The unofficial online home for fans of the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(04-04-2018 06:23 PM)gerhard911 Wrote:  

(04-04-2018 06:16 PM)grubs Wrote:  

(04-04-2018 05:26 PM)stxrunner Wrote:  

(04-04-2018 02:54 PM)grubs Wrote:  

(04-04-2018 12:56 PM)jarr Wrote:  I have no idea, just speculating... but does anyone have any numbers on the overall indirect revenue the football and basketball programs bring to the university? In other words, lets say we whacked football and/or basketball, how would that effect the university as a whole? Does the enrollment go down? Do donations and gifts go down? Does interest in the university go down? How does this affect general student and alumni well being as related to the university?

Its probably easy to point to sports and say, well they aren't making revenue. But some times youbbn have step back and look at the entire picture to see what they are truly bringing to the table. What are the programs bringing in revenue, and which ones are not? Are students paying for these as well?

Ultimately, the student has a choice if they want to pay the tuition, if not they have other options, if its too high and doesn't make sense for them, then why not look elsewhere. Everybody is not a victim.

Rough ideas can be gained by checking the University's budget which is public information. Direct Basketball and Football revenue were budgeted at 4.9 m and 6.9 m respectively. Gifts were 4 mil, and other is 14m. On the expense side, direct Basketball and Football expenses are 6.2m and 11.2m respectively. Womens sports were 6.9 m and other men sports 3m. Other expense lines Operations of 2.4m, 5m in debt service, 17m in admin and general. How close to revenue neutral the revenue sports are is dependant on how much you figure the gifts, others revenue evaporates without those sports and how much of the expenses can be reduced without them.
In reality, you shouldn't expect that athletics be revenue neutral any more than your communication departments would be. OSU is one of the small handful that is revenue positive. The majority of even the P5 run negative budgets. Having a strong athletic department brings value to the University in more ways that are covered in the balance sheet. The marketing alone to out of state students is incredibly valuable to the university.

It's a lazy article that was written to come to the conclusion that the writer wanted. This is not to say that the University's fees shouldn't be scrutinized. UC is second highest in the state behind Miami.

I think the bolded is a great conclusion. I have no doubt UC is on the higher end of the spectrum. It's not ideal. It's a huge gamble as many have pointed out. Louisville did the same thing a decade ago and cashed in. We may not. Noone could ever know. If things shift in college athletics in a major way, it's going to be time to have some hard conversations about where we spend our money.

I do know it would be a lot easier on the budget to axe almost every sport UC sponsors except the revenue ones while having minimal impact on donations and marketing (obviously we can't do this because of Title IX, but hypothetically). I'd love to read the sensationalist article written after we did that one, especially after UC tried to save money by having teams play in Ursula's gym this past year.

The other game is to compare to other institutions which likely accounted the expenses and revenue differently enough to make a difference between highly negative and barely negative. Do you think the Linder College of Business is charged with the debt service on their new building? That change alone would make the revenue sports self-sufficient.

Wait, what? UC bent over for CarlIII & FCC and still has a large debt service on the new CHLjr CoB building?

It's a $120,000,000 facility...even if he gave $60,000,000, which is more than what Louise Nippert gave for CCM, we'd still have debt service on the project.