(05-14-2020 07:03 PM)Mav Wrote: (05-14-2020 06:12 PM)johnbragg Wrote: (05-14-2020 04:40 PM)Attackcoog Wrote: In terms the of the marketing benefit an athletics department might deliver to a school----I would imagine the vast majority of it comes from football at most FBS universities. Thats probably the reason a school is willing to lose some money on that sport and more likely to cut rowing, even though it loses less money than football.
I'd be really curious to see some sort of data on this.
Maybe a survey asking people in Texas, especially high school students and parents, to identify the made up schools out of University of North Texas, Texas State University, Sam Houston State, South Texas STate, UT Rio Grande Valley, UT Fort Worth, Texas Southern University, and East Texas A&M.
Does the "front porch" advertising effect of lower-FBS really do any good compared to FCS? Does Texas State really have a higher profile than Stephen F Austin State? I really don't know. Does FBS North Texas really have advantages over UT Dallas or UT Arlington? Or is that not a good comparison, because UNT students aren't competitive for UTA or UTD?
I can tell you it doesn't work in Illinois. NIU, for all of its success in football, is considered well below Illinois State prestige-wise. FBS football hasn't done anything to stop them from bleeding students like all of the other directionals.
Then again, Illinois might not be the best example, either. The state's sports fandom is tilted extremely heavily towards the pros.
Illinois isn't the worst comparison. Let's look at numbers for NIU, WIU, EIU, SIU and SIU-E. I'll go in order of enrollment, greatest to least.
Northern Illinois University. Average SAT 1110, enrollment 13,779, decline 16% 2015-19
Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. Average SAT 1123, enrollment 10,704, decline 10% 2015-19
Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. Average SAT 1146, enrollment 9887, decline 34% 2015-19
Western Illinois University. Average SAT 1020, enrollment 6407, decline 33% 2015-19
Eastern Illinois University. Average SAT 1020, enrollment 6,046, decline 17% 2015-19
Illinois State University. Average SAT 1140, enrollment 18,404, decline 1% 2015-19
So, FBS isn't providing obvious benefits to NIU compared to the other Illinois directionals, and FCS isn't providing obvious benefits compared to SIU-E.
Now this has been a nightmare 5 years for the Illinois schools, but Northern Illinois has been in the Division I-A MAC since 1975 (says the wikipedia timeline), and they haven't obviously pulled ahead of their directional cousins, haven't really closed the perception gap with Illinois State.