution. It’s just relatively recently that it’s become big business and other revenue streams have eclipsed those. And we’re starting to see a breaking point in that model. But if FIU has 50k students that they can charge a modest fee to and raise significant dollars on is that less valuable or reliable than tix sales and donations? You could argue it’s better, if they had the fan support as well they’d be UCF. It all spends the same. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth but that’s it. Message board fodder. arkstfan and I have been talking about how unreliable comparing these figures are. Many might ask why not regulate to bring the numbers more in line with each other. The answer is simple, it’d serve no purpose other than for measuring dicks. With publicly traded securities and private entities a proper dick measuring has value and is necessary for stakeholders but outside of sports message boards forcing schools to change their internal accounting practices to adopt uniform accepted practices would serve no purpose. They are accountable to their board of trustees and that’s mostly it. So.....whether you like it or not, subsidized revenues ARE revenues. And that institutional support is an important part of a majority of Div I schools budgets.

I was with you until the bolded part, because to me, that's just your opinion. To me, there is value in knowing what the "real" revenue of an athletic program is, that is, voluntary revenue, not subsidized money forced from students or state appropriations. That value is in knowing whether athletics is supporting itself or is supported by others against their will - that's what a 'mandatory subsidy' is.

Beyond that, I think we all know that many schools - basically all but the top 30 or so P5 teams- rely heavily on mandatory fees. My USF has an athletic budget of about $45 million, and about 45% of that is from mandatory fees from students. That means that our athletic department actually runs a big operating deficit each year, it costs far more than it generates. To me, I like knowing that, because we should be striving to eliminate that. It's wrong so we should have a plan to sunset it.

And I don't think anyone believes what happens on message boards matters. I don't, I know that despite my view, schools are going to keep on socking their students with big fees to pay for the Football Dream. No illusions about that.