(01-29-2014 11:18 AM)TodgeRodge Wrote:  

(01-29-2014 10:57 AM)YouCanUseaMint Wrote:  If Lamar really has a combined $90M Endowment and have fund raised as well as they have, who the hell is running the athletics department and why haven't I seen anything major come from East Texas? Imagine where y'all would be with a Lynn Hickey type

1. the vast majority of that endowment would be earmarked for anything but athletics

2. a 90 million dollar endowment would pay out 4.5 million per year at the max and even if you devoted 100% of that to athletics (which would be highly foolish and not even possible considering most if not all of it would be earmarked for other things) that is still very little money compared to playing in a division where 30+ million dollar athletics budgets are in the lower 25% of overall budgets in that division

3. they only restarted their football program a few years ago and they are a small university in a small metro area that is in the far corner of a large state with numerous other sports options so it will be extremely difficult for them to draw enough fans to actually support a D1-A program successfully long term

they have highly respected engineering and nursing programs both of which cost a lot of money to run (and account for a large part of that endowment) so it is not like they are just wasting the money on nothing instead of wasting it trying to compete at the bottom rung of D1-A

I'm not in any way implying they can or should use endowment funds for athletics, but I think the Lamar posters have a point that there is a lot of money in the area and with the right leadership, a lot can happen. I don't care that they only restarted their football program a few years back. I don't care they are in a small metro in a large state (we are the sun belt after all - we win on the field, not in markets). If they have the leadership in place and the resources, then we can talk membership. But I'm not still not convinced they have those