(02-14-2022 12:25 PM)JMURocks Wrote:  

(02-14-2022 12:07 PM)We Are the Dukes of JMU Wrote:  It would be interesting to see how much state-level accounting rules impact these budgets. I think the JMU and ODU budgets include debt service for facilities, but I'm not sure that's the case across the board. If all of the budgets include some degree of debt service, then it would be interesting to see a breakout of operating vs. financing activities to get to what each school is actually spending on sports.

Agree, this might not be apples to apples, though depending on what timeframe they are looking at, I believe JMU's budget is higher, so perhaps this doesn't include debt.

The other aspect of this is JMU spends much more heavily on sports outside of Football and Basketball than most other schools do. So a better comparison would be operational spending per sport not including facility debt.

I think JMU is likely on equal footing, but not sure we blow everyone out of the water when it comes to football and basketball operational budgets. We are likely lagging behind still on coaching budget and will need to adjust that to remain competitive.

We all know that infrastructure/debt spend, spirit groups, and the accounting treatment of scholarships (JMU charges JMU Athletics for the tuition behind the scholarships even though its net zero impact at the JMU level) can cause big swings from school to school.

Normalizing for the costs tracked would be an absolute necessity before anyone tries to draw conclusions from this data. The $48M shown for JMU appears to be our 2020 report expense total ($58.216M) less athletic facility debt ($10.153M). Based on my memory of some of Borne's comments on other expenses that aren't always apples to apples with other states/schools is scholarship tuition ($9.593M), spirit groups ($1.195M), facility rent paid to JMU ($0.210M), indirect costs paid to JMU by Athletics ($4.164M). Perhaps JMU's normalized expense of $32.9M should be compared to some of the other amounts presented.

ODU is the only school that we can somewhat assume is apples to apples and I think the state by state and school by school differences are apparent when the two VA schools just happen to be the two highest.

After you normalize the expenses tracked; How many sports does a school offer? Are all sports offered expected to have the same financial investment (i.e. Ark State paying for a bowling team versus JMU paying for swimming and diving)? What is the spend by athlete? Are programs fully funded to max level of scholarships and coaching positions?