(07-17-2020 05:30 PM)Hilldog Wrote:  

(01-07-2020 12:43 AM)SDHornet Wrote:  

(12-06-2019 01:58 PM)Pounder Wrote:  

(12-05-2019 06:09 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  If leveling out to 12/14 rather than the awkward 11/13 then sure Dixie St makes sense for the Big Sky.

Cedar City and St. George are, by Western US standards, REALLY close. Less than an hour by car, but without serious traffic. That's way too much market saturation. Of course, in theory, that should have been a barrier to Dixie moving up in the first place. This perhaps puts Southern Utah (who's already a have-not in terms of Big Sky budgets) in a real spot if Dixie can follow through on its plans.

Yet... the options out west are such that the Big Sky may not have a choice.

The budget analysis comes from a recent Sac State newspaper article... https://statehornet.com/2019/12/athletic...t-deficit/

That analysis is flawed. This issue came up on our board and I recently posted a response. The athletics deficit needs to be addressed but it is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Our biggest issue is getting an events center built, that alone will punch a big hole in our "revenue" dilemma.

Your basketball team can't sell out your high school gym! So, this new arena will mean sell out crowds of 5,000-7,000 people?

The way for Sac St to cut expenses is to get into the Big West, which is all CA schools and Hawaii. The Big Sky is clearly willing to have football only members, so dropping Sac St for all other sports would mean a 10 team Big Sky! Bakersfield was D1 for about 15 years before finally getting into the Big West. Sac St has been in the Big Sky for about 25 years and still losing money!

We sell it out (or damn near it) when we have a good team and its a top matchup, promotional game, or senior night. During the 14-15 season that place was packed to gills every game, and when we had an exciting team (mid 2000's) when I was a student you had to get there an hour before tip to get a free ticket. So yes, we can sell it out.

New events center would be about 5k capacity, I'd guess we could easily average 1.5k on the season with the bigger match-ups (and better scheduling) getting bigger crowds then some of the less desirable BSC match-ups. Additionally a new venue would significantly help recruiting so the on court product would be better which would result in better attendance.

Regarding any BW talk, we aren't going to jeopardize our FB home. FB drives the bus in college athletics.