(02-15-2017 10:19 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-14-2017 09:55 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(02-14-2017 05:37 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-14-2017 05:21 PM)miko33 Wrote:  There won't be a group of 5 playoff. However, there may actually be something similar that will come about in the future that will make a new subdivision out of necessity. The brutal honesty is that there are maybe 20 - 30 schools that can legitimately spend at the highest levels to compete. At least 1/2 to 2/3rds of the current P5 setup cannot effectively compete at the highest levels when you look at schools like Alabama, Michigan, OH State, Florida, Texas, and a handful of others and use those as a benchmark for AD spending...it's not sustainable. IMO if your school CANNOT run a revenue neutral AD at the absolute minimum, you do not deserve to be in the highest subdivision. That's the first pass. Second pass, if you cannot spend at a minimum "X" amount of dollars, you have no business being in the highest subdivision. Applying a dual pass filter with these metrics, your ultimate slotting in the subdivisions SHOULD look quite different.

My school cannot compete at the highest levels and it's in a P5 conference. I do not WANT my school to compete at the highest levels. I would rather my school focus more efforts on the academic side AND MORE IMPORTANTLY focus on controlling costs so that tuition is more affordable to the state residents. We're beyond the fun and games at this point. College costs are too high, and playing college sports at the highest levels WHEN YOU CANNOT RUN A REVENUE NEUTRAL AD is morally repugnant in today's world. I no longer GAF if my school can go toe to toe with Ohio State if it means that the AD must be heavily subsidized to do so.

If your school is in a P5 conference (including Pitt), then its football and men's basketball programs are absolutely, 100% making a lot of money. Whether the rest of the athletic department is draining such money and/or there's a lot of creative accounting being employed to show $0 profit or a net loss is another matter.

It's not mutually exclusive for a school like Pitt to have a top level P5 athletic department while also improving academic standards. Once you get past the Ivy League-level schools, there's a pretty strong correlation between academic prestige and P5 membership. A P5 athletic department is also not a reason why tuition is going higher. Public schools everywhere (regardless of whether they are in the P5 or not) are getting little to no state funding these days and private schools have jacked up tuition rates to the point where it's literally funny money if you're attempting to pay out-of-pocket. Don't kid yourself - Pitt isn't going to be more affordable if it drops P5 sports. If anything, that reduces the national name brand of Pitt where they don't attract as many applications from quality students, which then reduces enrollments and then forces the school to squeeze more tuition dollars from its existing students.

I can point to my own home state of Illinois. It's not the University of Illinois (with its Big Ten athletic department) that's hurting due to a complete lack of state funding of higher education (literally) - they've just announced that they've received yet another record number of applications this year. Instead, it's the non-P5 public universities in the state that are getting hammered financially and facing declining enrollments. That's not to say that having P5 athletics is the reason why U of I isn't suffering the same fate as its other in-state brethren, but the point is that it certainly isn't hurting them at all whatsoever. Big Ten membership is a pretty significant plus for U of I in differentiating itself against other schools that are its local competitors, just as ACC membership is a pretty significant plus for Pitt as being a differentiator versus, say, Temple, Delaware or Miami of Ohio.

Correlation is not causation, Frank. Most schools are P5 today because they were the schools pushed strongly by the states sponsoring these land grant institutions over a hundred years ago. Of course the public schools that get the majority of the financing because they are - the official land grant state universities of choice by the state - they will have the higher ratings. They will have the resources that will get them the best equipment for their schools and the talented phD's to become professors. This in turn will provide the shot in the arm to become strong research centers. That will attract more dollars and more reputation and the cycle will continue. It's a self reinforcing positive feedback loop that was all made possible by significant seed money from the states originally. This doesn't account for the private P5 schools, but that's no biggie since my statements account for the vast majority of P5 schools.

Maybe decades ago before we had all of the info at our fingertips, college sports did act as THE primary marketing tool that prospective students had access to. This paradigm is no longer the dominant model. The best and brightest students are those who are discriminating shoppers who are carefully weighing the strength and weaknesses of various schools. If they are interested in polymer science, they'll choose the school strongest in polymer science that they can get into AND get scholarships to study at.

For the rest of us middle class types who are not rich enough for the Ivy's, not brilliant enough for the Ivy's or not poor enough for the Ivy's...we're choosing the overall best school that we can reasonably afford. Growing up in PA, I already knew I was either going to Pitt or PSU. I applied to both and was accepted to both. It wasn't college athletics that swayed me. These were the 2 best options available for a middle class kid who wants to study engineering. The other options either didn't offer what i was looking for, low quality or too expensive. Conference affiliation had nothing to do with it. For the VAST MAJORITY of people, the dominant state school is what they'll choose as their best available choice if they want access to as many options for degrees as possible. This is common knowledge for the majority of us. It has nothing to do with conference affiliation, and frankly it's stupid to make such an argument.

I completely agree that correlation is not the same as causation and that academic standing and P5 membership are correlated with each other (as opposed to one causing the other).

By the same token, though, there's neither causation nor correlation between eliminating/reducing the size of an athletic department and decreasing the costs of tuition at public universities. They have nothing to do with each other. If you want to state that academic standing has nothing to do with conference affiliation and that it's a "stupid argument", then that's fine. However, it's also just as stupid (or at least naive) of an argument to think that Pitt (or any other school) dropping big-time sports would result in a single cent of savings for its students. Public school tuition is largely driven by the level of state funding (or the lack thereof) and private school tuition is largely driven by charging as high of a rack rate for a certain number of families that can pay out-of-pocket while subsidizing the rest (either through endowments or federally-backed student loans). Pitt dropping P5 sports would simply result in Pitt not having that exposure in that particular high profile venue any further. That might please the anti-sports people on campus, but it certainly won't help ease the actual tuition burden of any of its students.

You may be right that it would do nothing. However, it makes no sense to subsidize a money loser. Most P5 schools are running deficits, so the money has to come from somewhere. Universities today do not try to control costs. They are in an extended expansion mode. When your AD is a money loser, it only increases costs overall. You can make the argument that there are bigger levers you can pull to control costs. However, it's a net money loser for most universities. Most of these students are forced to subsidize athletics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grad...6#comments

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/col...s/2142443/

http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/ncaa/...t-any-cost

If you protest that these 3 articles above are about G5 programs and that the P5 is different? No so fast. Because the article below includes the P5 woes as well. The bottom line is at the G5 level it is glaringly obvious. But you can see the psychology on why school administrators are going all in on college sports. The first article from WaPo talks about the Flutie Effect. Everyone is banking on that, and they are pouring cash into the system with the hope that there schools "wins the lottery" and gets that elusive shot in the arm to make it stronger. In the meantime, the students bankroll these dreams.

http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/medi...l-minority

Quote:Though the number of athletics departments reporting positive net generated revenues has increased slightly, the average of their net generated revenue has dipped in the past year. Those 24 schools, at the median, generated about $6 million in net revenue, compared to just over $8 million in 2013 and a little more than $2 million a decade ago.

But those 24 schools are a minority. Many more schools saw their expenses exceed their revenue, requiring their colleges and universities to cover the shortfall. The median FBS school spent $14.7 million to help subsidize its athletics department in 2014, up from a little more than $11 million in 2013. That level of spending isn’t unique to FBS schools – median Football Championship Subdivision and non-football schools spent roughly $11 million to help fund athletics in 2014.

"There is still a misperception that most schools are generating more money than they spend on college athletics," said NCAA Chief Financial Officer Kathleen McNeely. "These data show once again that the truth is just the opposite.

The money has to come from somewhere, Frank. If it's coming from the gov't or the students directly, it's a wealth transfer to a select minority of kids who the odds favor for not being able to get admitted to the school on their own academic merits.

What we see happening to the G5 in the articles I posted above can easily happen to the majority of the P5 schools trying to compete with the top programs. There is a major arms race still going in college athletics, and it's one of the biggest reasons why schools continue to take on more and more debt.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/col...story.html

Quote:Facilities spending is one of the biggest reasons otherwise profitable or self-sufficient athletic departments run deficits, according to a Washington Post review of thousands of pages of financial records from athletic departments at 48 schools in the five wealthiest conferences in college sports.

In 2014, these 48 schools spent $772 million combined on athletic facilities, an 89-percent increase from $408 million spent in 2004, adjusted for inflation. Those figures include annual debt payments, capital expenses and maintenance costs.

Big-time college athletic departments are taking in more money than ever - and spending it just as fast

Quote:Clemson's new facility likely will be the best for just a matter of months, critics of college sports said, until the next school decides to transform a corner of its campus into what Drake Group President Gerald Gurney terms "day spas" designed to entice teenagers.

"This is all about pandering to the fantasies of 18-year-olds. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the mission of a university," said Gurney, whose organization advocates an overhaul of commercialized college sports in America.

"What's probably next down the line is a floating river attraction. ... Why don't we have a roller coaster?" said Gurney, who has worked in athletic departments at the University of Maryland and the University of Oklahoma, where he now teaches. "It's embarrassing that we're even discussing this."

Subsidizing the small minority for what? For bragging rights? For connecting the alumni more deeply with their alma mater? Ha! Not in today's world. The model is different. Costs are too high to pay for the "luxury" of the "college experience". It's much more of a cost/benefit calculus for today's students.

I close with this - perhaps the biggest blunder made by a P5 program for athletics.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/...pling-debt

Quote:By another measure, Cal sports are in big trouble. After completing the most expensive college football stadium overhaul ever, the Golden Bears now owe more money than any other college sports program. Hobbled by debt service payments, the athletic department ran a $22 million deficit last year and expects to end this fiscal year deep in the red.

Quote:Football critics nationwide often point to multimillion-dollar coaches as emblems of excess. They should be more worried about debt, which costs more and lasts longer. A high-priced coach might earn $4 million to $5 million a year. Meanwhile, according to public records, athletic departments at least 13 schools in the country have long-term debt obligations of more than $150 million as of 2014—money usually borrowed to build ever-nicer facilities for the football team.

For some schools, millions in TV money can support a high level of debt service. That includes the University of Alabama, which plays Clemson for the national championship on Monday. The Crimson Tide owes $225 million over the next 28 years. In the Big Ten, also flush from a rich media deal, the University of Illinois owes more than $260 million. If that revenue stream fails to grow or starts to drop, as it already has for some programs in the top tier of college football, the results could be crippling.

Quote:There may be limits to how much help can come from central campus. Overall, Cal had a $150 million deficit last year and is up against its borrowing limit. “Not only does athletics have a problem on account of the debt service, but it’s also taking up a huge chunk of our available borrowing,” said physics professor Bob Jacobsen, a faculty representative for athletics. Meanwhile, he added, professors are losing research opportunities due to funding concerns.